Spell Love T-I-M-E
Again, things in my life conspired together to bring me to a point of understanding something: Loving God equals time with God. A friend challenged me to start spending 1 hour a day with God. How crazy hard this has been and there is no reason for that. I am not an encumbered person.
In this process of spending time with God, there was a lesson that there is no right or wrong way to do it. Even if I dozed off but was truly seeking the presence of God, I was blessed. I did find that God gave me a variety of ways to “talk and listen” to Him. However, I am also discovering that these may be individual. Each person may need to find his own methods of communication.
Just in case any of these methods are helpful, I will include them, for my time with God has evolved from my initial snoozing, then to one-way prayers, and finally to true communication.
In the beginning, I began to write out on index cards verses that struck me as prayers, promises, or personal needs from the Bible. These I put into the “I ” format and prayed back to God as coming from me. Also, I asked Him for what he wanted me to pray. At a suggestion from a friend, I started 2-way journaling. I poured out the concerns of my heart in a journal and listened for his response. then journaled what I thought He said.
The upshot of these prayers is that my heart has become even more concerned for the lost. These prayers have become my most important, as I finally understand that they are most urgent to God. My prayers are mostly for those that I love to know Him, but I pray lists for others’ loved ones also. These prayers were somewhat dull and repetitive so I began to bring these loved ones to the throne room in my prayers. I pictured either carrying them or taking them by the hand to the throne room of Jesus.
Interestingly. this process took on a life of its own. It seemed that God showed me pictures of what will be or could be as I prayed. One loved one resisted as I tried to take him to Jesus. I began bringing him and his wife as far as I could into the light that was coming out of the throne room, understanding that they were not ready for the encounter with Jesus yet. Their hearts had to be softened by His light and love before they could come into that holy room. Another, whom I viewed as an atheist, surprised me by going right into the throne room and going down on one knee. Since the onset of these prayers, the people in them have not stayed static–postures differ, expressions changes, and the distance from the throne seems to vary daily. I don’t see this a prophecy necessarily, more as God’s view of where each of these people has the potential to be. I take this as direction on how to pray to add my efforts to His drawing each of theses loved ones unto him. This has become the most important thing in my life.
The second thing that conspired to help my love of God is this– a sermon by Skye Jethani, http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/but-now-i-see/id363665348?i=97046494, yesterday that seemed to reinforce my understanding of loving God. We love God by hanging with him.
TIME equals LOVE. A hurried time with God, a mandatory Bible time, and some arrow prayers to God show Him that we are fitting Him into the periphery of our lives. We cannot be Christians in order to use God to control our lives or to deal with our fears. We cannot use our prayers to ask him to make our existence as we desire it to be.
We must seek God as our ultimate gift. He is what we seek; he is our goal. He is our answer — our pearl of great price. He is our security, our rest, and our deliverance. We don’t need Him just to make our lives better – we need Him to be our life. He is our great snuggler. He fills those deepest longings with Himself. He loves us, and there is no substitute in appropriating this love besides TIME with Him. Absorb Him! Know Him! Worship Him! Luxuriate in Him! He is there waiting for you.
