Spending Time Alone With God

Here is another of Stormie’s Heart that Lord want me to post:

Our God is a God who can be found. A God who can be known. A God who wants to be close to us. That’s why He is called Immanuel, which means ‘God with us’. But He draws close to us as we draw close to Him (James 4:8). If I could sit down and talk with you in person about your life, I would tell you that if you have received the Lord, the answer to what you need is within you. That’s because the Holy Spirit of God is within you, and He will lead you in all things and teach you everything you need to know. He will transform you and your circumstances beyond your wildest dreams if you will give up trying to do it on your own and let Him do it His way and in His time.

This is not about striving to be good enough to get to God, for there is no way any of us can be. This is about letting all of goodness of God be in you. It’s about drawing closer to God and sensing Him drawing closer to you. This is about an intimate walk with God and the wholeness that will be worked in you because of it.

God wants us to want Him. And when we realise that it’s Him that we want, we become free. We are free to identify the longings, loneliness, and emptiness inside of us as our signal that we need to draw near to God with open arms and ask Him to fill us with more of Himself. But this deep and intimate relationship with God that we all desire and can’t live without doesn’t just happen. It must be sought after, prayed for, nurtured, and treasured. And we must continually seek after, pray for, nurture, and treasure it.

We can never draw close to God and get to know Him well, or develop the kind of intimate relationship we want, unless we spend time alone with Him. It’s in those private times that we are refreshed, strengthened, and rejuvenated. It’s then we can see our lives from God’s perspective and discover what is really important. That’s where we understand who it is we belong to and believe in.

Here’s something to keep in mind: If you haven’t been praying much, you can’t expect things to change overnight. It takes a while to get the enormous ocean liner of your life turned around and headed in a different direction. It doesn’t immediately reposition itself the moment you begin steering. In fact, you may hardly see and changes at first. It’s the same way with prayer.

Prayer can turn your life around but it doesn’t always happen the moment you utter your first words. It may take a time of continued prayer before you actually see the scenery change. This is normal, so don’t give up. You will soon be heading full speed in a new direction. Far too often people give up just before their breakthrough into the realm of answered prayer. Remember, this trip is not a mini-vacation tour around the harbor; it’s a lifelong voyage to meet your destiny.