Seven Counterintuitive Ways to move Closer to God

1. Stop trying so hard.  The nature of Jesus Christ was one who was comfortable in his own skin to be truly human.  We were not created to be fallen creatures, but to be the imageo dei.  The fall was a choice that humanity made to follow things that are by nature not God.  It is a process to move back to the place where we view humanity primary as the image of God when it seems to have been so distorted by people, but there still is this glimmer of hope.  Rather than trying so hard to get close, let the spirit wash over you each morning as you pray to simply be in the presence of our Father.

2.  Cut things out of your schedule instead of trying to tag more “God” things in yoru schedule.  I am a big fan here that less is more.  If you are planning on meeting four people throughout the day today, try to meet only with two people for a longer and deeper amount of time.

3. Stop thinking of certain things as spiritual.  If you think of Bible and prayer as spiritual, you are, in a sense, making your job, your car, your house, your family, and your friends inherently unspiritual.  Write down ways that your relationship with God can be furthered through everything you do.  For instance, your relationship with God can be furthered with people as you talk about God with them (even if you are not “evangelizing” in the classic sense of the word).

4. Take an inventory of items in your house and decide what you do and do not need.  Get rid of the things you do not need by giving them to the poor and selling them (if they are valuable).  My suggestion is to get rid of 50 percent of things in your house.  Why do you need two TVs?  Why do you need so many dishes?  Do all households really NEED to cars?  More stuff often inhibits our relationship with God because we tend to want to play with it all rather than play with God.

5. Read less of the Bible, but read the parts that you do read more closely searching for a conceptual understanding of what you are reading.  I am not a huge fan of trying to go through the Bible in a year.  Scripture is an instrument for mediation, not a medal to be awarded once we have read it all.

6. Move slower in everything that you do.  The other day when work was really busy and everyone was moving at lightning pace, one of the girls said we all looked stressed out and that we should just be patient.  At the time it was annoying to me, but looking back on it, there is no reason to rush.  Sure, customers wanted their food, but the humanity gets lost in the rush of it all sometimes. God can get lost in this rush too.

7. Honor God by worshipping him with your body through the way one eats and exercises.  Our mental and physical health is not ever seperated from our spiritual health.  One will invariably affect the other.