7 Ways to Find God This Week

shutterstock.com

If God is everywhere, then why is he so hard to find? Sometimes the Christian life can feel like you’re playing hide-and-seek with God, and God is a cosmically good hider. Too many Christians would say that they feel distant or removed from God when we should feel close and intimate. Scripture tells us to seek God, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you” (Jeremiah 29:13-14). More than that, the Bible says that God Himself seeks us, “Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks” (John 4:23). Seeking and finding God doesn’t have to be a guessing game. If you truly seek to find God, here are seven proven ways from Scripture to find God this week.

Discover Your Spiritual Pathway

The one thing you’ll figure out about quiet times is that there are many different ways to do it. Most grow up thinking the only way to be quiet is to sit completely still, read verses of Scripture and pray silently for 10 or 15 minutes. And you might feel bad because when you start to pray silently you start thinking about what your eating for lunch, then you start thinking about the football game last weekend, then you realize, “O jeez, I just spent ten minutes thinking about everything but God. I’m a total failure.” There’s a book that came out almost 20 years ago called Spiritual Pathways by Gary Thomas that really helps in this area. It makes the argument that just as God created us all differently, we connect to God in different ways.

Some people love to just sit and meditate, but that’s not the only way. Some are deep thinkers and feel closest to God when they’re diving into a biblical commentary. Some are worship junkies and can put on their favorite worship album and just have some church. Some people like to write and journal, some people feel closest to God when they’re actually doing something, serving others, while some feel closest to God when they’re out in nature (you can also read a full list and explanation of spiritual pathways). Whatever your spiritual pathway is, discover it and begin to lean into it.

Love Others

shutterstock.com

If someone walked up to your kid, and right in front of you, just slapped the mess out of them, for no good reason other than they wanted to, how would that affect your relationship with that person? If someone hurts your kid, would that negatively affect their relationship with you as the parent? Absolutely. You can do whatever you want to a parent, but you better not mess with someone’s kids or you’re going to have to answer to them.

Now, don’t miss this: every single human walking on this planet has a Heavenly Father who loves them unconditionally. If we want to have a better relationship with the Heavenly Father, then we need to stop slapping his kids around. Some of us mistreat, abuse, degrade, manipulate and hurt other people, and then we wonder why God won’t speak to us. We’re slapping his kids in the face. You want to grow closer to others? Treat his children, every other person on this planet, including your family, your boss, your teachers, your ex-spouse, with the respect they deserve.