“The Lord hears His people when they call to Him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles.” (Psalm 34:17 NLT)
Closeness to God isn’t a feeling. On the contrary, like love, intimacy with God is a decision. When I want to be close to my wife I don’t sit in my office and try to muster up some special kind of feeling. I get up from my chair, walk to where she is and hold her in my arms. Admittedly, it feels great to hold her, but that good feeling was the result of a decision.
Rudolph Dreikurs said in a book I read many years ago, “When you do the right thing, you’ll feel the right way.” In other words, right feelings follow right behavior, not the other way around. We don’t feel our way to right actions, we act our way to right feelings. Why is that so important to understand?
Our closeness to God is made difficult by the fact He’s invisible to our physical eyes. We can only see God with the eyes of our heart. Because of that we often reduce our love for God to a few verses of Scripture or the way we feel when we sing Christian songs.
You may have heard the adage: “If you’re not as close to God as you want to be, who moved?” We tend to place so much stock in how we feel in any given moment. “It’s cloudy, so I’m going to stay in bed. I just don’t feel like getting up.” Have you ever tried this one? “I’m aching all over, so I don’t think I’ll pay my taxes this year.”
Ultimately, we learn to deal with things regardless of how we feel. On some levels that’s how we need to approach our walk with God. Personally, I feel closest to God when I’m fulfilling His will to the best of my knowledge and ability. For example, I believe God’s will is for me to love my wife, but I also believe He’s allowed me to author these blog articles.
So, when I’m heading to my office and I hear my wife say: “You said you’d do (whatever it is I said I would do for her). Is now a good time?” So, what do you think I do? I know both are God’s will, but in that moment I have to prioritize, so, yes, I do what my wife asks me to do.
What’s my point? Whatever God has called and equipped you to do for Him, you will be challenged by many other avenues of His will. But it must begin with a solid commitment to personal holiness. What does that mean? It means to commit to daily prayer and reading/studying/listening to God’s Word, the Bible, then seeking to live out what the Lord is teaching me.
Apart from prayer and God’s Word there can be no long-term closeness to God. And by prayer I’m not talking about “saying” prayers. For example, simply reciting the Lord’s prayer or some other prayer you’ve memorized. Although, even as I’m writing, the Lord is reminding me of the repetition in my prayers every day.
Because of my heart for the lost, I ask the Lord to give me sensitivity and open doors of opportunity for me to reach my loved ones, friends, and neighbors for Him, but I use essentially the same words every day. The point isn’t as much the words we use, but the heart behind those words. If we’re reciting words to fulfill a “commitment” to God, we’re wasting our breath, but if those oft used words reflect the desires of our heart for whatever we’re praying, we’ll move the heart of God and we’ll sense His closeness.
Tozer’s words I’ve shared before: “Every man is as close to God as he wants to be,” may seem a little harsh, but they’re still true. The point is, God is ALWAYS with us, so if we want to get closer to Him, we have to make the conscious decision to make that happen, regardless of how we feel about it.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 