Episode #131 Taking Action to Grow Your Connection – Life With God

Hey friends, it's Jen and welcome to Good God Talks. Today we're talking about how we can connect with God using our hands. And if you're jumping new into this series, you're going to want to, use that link here in the show notes to take a quiz that will help you identify the way that you currently connect with God best.

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

And I've simplified this into three main categories here: Do you connect with God best using your head, your heart, or your hands?

Now that's not to say that you're going to need to pick one and that's the only way you connect with God. We all get to bring our whole selves to God. But based on our natural gifts and personalities, we all will lean towards one of these areas in how we connect with God relationally. And so we want to maximize that gift that God has given us and how we're created and use that to draw near to him.

That quiz will help you identify it and will also give you some resources to maximize that and build habits into those ways of connecting with God. And today, we're talking about connecting with Him using our hands.

Connecting with God using our hands comes across in how we receive what he offers us and in the way that we serve and how we partner with him in what he is doing in the world.

So those who love to connect with God this way might find themselves really drawn to volunteering and serving. You might also find yourself as being more creative and enjoying working with your hands.

You like to be active. You might even find it easier than others to understand the connection between work and worship. You see your activity, your actions, your service, and your care as expressions of love, both to God and to other people.

You might be the family member or the friend in your community who's going to follow through, the one who won't forget, the faithful, loyal, trustworthy person that everyone can count on.

Those who feel close to God using your hands are often drawn to putting the Word into action. Maybe for you, that looks like regular spiritual disciplines, or practical application at the end of a weekend message, so that you know what you can go and do based on what you've been taught.

You're drawn to noticing how God is at work in the world around you. You Feel close to him by partnering with him on mission when you're able to operate in your gifts.
So here are some verses that talk about how we can connect with God using our hands.

Luke 6:38 says, “give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

2 Corinthians 9:7 says, “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

Hebrews 13:16 says, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

James 1:22 says “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”

Now, as is the case for all of these areas, there's overlap in our head, our hearts, and our hands. That's good. And that's part of what it means to engage our whole selves as disciples. But if these verses and descriptions really resonate with you, then this might be one of the ways that you connect best with God.

And as we've been talking about through this series, there are ways that the enemy will try and attack our connection by accusing us. “Oh, that's not really being connected to God.” “Oh, that's less spiritual.” Or “that won't really give you a relationship like other people have.” And so if you have faced any of those accusations in the past, I encourage you to talk with God about them.

Maybe you felt like it's not as important for you to be in times of receiving the Word, or receiving ministry, because your role is to be the one who's giving.

Maybe you have felt disqualified from feeling close to God because you don't have the same depth of insight that others might have, or you don't enjoy Bible studies like your friend does, or you don't have that same feeling or passion or sense of closeness that other people describe.

Don't let the enemy disqualify you from how God has uniquely created you to connect with him.

Using your hands, can be a strength in your relationship with God. Just as it is in other areas, there's space for this to get turned around. Some of the ways that that can happen when we use our hands is really just seeing ourselves as a means for God to connect with other people. And so we assume that God doesn't actually want to connect with us. That's not true either.

Sometimes we can get so caught up in serving and using our gifts that that becomes the thing that we put on a pedestal in worship and give ourselves for, instead of giving ourselves to God, who is the gift giver.

Our God is generous and giving and serving, and he has created you in that way to embrace it and learn how to use it to grow your connection with him.

And so whether that is a strength for you or not, here is a question that we can take to him today:

God, when it comes to us connecting using my hands, will You show me what this could look like?

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!

Connect with Jen on Instagram