I can’t believe its been over a month since I last posted in my blog. Life has gotten busy. I’ve been at my new job now for around 10 weeks and love it. Joanna and I moved from Wooster, Ohio to Beach City, Ohio three weeks ago. As I wrote last month, that’s a lot of changes packed into a couple of months. But, we are enjoying all of these changes and believe they are blessings from God.
One of the benefits of our recent move is, we are closer to our son and his family. We have been spending more time with them and love being just minutes away. We are enjoying more time with our grandson, who is such a blessing to our family. We are also closer to my parents and our siblings.
I want to talk about moving closer to God and how this can benefit us. When we move from one home to another, we gather our possessions and load them on a truck. When we move spiritually, we need to gather our spiritual possessions and load them on a prayer. In both cases we are moving everything we have from one place to another. By moving, we are hoping to better our situation within our current circumstances.
What kinds of benefits would we want to gain by moving closer to God? Knowing God’s will and his plan for our lives are just a few of the benefits. What else can we expect from a move closer to God? Living in God’s presence fills us with his peace and his love, grace and mercy. We need this to be healthy spiritually. Being closer also means we will spend more time together. Spending more time together means we will begin to know the heart of God. It also means you can get his input on any decision you need to make. We will be in constant communication and lay down any burdens we carrying.
Psalms 141:1,2 “I call to you, Lord, come quickly to me; hear me when I call to you. May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.”
God wants us to make this move to be closer to him, he welcomes this move. This was his plan from the beginning; for mankind to be in communion with him. Why do we wander away from God, like lost sheep? It is because we are focusing on the here and now, rather than our eternal future. This is easy to do with all that we face each day.
But, if we make a deliberate move closer to God, it will be much easier to stay focused on our eternal future. God has a way of keeping our perspective focused in the right direction when we are close to him.
So, the question is; how do you pack up your spiritual possessions and move closer to God? What are our spiritual possessions? Well, our spirit is made up of our emotions, intellect and our will. What all is contained in our emotions? Wow, that’s a load in it’s self. What about our intellect, what all does that contain? And lastly but certainly not least, what is contained in our will? If you can pack up all that is contained in these three areas of your life and move it closer to God, what would happen? Awesome, incredible and amazing things would be the result.
To do this you need to pack up each area separately, one at a time. Doing more than one area at a time is overwhelming. So, let’s tackle our emotions first. Let’s pack up all the deep rooted emotions that drive our existence. The things that light our spiritual fires. The passions, the hates, the pain, the anger, the love, everything that brings out the good or bad in us. If we don’t pack up everything that means something to us and move it closer to God, we will not be able to work through and resolve each emotional area.
What about your intellect? Your intellect is made up of both knowledge and your ability to reason or figure something out. Some of the knowledge we carry with us is tainted and not complete truth. As we move it closer to God, he will sifted it and expose the areas of untruth. Our ability to think or reason, will also benefit from the move closer to God. Because over time you begin to see the world through God’s eyes and weigh decisions based on God’s heart.
Lastly, packing up our will can be challenging. Bringing our will closer to God is dangerous and can be scary. But, unless we bring our will along on the move, God will never be able to use us to our full potential. Realizing that God has our best interests in mind all the time is a weight off our minds. Giving up our will and being obedient to God’s will is life changing.
I hope this all helps you begin a process that leads to greater spiritual growth. I hope it has challenged you like it has challenged me. Keep moving all that you are closer to God and you will see positive changes in your life. Tackle each area one at a time and see what happens.
Blessings to you today! thank you for reading my blog.