What God wants most is your heart.
He is actively pursuing you. He has made a way for you to have an eternal relationship with Him. He knows you better than you know yourself.
So, what’s keeping you from intimacy with God?
In the name of being a good Christian, we do a lot of things for God. We do a lot of good things in the name of God. We somehow think if we check off all the right boxes of good behavior that God will be satisfied. At the very least, we do them because it’s what we’ve always done (if we’ve grown up in church or gone to church our whole lives).
Go to church. Check.
Pay tithes. Check.
Go to Bible study. Check.
Volunteer for Children’s Church. Check.
Cook meal for family. Check.
Read Bible. Check.
For a lot of people, they don’t even do everything that’s on this list, but that’s another issue for another day.
We do this Christian Checklist thinking this will make God happy. We’ve done our Christian duty, and we’re good to go.
But then something is missing deep in our souls which may even make us wonder if this Church thing is all there is. We long for more but can’t really put our fingers on it as to what’s missing.
Peter Scazzero calls this “Using God to run from God”- doing all the Christian things for the sake of God, all the while, not really having a deep relationship with God.
God never meant for it to be this way. Even in the Garden of Eden, God longed to walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. Then, the Fall happened, and they hid from God. The whole epic story of the Bible has been how God intends to bring everything back to that initial state of intimacy.
How do you hide from God? How do you run from God? How do you keep God at arm’s length?
There are lots of reasons why someone would keep from God. Some deep questions that lie behind our arm’s length distance might be- “Can God be trusted?” “Is God good?” “Does God really want me?”
The answer to all those unspoken questions is YES!
But, I can’t convince you this is true. I can’t reason with you until the light bulb goes off in your head.
You’ve got to stop doing for God long enough to BE with God.
(Don’t stop all those good things forever because they ARE good things, ok?)
I challenge you to get in a quiet place with no noise, no distractions, no interruptions and just sit before God. Do nothing but just think about God. Don’t ask for anything. Don’t pray about anything. It’s ok, you can do those things at another time. Just think about God’s Love, His Goodness, His Creation, His Character.
It won’t be easy at first, but it will be worth it.
If you need a some help, here’s a little thing I put together to help you with developing silence and solitude before God. After this week, the Summer Gardening Series will be tucked away until next summer since it’s now feeling like fall. I hope it helps.
~Amy