I’ve recently been wondering how I can become closer to God and the Lord Jesus. I research near-death experiences (NDEs) and visions including both Heaven and Hell. I have seen Bill Wiese’s “23 Minutes in Hell” twice and recently watched Mary K. Baxter and her incredibly descriptive vision of Hell. As I finished watching the latter video, I was pondering what I just saw and the Lord started to play a song to me describing how I can dive deeper into a relationship with Him. The song is Take Me There by Rascal Flatts and the lyrics only scratch the surface of the depth of relationship God wants to have with you!
In full disclosure I was writing this post from the vantage point of someone who has told everything about his life to God in prayer and I got the small feeling I should stop because I was a hypocrite if I posted from that point-of-view. So I am taking a different approach, posting as someone who’s steadily growing in his walk with the Lord and sharing what I’m discovering along the way. With that being said, there’s some good advice on prayer and meditation in Richard J. Foster’s book “Celebration of Discipline” which also inspired the tip below, and what I’m just beginning to practice.
Find (or even better, create) time to be with the Lord in prayer; whatever comes to mind about absolutely anything in your life, tell Him about it. You may be thinking , “He already knows” (and you’d be right), but He wants to hear it from you. He wants you to trust Him to share everything about your life, past and present! How you present what you remember about your life is up to you. For me, I started telling Him about every girl I’ve ever had a crush on, then I moved on to the deepest desires of my heart as a kid.
To cement the importance of a relationship I refer you to what Bill Wiese said at the 53 minute mark of his testimony above, “You have no right [to move into God’s Kingdom with no relationship].” Also from John Bevere’s book Killing Kryptonite, “‘Then what is the thing I should seek for the most? What is first in importance?’ I heard the answer so clearly, ‘To know Me intimately.'” (251)
Mind@Work 