WHOLE: Relating to God With All of Yourselfနမူနာ

Head + Heart

Does God feel distant these days?

If so, it can be easy to assume that He has neglected or forgotten us. We might begin to think that, in this season, He doesn’t care to speak to us. But what if the distance we feel from God isn’t from His end, but from ours?

To be close to someone else requires both parties to come toward one another. For us as followers of Christ, our call is to come to Him fully, wholly, and completely. Like the verse above says, we are to approach Him with our head and our heart. The problem is, it’s easy for us to hold parts of ourselves back.

Some of us are natural at relating to Him with our hearts. We trust Him and are comfortable with Him. We believe that to be relational with Him, or to feel His presence in everyday life, is more important than just to study about Him.

Others of us are more comfortable relating to Him with our heads. We want to understand God accurately, because we believe this understanding is vital to living the Christian life.

The thing is: God will not settle for less than us relating to Him with ALL that we are.

I’ve watched my husband go on this journey over the last few years. He loves stories from history, reads constantly, and can retain a lot of names, places, and dates in his brain. As a child he was riveted by the stories of David and the battles of Joshua. He has faithfully learned Scripture over many years.

A few years ago, he was challenged to begin his devotional time by writing down his emotional state and beginning his prayer time by bringing that to God. He was very confused by this. He was never emotional with God. He quickly went back to the Psalms, written by the David he knew so much about, and realized that most of them involved David expressing his heart and emotions before God. David was relating to Him with his heart and not just his head.

Through this simple process, my husband began opening himself up to God in a whole way. He began to trust Him with his heart. In return, the Lord revealed himself in brand new ways to my husband. Scripture came alive in new ways. One day, he walked out of the room where he reads his Bible and said, “Kathryn, seek ye FIRST!”

He had read the Scripture about seeking the kingdom of God first for all his life, but once he began relating to God in this new way, something in the words he had studied all his life began to take on new meaning.

What about you? Do you tend to relate to God with your head? Could you possibly benefit from opening the depths of your heart to God as well? Or is that your strong suit, and you need to grow by simply understanding who God is through studying his Word, maybe even for the first time? Pray that God would give you a way to approach Him more fully as we pray for a more vibrant life with Him in the days ahead.