Intimacy; Learning How To Talk to God Part IV

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This is my favorite part!  In the past 30 years, I have learned to do one thing right and that is I have learned how to communicate with God.  When I was first seeking God, as I shared in my testimony in Part III, I learned how to throw out a lot of religious practices and did it my own way without all those religious trappings.  I want to share some of what I learned, what to do and what not to do.  I hope I can give you some insights to being intimate with God.

God is a Person

I shared that God is a person in my last article but I wanted to go over it again.   This concept is huge and it is where most people mess up.  Again, God is a person and if we take away all the religious trappings, and approach Yahweh, as you would any other person, you will go a lot further.  I have a feeling most people believe they have to approach God as in the scene from the “Wizard of Oz.”  In that scene there is a loud intimidating voice with smoke and flames coming up, then Dorothy squeamishly goes forward to meet the great Oz.  However, we do not have to approach God in such an intimidated manner.  The Bible gives us a much better way to approach God.

Hebrews 4:16; Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
God wants us to come boldly without fear, as a child comes to their own dad.  When I began praying, I just simply threw all the old stuff away and began to talk.  There was no more religious stuff.  I just came and told God; “I would like to get to know you.”  I really wanted to know for myself if all the things I had heard about God were true.  This was the only way I knew to figure this out.  If He was real I would approach Him as I would any other person and meet Him.
I became, in a way just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, she just had to meet him so she could go home.  I had to find God in order to survive this addiction that had me for so long.  I did not want to learn second hand.  So for 6 months I was persistent and faithful to talk to God and listen.  I was on a search and I searched for Him like He was gold and limitless treasure.
Psalm 63:1  O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;
PRAYER

With today’s technology, we should have no problem understanding prayer.  We are the generation with Skype, Messenger, What up apps, and Facebook to name a few.  We certainly should understand how to communicate via long distance.  Today we can chat instantly with anyone around the world, even if you cannot see them or hear them.

Well, that big religious word “prayer” simply means to communicate with God.  That is all it means and yet we unnecessarily complicate it in the church and the world.  Please do not get me wrong there are different types of prayers written in the Bible, but for our purposes here I want to simplify it as much as possible.  The reason for that is if you do not get this one down, the rest is useless or will lead you to some religious bondage that will only frustrate you in the long run.

Another big mistake people make is thinking prayer is a monolog.  That it is a one-way street, or it is some pre-learned prayer, we recite over and over again.  Prayer is a dialogue, which means it is a two-way conversation.

We are not designed to do all the talking.  God would love to speak, but most of the people I have watched only say their part and then they are gone out the door.  That leaves God sitting there wanting to answer, but those praying are already gone.  So to speak we have already hung up the phone.

This is the biggest reason so many in the church have never heard Him.   They rattle off their wish list or petitions and say in the name of Jesus and then hang up.  God is on the other end saying; “hello, hello, well they must have hung up, and I was going to share with them about their request.”  So we go through life believing either God does not answer our prayers or believing that hearing God is only for the super-elite Christians.  Let me share how I heard God even before I asked Jesus into my life and became born-again.

So all prayer is communication – a two-way dialogue.  The bible tells us to “pray without ceasing.”  When a religious person hears that, they automatically think that it is a lot of work and dedication.  They think they need to dedicate their life to prayer.  They think it will take years to learn how to stay in the mode of prayer.  Let me reassure you, it does not.  Think about when you used to talk for hours on the phone with your new boyfriend or girlfriend.  Think about how much time we spend on text messages?  We can spend hours on those things, if we think the person on the other end is worth it.  Let me share this, GOD IS WORTH IT AND HE LOVES TO TALK TO YOU ALL THE TIME!!!

When I pray, if you could hear me, you would think I was talking to my best friend.  Othertimes it might sound as if I was talking to my dad. Then there are times I just include Him in my day while riding in the car, at the mall or at a restaurant when I am alone and I want someone to talk to.  Do not get me wrong, I am not nuts and I do not sit there talking aloud to an empty chair.

If you read my last article, I shared that during the evening of June 10 I first talked to God in the physical realm.  Later that evening, God told me to go and sleep in my broken down Mustang.  As I sat there and tried to fall asleep, I began to talk to Him about how to fix my car and how to find a place to live.  To make a long story short, every time I asked God for something, even something as simple as the need for a blanket, one showed up.  Then I said I needed some money to get my car fixed and at 3 o’clock in the morning a woman I knew knocked on my car window and gave me a blanket and lent me enough money to get a car part.

As God began working mysteriously in my life, I was so happy that I thought all I needed now is a vehicle to go get that car part.  The same woman who gave me the blanket and cash, now showed back up and offered me her car.  The next day I bought the part and the car was fixed but I was still homeless.

I then went to the Lord and asked what am I to do with my homeless situation.  God said,”I was to humble myself and reconcile things with my sister.  I then went to her house and knocked on her door and she hugged me so hard because she thought I had gone back to drinking.  We finally became reconciled that day.  Later that day I told God, “I need to sell my stereo, so I can relocate from my home town and get a new life started.”  Within one hour a friend called and asked; “if I was still interested in selling my stereo.”  I sold it to Him that day.

Ever since that day I have been talking to God.   There are times I do the talking and there are times He begins talking to me about my life.  There are also times that I have even had a passing thought on something and I would share these with God.  If I needed something, it would show up.  I figured out later on that God knew and heard my thoughts and prayers.  God let me know that He wanted to bless me.

Why did God answer those five thoughts or prayer requests I had on my mind that night?  To thwart the devil!  He knew the devil would come in and try to steal that experience from me.  The devil loves to whisper,” it was only a dream, it was not real.”  I know that, because He tried over and over again but every time, I remember how I asked those 5 things and God responded, in a very real way.
Persistence
Learning to communicate like I have learned to do takes persistence and time.  During my first six months as a new believer I began seeing consequences in my life as I talked to him, but I never heard His voice. I saw results as if I was watching the wind.  Although I cannot see the wind, I can certainly see the results from the wind, like the leaves of a tree blowing or grass moving. It was like that at first and at times still is.  Now years later, after learning how to quiet myself and listen, I can often hear God, but even now it is not all the time.  However, it is most of the time.  There are times when I might be working and not even thinking of God, and then He begins to talk or show me something I might have mentioned earlier in our times together.
Have you ever seen the movie: “The Matrix?”  When Neo or one of the other members of the team went into the real world and they had to learn something, the man on the sub would load a program and they would learn it instantly.  In one example the female character needed to learn how to fly a helicopter, so they downloaded it to her and she knew how to fly it immediately.  The reason I shared this is because this is how God sometime downloads information from His Word to me.  There are times I feel that I just received a download and now understand things from scripture I never knew or understood before. Jesus let us know that the Holy Spirit would be our teacher.  I am convinced that sometimes He downloads these cool revelations to me. It is really fun, and I highly recommend that you too plug into God.

 Our Daily Bread

God taught the Israelites, who just started out with him in the desert, an important lesson;  

They were to gather manna once a day and only for that day except for the Sabbath.  They were not to collect a weeks worth, or a months worth because it would spoil.  God wants us to learn that we need to come to him for a fresh provision every day.  So many Christians think they can go collect their manna and their other spiritual needs only on Sunday, instead of meeting with God daily.

I have heard so many say on Sunday; I need to go to church to recharge for another hard week.  You do not need to recharge if you stay plugged in all week.  Then they wonder why their life is spoiled and rotten and nothing seems to flow right in their week.  If your life moves like a rusted joint, then oil it every day.  When Jesus taught us to pray He said we are to ask for our daily bread not our weekly bread!

Intimacy with God is not going to happen with a quick cup of coffee and a donut as you rush off to work or drop off the kids at school, and then think you’re going to get your prayer time in as you fight traffic.  I know what you’re thinking, I am so busy!  Jesus was busy too!  Jesus taught, preached and healed whole towns full of sick and demon possessed people and in addition fed the masses.  He also walked everywhere He went, but every morning, He got up and spent time with God before “every man wanted to see Him”

The Prayer Closet

Matthew 6:6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
This is one of the misunderstood verses in the Bible.  I have seen and heard about Christians building a closet or going in to a closet to pray. There is not a thing wrong with this, if that is the only way to get alone with God.  But this was not the point Jesus was driving home.
He was doing a comparison to a man who wants to be intimate with His wife.  He was pointing out when a man wants to make love to his wife, he does not do it in public.  He does not make a public showing out of it!  He takes her into the closet (in the greek “bedchamber”) and has intimacy with her.
God wants us to know if we really want to have intimacy with Him we need to treat our prayer time the same as the example above and not pray in public.  People often pray in public to get people’s approval or for others to see their great spirituality.  Instead, our prayer time this should be when we desire and need intimacy with God.
You might think I am contradicting myself from earlier statements.  However, let us do what Jesus did.  We can learn this by looking at an example from marriage.  When I want the most intimacy with my wife, we go and be alone, but it does not end there.  Do I only speak to my wife in the bedroom?  No, we interact all day.  The same concept should apply with God.  If we want a deep intimate relationship with God, we need to steal away time and shut off the television and stereo, even worship music at times.  Get away from everyone and everything, be quiet and still.  Then we can open up that spiritual channel to only hear God.
I once heard that God is like a radio station that broadcasts 24 hours a day, but if you never tune into that station, you will never hear him.

 

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