Relationship with God

I only have a few minutes to write, so in this blog i will only barely touch on the subject, but this is what it is all about.  Following Jesus is about a personal relationship with God (and of course that means relationship with God the Father, relationship with God the Son and relationship with God the Holy Spirit).

A personal relationship with God, just like relationship with another person, is a complicated thing.  Mainly however, you have to spend time with them.  One of the awesome things about God is that whenever He speaks to us He is also telling us that He loves us.  And when God  tells us He loves us that is the ultimate experience of being loved.   So the most important part of this relationship with Him (but remember it is still a complicated thing just like relationship with people) is loving Him and receiving His love.

Something we see all the time in today's world is two people together and one is talking on the cell phone.  Those two people are not (most likely) spending quality time together.  Myself, when the other person is talking on the cell phone, would mostly rather not be with the other person at all.  Similarly when we claim to be hanging out with God, but have other stuff on our mind and are not focused on God at all, need to realize that it doesn't count.  For example if we are sitting in a worship service and thinking about lunch - that's not relationship with God, and we may be mostly missing out on one of the most awesome things this life offers us.  If we arrive at the Bible study late and can't possibly catch up with the group on what they are learning about God - it doesn't really count.

Clearly it's not that simple; we can also have relationship with more than one person at a time.  We can have a group of people having a group relationship and God CAN be included in a group.  One example can be a group worship experience - and loving God as a member of a group can be really, really, powerful.  But we need to realize that the flesh can give us fake and religious experiences that also make us feel good.  We need to be wary and think about spiritual principles . . but am getting off on a rabbit trail.

 Group relationship with God. We can also have this going on in types of situations that we very rarely do spontaneously.  If in your life it happens regularly - thank God for this blessing.  When we get together with our friends we can move the conversation to spiritual matters and end up in spontaneous prayer, bible study and or singing to God.  If God is truly the center for each of the people in the group then this should be a very natural process.  We can give the other people in the group a precious gift if we do our part to include God.

One of the things that we can do to spend time with God, when alone with Him (or not), is to sing, chant or quote a song to God which is significantly meaningful to us about our relationship with God.  This can get us into the situation where we are loving God and being loved by Him.

Questions:  What are your favorite ways to spend time alone with God?  What are your favorite songs (or other) that bring you into God's presence and into relationship with Him?