I don't know where to begin. I feel so distant anymore. My intentions today were to spend the entire day focusing on You, LORD. Instead, I woke up, started to clean my room, did my laundry, organized the living room, and before I knew it my dad was home, it was 5:30, the phone was ringing and it's time to get ready to go to caregroup and I haven't even said hello. Why? This isn't the way I want it to be. I don't want this distance between us and yet, I am the one that keeps running. What can I do to change it? to make it right? I need You, LORD. I am empty without You, weak, and useless on my own. Please, come and fill me up, please, come and hold me, lift me out of this darkness and make me new again, help me to smile again, give me joy in You again.
I feel so defeated.

I ache inside from my own loneliness, but also for those I love who are lost. I literally ache inside for those I love when I think about how they are living their lives, the choices they are making and the end that they are choosing and these days I am so aware of the how close I am to them, how easily I could be making those very same choices and living that very same life without conviction, without the light of Christ, without hope, without salvation and it tears me up inside. God, why me and why not them? Please, open our eyes, show us our need for You, show us the emptiness of our lives and show us Your Glory, show us Your mercy, Your kindness, Your grace and give us a longing for You and a hatred for this world and the lies that have entangled us and dragged us down. God, there are men and women that You have placed in my life and You have caused me to love them and it physically hurts me to think that they are dying, they are spiritually dead and they are dying day by day right before my eyes and there is NOTHING I can do, BUT You can, LORD, You can, and so I am crying out to You with everything in me and I am asking You to change their hearts and lives this coming year. Would you save these men and women who You care about and love more than I do? You have given me a heart for them, a love for them and a desire to see them saved because it is Your heart for them. I have to believe that. Please motivate me to pray more often, more passionately, more faithfully, ceaselessly for those that I love...make this my mission this year, LORD. Grow me in this one area from now through 2011 and I pray that you would allow me to see folks come to know You this year as a fruit of faithfulness and obedience and because You are merciful, kind and forgiving, a loving and gracious God. Change me, LORD, as a result. It is in the name of the One that I cling to, whom my salvation rests in completely, Jesus Christ my LORD, that I ask.
Let this be a year of regeneration and sanctification and let it begin with me!