I woke up today with the word afficiate in my head.  Google says it’s a slang word.  To be specific it’s “a complicated word that is difficult to put into a sentence”.  I hope you find that definition as helpful as I do – not!  Google doesn’t always get it right.  Either does Siri but that’s another blog post…

To me afficiate is the physical feeling you have of being stressed and overwhelmed while your mind is completely stress free.  I think that you get the same feeling when you are striving to follow God but He feels far away.  You know your heart is off center and something is wrong but it’s hard to articulate.  Why?  Because it’s “a complicated and difficult to put into a sentence”…

When we’re distracted, tired or overwhelmed we/I tend to do things in our own strength.  It’s like a switch is flipped and we go into survival mode.  We forget that the lover of our soul, the great pursuer, is right there wanting to help us.  But we don’t ask Jesus for help…

We’re confused and propelled by fear not hope.  Fear that we/I won’t get everything done.  Fear that we’re/I’m not enough.  Fear of ____________.  Fear of things we/I can’t explain like the word afficiate.

This morning while reading, I picked up on the four different types of problems that separate us from God and knock Him out of our center.  They are:

• ‘offence’ or ‘transgression’ (breaking of a known command)
• ‘sin’ (missing the mark of genuine humanness)
• ‘guilt’ or ‘iniquity’ (the murky stuff inside me where there should be clarity and openness)
• ‘deceit’ (the vain attempt to pretend all is well — a very common problem today

I think that many times when we start to feel that Christ is no longer our center we first must ask for forgiveness even though we may not see or think we did anything wrong.  Often our heart know before our head does.  Once we humble ourselves and admit our humanness then He will step in and help us to let go of our self-reliance or whatever stronghold is holding us back.

 Psalm 119:10 puts it this way “With my whole heart I have sought You; oh, let me not wander from Your commandments!”

It seems that our human tendency to wander, do things on our own, is thankfully only matched by God’s willingness to pursue us.

Mary R. Miller