"Responsibility. What's that?"

It's Tuesday. I'm sitting on my couch, in sweat pants and the work that I'm supposed to be doing is sitting besides me in a nice, neat stack. This morning I've been successful in washing my sheets and blankets, cooking delicious food, updating my finances, writing a few emails, getting my winter clothes out and putting my summer clothes away (finally!!) and yet I feel like I've done absolutely nothing.

About an hour after eating lunch I started to feel the Lord wooing me to come away with Him, to read His word, and to just be before Him. I felt the urge to write because that tends to be one of the most powerful ways that I connect with Him. I am sick to admit it but my thought was, "Oh, but I need to be responsible and get my class work done. I have too much to do and it needs to get done. "In that moment, I heard the Lord ask, "But what are you responsible to?"

Ooo, dang. I wish that I could explain the conviction I felt at that moment. I am all about responsibility. It's actually a strength of mine, to be 'responsible.' If I say that I'm going to do something, I do it. When I don't do something to the standard that I know I can do it, I feel it and it haunts me at times. But since when did it become ok for me to not be responsible to obedience? Since when did I become 'too busy' or 'too grown up' to be wooed away by God, Himself? Since when did my own agenda become more valuable or validated than His?

I know that I have a job that I do have to do, that I have classwork that has a deadline but doesn't God know that? And isn't coming into His presence and encountering Him the most important and valuable thing that we will ever do in our lifetime and for all of eternity? It grieves me so much to say it, but in the midst of life I have to schedule times for Him, and it could never be enough. I do know and recognize that His presence is with us wherever we are, that we can encounter and talk with Him in every activity. But are we so busy that we miss the small whisperings or the special moments where He wants to tuck us up under the shadow of His wings and love on us, and encounter us?

There is nothing more important that I will ever do on the face of this earth; nothing of more value than to hear Him, to recognize His voice, and to respond to it in obedience. So today, I slowed down. I'm sitting on my couch, encountering His presence and trying with all I have to hear His voice. My work is sitting beside me, right where it ought to be...2nd in line. I am responsible to respond; to His voice, to His wooing, to His romancing and the moments He has set aside for us.

Slow down.
Take some time to ask these questions for yourself. And with no shame involved answer honestly. I pray that these questions lead you into a deeper encounter with the one who loves you more than you could ever fathom. May He woo you away, today, and may you allow yourself to be loved by Him. He doesn't want you just surviving...rushing from one thing to the next. He wants you thriving, and fully alive in a love relationship with Him. He wants to hold you, to beckon you to a freedom you can only dream of. Oh to be free, and oh to be "response-able" to Him.

Am I responsible to obedience? 
Or am I content to just do my own thing? 
Am I ok with making my own way and not to being in tune with Him in every moment? 
What is the balance of being free and the recognition that I cannot and do not want to do anything apart from Him? 
How does He try to woo me, and how have I missed it?
What does responsibility even look like to you, Lord?
What can I lay down and what is not mine to carry or do, that I have made mine to carry?