Intimate Relationship with God

Have you asked yourself how do I build an intimate relationship with God?  Well I pray this will insist you in doing just that.  So many times in the past I would wonder what people meant when they said they had an intimate relationship with God.  I would pray to God and ask Lord how this was even possible.  The whole concept was foreign and confusing to me.  Not that I haven’t experienced intimate relationship before this but those relationship was so full of pride on my end that I couldn’t draw a parallel to that same type of relationship with God but I was seeking a deeper experience with God.  Longing for what all these people had experienced and wanting to clearly hear his voice, I went on a search.  I decided to look up the definition of the words relationship and intimate and it states:

Relationship: The way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.

Intimate: Closely acquainted; familiar

So after reviewing these definitions I started thinking what came with being in a relationship.  Then I started thinking about when being in intimate relationships there is fellowship.  I thought what step do you take to truly fall in love with a person?  Then I was blessed with an answer at a woman’s conference at my church.  The woman of God that was speaking that night topic was, Relationship with God.  She described how she set-up a date night with God weekly.  She shared with us how when we are dating someone we get all dressed up.  We cook meals and clean our house.  We will go all out.  She asked us why we don’t give the same effort to God.  Why don’t we spend uninterrupted time with God?  She explained how she would set-up candles like a date.  This woman would talk and reveal her feelings to God.  She even described how she would sing and dance. 

I was so ecstatic that God had finally provided me with an answer to my prayers.  Giving it a try was the best thing I had ever done.  I dressed up and cooked a meal.  Lighting candles to set the mood was a must.  I turned my phone off and shut the television off.  God and I shared a personal praise and worship time.  This time allowed me to grow spiritually.  I realized that I could really express how I felt.  I would find different ways I could truly show God how much I appreciated him.  I was able to sit in silent with him and allowed him to become my best friend.  My week was not complete without my date night. 

Now that some years have passed I have gotten away from doing my date night.  As I reflect on that time in my life I was truly seeking God not for blessing but just to show how grateful I was because I am already blessed.  Entering a new transition in my life right now I feel God is calling me to his purpose and to surrender my all to him.  With the revelation that this life is not about me how can I not give God all my time.  Just like some relationship that have been together for a while we let the spark die and take our significant other for granted.  Well it’s time to put the flame back in my relationship.  It’s time to make every day date night and give God my life. 

I will recommend that no matter where you are in your walk with God that you invest more time with him and watch you mature spiritually.  Start slow if this is a new relationship for you.  Start off by committing to a date night a week.  Let the butterflies ring in your spirit like you would with any new relationship.  Tell your family and friends about him.  When that thought of him appear smile or just when a thought cross your mind give him a call just to say hi.

If you have been in your relationship a while, it’s time out for games and time to show God that nothing else matters but him.  You heard the saying the things you do to get them is the same thing you need to do to keep.  So what was your excitement level and effort when you first got saved?  Look, he has a purpose for your life and when you take your eyes off of him you are not walking in your full potential that you were created for.  Run back to your first love and rekindle the flame.

Love you guys

Freedom

Apology - Surrender All

Today I want to take the time out to apologize to God, my family, my friends and anyone that read the Freedom Speaks Blog.  I've lead you astray.  I have been selfish and for that I pray that God and you forgive me.  You see for so long I have made this life all about me.  I would write for God but even in that I was present.  My blog had a picture of me which I feel was telling you about me and my accomplishments.  I was even telling you how God was using me.  Do you see the pattern of self-centeredness flowing.  No longer do I like the words I or me.

This past week God gave me a revelation of how I have not truly surrendered my life to him.  I mean really giving him every area of my life.  This life has been about me much too long.  I don’t want a thought, a goal, a dream, a feeling, a career, a love life, a vehicle, family, friends, or even food to eat if God is not in the midst of it all.  I am not trying to sound mean but I don’t care about anything else but God and his purpose for my life.  I am at the point in my life that where ever he leads is all that matters.  No longer will I fear letting go of control of my life.  The crazy thing is I never had control in the first place.

People, we tend to focus on such trivial things.  We go to God with requests that are so shallow.  God please don’t let this person on my job get on my nerves today, please let me get this new job or a job, God please let me get the car I want or that house I love so much, or Lord allow me to be able to pay my bills.  Do you realize there is this big world we reside in with people who wish they had your problems?  Their prayers are Lord if you can find it in your heart to just provide one more day of food for me and my family, Lord please give us clean drinking water, Lord please give me shoes for my feet and one of the biggest Lord please give me or someone in my family the opportunity to go to the United States. 

I have a friend who family is from Iraq.  He told me the story of how his grandmother actually watched her son hanged.  When he spoke it was evident that this was not out of the ordinary and we have the nerve to complain.  We are spoiled and don’t know what it means to struggle for real.  Do you realize you can freely worship God every day without harm?  There are fellow Christian brothers and sisters that are being killed every day just saying the name Jesus.  Our selfish behind will tell God I am too tired to get up in the morning to give him 5 minutes to say thank you, man our priorities are so off track.

Please don’t get me started on the excuses we use for not doing God’s work.  Too many of us can’t go anywhere if it is not a “Christian” event.  Our ears may be too sensitive to hear the words that may come from the world.  I thought as children of God we are supposed to influence the world not the other way around.  Jesus got up with all power but our weak behinds stay in the comfort of our church, our concerts, our programs and the world is going to hell faster than we can blink.  Our new walk has made us blind to how we use to be, has made us think too high of ourselves, and clearly made us forget what our purpose is.  Jesus hung out with the sinners so he could show them the proper way to go.  If all of us are hanging around are fellow Christians, who life is being affected by God living in you. 

Today is the day to surrender your all to God.  This very moment is the time you need realize that the only thing that matters is God and him getting all the praise in everything we do and say.  Every day you should remember Jesus dying on the cross for you and the resurrection.  Every moment should be a thought of how can I please you Lord.  Wake up every moment asking what he wants from you rather than requesting things.  There should be an authentic chase after his purpose.  Your heart should long for nothing else but pleasing him.  Are you going to get serious for God today?

Romans 12: 1-6 (The Message) – Meditate on this scripture.

Place Your Life Before God

^1-2 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

³I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

^4-6In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't.