In this busy age, the fast-paced life causes our hearts to be occupied by all kinds of people, things, and matters, so that we have very little time for quietening ourselves before God, drawing close to Him or contemplating Him. Because our hearts frequently grow apart from God and we don’t give them to God, we cannot gain the work of the Holy Spirit and don’t have God’s guidance and leadership in our lives. As a result, we are very busy in dealing with various people and events, feel physically and mentally exhausted, and cannot achieve good results in doing things. Below, I’d like to share with you three critical aspects of practice of how to establish a normal relationship with God.
1. Consciously Allotting Time to Pray and Read God’s Words
Frequently praying to God and reading His words are the most fundamental lesson in our faith in God, and are the most basic condition for maintaining a normal relationship with God. If we pay no heed to our spiritual lives, even though we occasionally pray and read God’s words, it’s just going through a process. As time goes on, because we have no true communion with God, we will gradually become distant from Him. Therefore, in our busy and fast-paced lives, we must forsake ourselves with awareness and make time to calm down and read God’s words. For example, we can get up early or stay up late to spare half an hour every day, find a quiet place and avoid all that could distract us, quiet our hearts and pray to God, and then diligently read a passage of God’s words. Although it is not a long time, we can understand God’s will and demands, and so we will have the guidance of God’s words in our work and lives and can get things done in half the time. It is evident that keeping a normal relationship with God is very important.
2. Constantly Calling on God, Praying to Him, and Having Spiritual Communion With Him Within Our Hearts
What should we do if we really cannot find the time? Don’t worry. Let’s first read a passage of words, “How can one maintain their relationship with God? By what means can they maintain it? By means of imploring, praying and having the communion with God in their heart. This kind of relationship will allow you to live always before God, and so you will be a very peaceful person. Some people are always doing external things and they busy themselves with external affairs. After a day or two without engaging in the spiritual life, their heart has no perception, and after three days, or five days, it still has no perception, or it still has no perception after one or two months. This means that they do not pray or implore for anything, and they don’t engage in spiritual communion. Imploring is when you encounter issues, you ask God to help you, to guide you, to provide for you, to enlighten you, to allow you to understand, to allow you to know God’s will and to know what the truth is. Praying has rather a broad scope. Sometimes it is saying the words in your heart, speaking with God when you encounter difficulties and saying the words that are in your heart to God when you become negative and weak. You may also pray to God when you are rebellious, or you talk with God about the issues you encounter every day, both about the ones you can understand and the ones you can’t understand. This is praying. The scope of praying is basically having a chat with God, sometimes at fixed times and sometimes at unscheduled times, and it can be done at any time and in any place. Spiritual communion does not really hold to a certain format. Maybe there is an issue, maybe there isn’t; sometimes there will be something to say, and sometimes there won’t. This is spiritual communion.When there is a specific issue to talk with God about, then you can pray. When there is no issue, you just think about God, “How does God love man? How does God care for man? How does God reproach man?” “Oh God, I feel I have done this thing wrong. If I really have done it wrong, then reproach me and make me aware of it.” This is spiritual communion, and it can be done at any time and in any place. ”
From these words we can find a clear way to practice. Sometimes when we are very busy and have no time to pray or read God’s words, we can practice drawing close to God in all matters and constantly calling on Him, praying to Him, and having spiritual communion with Him within our hearts. These ways are not restricted by time or the environment we are in, there are no fixed rituals in them, and we can communicate with God at any time and place. For example, when we are waiting for a bus, when we are in a bus, we can confide in God our real state to seek His help or we can contemplate a passage of God’s words. This way, we can understand more of God’s will and demands. When we encounter some thorny problems in our jobs and we don’t know how to solve them, we can pray to God and ask Him to lead us. We can also speak the words within our hearts to God anytime and anyplace, draw close to God, and think of God’s love. And so on. In this way, although we are very busy, through frequent prayer, spiritual communion with God, and imploring, our hearts won’t grow apart from God, and our relationship with God will become normal.
3. Seeking the Truth and Acting According to God’s Will in All Things
Our lives are fraught with changes every day, and we don’t know when we will encounter things that are not to our liking. If we don’t have God in our hearts nor seek the truth, we could only analyze matters with our own minds and get stuck in the idea of right and wrong, couldn’t obey God’s sovereignty and arrangements, perhaps could even misunderstand God or blame God, and end up sinking into darkness and pain. Just as recently I was passed over when competing for the job of corporate executive in my company, which caused me to feel embarrassed. I thought, “According to seniority and skills, I’m the best one in my company, so how could I have not been elected?” When thinking of that, I became brooding and couldn’t quiet my heart in God’s presence. Later, through praying, seeking and reading God’s words many times, I finally saw that behind my failure to compete for the job of corporate executive were indeed God’s good intentions. I thought of how after I had some success in my company, I was full of ambitions and desires, wanting to seek greater developments and have a better future. In order to realize my plan, I had been busy with work all day long for a long time, and I even didn’t regularly say my prayers, read God’s words or attend gatherings. As a result, my heart began to move further and further away from God, and I felt no reproach even though I lived in sin, so much so that my sins grew apace. Seeing me living in a state of pursuing fame and fortune from which I couldn’t escape, God reminded me and forced me to come before Him and reflect upon myself in my pain through my failure in the competition, so that I would not continue down that path of depravity, but could return before God once again and do things in a down-to-earth manner. I finally saw that these bad things turned out to be good ones, and that behind them were God’s earnest intentions. Thereupon, seeking the truth and acting according to God’s will in all things are also the practice of how to establish a proper relationship with God.
I believe that as long as we can persist in practicing the three aforementioned aspects of the path, our relationship with God will become more and more normal.
