This is from one of the Friday afternoon breakout sessions:
Dawn talked about a crushing counseling load she had at one time. It was beyond her to be able to deal with the number of folks that were requesting counseling sessions. After some talk w/others in her ministry, they decided to require a bit of time investment from potential counselees.
The requirement was to spend 10 hours seeking God on their own...the suggestion was during lunchtime...before coming in for counseling. Actually, if I remember right, she said she told the folks to spend the 10 hours with God and then call the office about counseling. Not 10 hours reading the Bible...10 hours in prayer, with journaling.
Dawn asked the ladies their to guess how many people out of the dozens on the list actually followed the instructions, then called.
I guessed five. The correct answer was...zero.
The implication was that people are not willing to invest themselves in their own spiritual future. I don't know if it's possible that some folks *did* spend the time seeking God and then found they actually didn't need the counseling or not; she didn't go into that much detail. I'd like to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that that was the case, but I really think it's probably just that no one persevered in seeking God.
We all want shortcuts. Someone with 'A Word' to us to take the responsibility of seeking our own direction off of us.
Folks, I got convicted. I see the powerful anointing on the ladies who spoke and our own pastors and I know that did not come cheap or easy or at the word of someone else. It came because they paid the price in time seeking God.
I'm not sure how or when, but I'm going to put a box on the sidebar...'seeking time', I'll call it...to just keep me accountable to you all to do some seeking myself. It's time I quit moaning that I don't have a 'spiritual mentor' and just go for God myself.
And if I were not challenged to do anything else over the weekend, that would have been enough.
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