Episode #128 Bring Your Whole Self – Life With God

Hey friend, have you ever struggled to connect with God or felt like other people had a better or stronger way of connecting with Him?

If so, then I'm really glad you're here. I've struggled this way as well, and I know other believers have too. And we're diving into this topic today and looking at how we're each uniquely created to connect with God.

Your relationship with God doesn't have to look like anybody else's.

And I'm bringing some tools alongside to help us out. So as we get started here, I'm going to reference a quiz that I created, to identify the way that you uniquely connect with God best. You'll see a link here in the show notes.

• Take the Quiz: How Do You Connect with God Best?

It's a quick quiz and you don't need to stop this episode and go do the quiz now unless you're at a place where it's convenient to do so. We're going to be talking about this topic throughout the series and I'm going to have that link available so as you have time, you can go and take the quiz. It will give you more insight into your relationship with God and some really applicable action steps along with free tools on my website.

So as we get started here, it's important for us to begin from a foundational understanding that we are created to experience life with God.

I would say a lot of us would say that we know that, or we believe that or that's familiar to us. But it's easy to disqualify ourselves from actually experiencing the life with God that he offers to us, and those disqualifications come because of lies and misunderstandings.

We can look at our sin or at aspects of our pasts and feel like we're excluded from God wanting to spend time with us. And that's not true.

We can also assume that certain personalities or skill sets are created to have a closer connection with God than we do. And that is the falsehood that we're exploring in this podcast series because we all are created for life with God.

As a Bible teacher and as a Ministry Coach, I have found that each personality type is often pummeled with lies about how they're not the type of person that God would want a close relationship with. God created you uniquely. Distinctly. And Scripture is full of places where he tells us that he has created us for himself and that he longs to have relationship with us. This common lie that plagues everyone is a lie for everyone. You are created by God to have a life giving relationship with him.

The things that are unique to who you are and how you learn and how you connect or how you sense God as being close to you, those are not problems or obstacles that stand in the way of you drawing near.

They're actually incredible blessings that you can learn about. They’re strengths and gifts and beautiful aspects of your personality that you can make use of to draw near to God intentionally.

The way that I'm talking about this here is using the simplified imagery of head, heart, and hands. And before I get there, I'm going to read a passage of scripture for us from Mark 12:28-34.

“And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, ‘Which commandment is the most important of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The most important is, Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.’ And the scribe said to him, ‘You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one's neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.’ And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’ And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.” (Mark 12:28-34)

I'm referencing that here because part of what we get to experience in life with God is bringing our whole selves to God. We see that on display in this passage and in the greatest commandment, that you and I can love the Lord our God with our whole selves.

You can love him with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength and with all your soul. But the temptation is to box in what it looks like to love and to know God.

Some of us are really good at loving God with our hearts. We bring our dreams and our desires to him. We're moved by a sense of his presence near us. We connect with the tenderness and the loving kindness of God.

Others of us find it easier to love the Lord with our heads. We enjoy learning and curiosity. We ask him for wisdom and we feel connected to God as we understand more about him through in depth study.

Others are good at loving God with our hands. We love to create alongside him. We're active in our community or serving at church. We demonstrate and cultivate that love by our actions and even by our disciplines.

These are all good things, but what can happen sometimes is:

1. We aren't aware of how our personalities can help us grow in our connection with God.
2. By not knowing how we connect with God best, we miss maximizing those strengths to help us connect with him in that way and in other ways. And that makes it harder for us to bring our whole selves to God.
3. We can disqualify areas of connection because we think that our relationship with God has to look like somebody else's.

In this series, we are overcoming all of that. God has uniquely created you to bring your whole self to him and to live life with him. We can trust him with our whole selves.
And so we're asking him to talk with us about it.

And here's our question:

God, I want to connect with you more. With my head, with my heart and with my hands. What excites You about us connecting more in this way?

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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