the WHY behind this whole 7 thing

Now that life has slowed down a bit for my sweet husband, he has taken some time to lay out our thoughts on why we not only agreed to this 7 month journey, but why we jumped all in, thrilled to experience every bit of it. Here is a guest post that I believe was well worth the wait:

“Our primary reason for pursuing this whole 7 journey is so that we may experience the presence, grace, and love of God in a more intimate way. We realize that by doing so, certain things about us will have to change. Why? Because God is holy. But what does God’s holiness have to do with us changing?

It has everything to do with us changing.

Remember, holiness means “otherness,” i.e., as much as we are God’s image-bearers in this world, we can only portray who He is in an extremely finite way. But God is infinite. We do all things imperfectly. God does all things perfectly. Recall what God said through the prophet Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts,” (Is. 55:8-9, NIV).

Simply put, God is vastly beyond what we can ever imagine or understand, and His holiness makes Him the absolute standard for righteousness. Therefore, when we grow closer to God, simply being in His glorious presence reveals to us our own sins.

Turning again to Isaiah, this prophet of God understood and repented of his own sins when he encountered the presence of God (Is. 6:1-7). The more light that shines upon us, the more aware we are of our own shadows. And we are reminded that God does not fellowship with darkness (cf. 1 John 1:5-7).

Therefore, experiencing God in a more intimate way will cause us to change, and that is a good thing! We desire to be challenged and convicted by the Holy Spirit. We want to be awakened to the sins and injustices in our own lives. We want to make those changes that will cause us to fall more deeply in love with our Creator-Savior. We do not want to be blinded by what our society says is normal or okay, but rather we want to realize what it is we have been taking for granted and hording for ourselves.

We truly want to be a light unto the world and a blessing to others for God’s glory. That journey only begins when we repent of our sins and give ourselves over wholly to God’s presence and purposes.”

As my husband has so eloquently shown... this is why we have embarked on this journey and hope to make it a life-long journey. We do not intend to change our lives in some particular way for 4 weeks at a time, but to make room for God to change us each month, a change that will last a life-time. A forever kind of change.