If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:11 NIV)
The God of the Universe knows you better than anyone else, including yourself. He is our father, who looks down on us as His sons and daughters, while also never failing us as earthly fathers can. God loves us and has great plans for each of us! We can trust Him with every detail of our lives. But how can we learn about what His plan for us it? How can we learn to trust Him with every part of our lives? How can we learn to depend on Him?
The answer to this is simple: spend time in His Word and time in prayer, talking to the God of the Universe who created us. However, we can only hear Him if we are truly quieting our hearts and minds and listening to what He has to say to us. This can be very difficult in today’s world, as there are always many distractions that can take our time. The enemy is hear to steal, kill, and destroy, while pulling us ever so slowly away from our Father. It takes an intentional effort to continually spend the time we need to with God daily. In my own life, I am finding out that if I don’t take the time in the morning, when I first get up, I tend to not make time for my personal quiet time with God.
How does a relationship here on earth work if there is no communication? The answer is not very well. It takes intention to make a relationship grow and to be healthy. So here is my challenge for all of us in the weeks to come. (And by the way, I am also not the best at this, so I am challenging myself as well.) First, find a time that you can dedicate daily to spend time with God. Try to find a time that you can stick to every day, so that it can become a habit. Second, find a quiet place, free of distractions, for this time. I spend my quiet time out in our sun room early in the morning before my wife gets up. It is very important to free yourself from the distractions in order to clear your mind of other things and focus on talking with God. Yes, he does talk to us, however, we need to be quiet and listen!
What I have found, is that when I intentionally spend time with my Heavenly Father, he truly does want to give us the desires of our hearts. But we also have to do our part and follow the plans that He has laid out for us. He also has plans for us that far surpass anything we can even imagine and many times are much better than our desires!