How Do You Connect With God?نموونە

You best connect with God through meditation. Meditation is intentionally focusing and directing your thoughts on God. You connect with God by saturating in His presence and meditating on His Word. Scripture is your meeting place. In meditation, you can slow down to hear what the Holy Spirit wants to show you as you read, contemplate, reflect, and apply Scripture to your life. To meditate is to lean into the fact that every word in Scripture is God-breathed. When you slow down to read, you prepare to catch every word God speaks. You see the Bible as not something to just learn from, but you allow it to transform you. It is through meditation that the Word of God renews your mind and your thoughts. What you behold is who you become, so when you behold Jesus in Scripture and meditate on Him and His words, you allow them to renew your thoughts to be like His. When you do this, you feel the closest to God because you are uniting with Him. He reveals Himself to you when you look at Him, and then you can see yourself the way He sees you.

Suggested Activities:

• Reflect on each word in Scripture -it is full of revelation. Ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you and show you what He wants to teach you.
• Memorize Scripture. • Meditative Prayer is a prayerful reflection of a biblical text or theme/use of something you can see, taste, touch, hear, or smell (Lecto Devina - place yourself into the passage).
• Create declarations based on Scripture to meditate on.
• Close your eyes, and imagine yourself doing what you read about in Scripture.
• Declare out loud who you are and what God says about you according to Scripture.
• In your daily encounters, stop when something stands out and meditate on what God imparts to your heart.
• Be intentional to insert memorized Scripture into your conversations. This is how you apply Scripture to your daily life.
• Think and direct your mind towards God and the things of God. Philippians 4:8-9 tells us to think Suggested Activities about what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, if there is any excellence, things that are worthy of praise. Think about these things, and practice what the Holy Spirit tells you.

Encouragement:

Give yourself the freedom to pause when you are reading Scripture. It is not about how much you read but how God speaks to you. One verse has unlimited revelation that He wants to reveal to you. In Ezekiel 3, Ezekiel is commanded to eat the scroll. Likewise, when you meditate on God’s word, you are eating His words to fill your belly, digest it, and allow it to transform you. Meditation is like eating healthy. Your mind gets renewed as you reflect on Scripture, but eating one healthy meal doesn’t make you healthy unless you continue to make it a practice. Keep returning to God and His Word, continue to take every thought captive and align it with Christ. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you make your thoughts like His.