dailydatewithgod

The point of our recognition of our connection to God is to endure with peace.  If we know where it is we come from, what our design is and why we are here we can focus our energy towards living the truth of ourselves.  We can begin by asking God where we are to be, what we are to say and to whom.  If we do not ask, we will not get an answer.  One of my favorites is “Holy Spirit, show me what to do, tell me what to say and use me as you will.”  It is a way of turning over my being to the greater good of all.  I desire in my heart to be led by a vision greater than my own and I do not always have a sense of what that is, so I ask.  I am not pure by any means so invariably I will find myself at moments in my day resisting what I feel the Spirit is calling me to.  The longer God and I have been dating, the easier it has become to trust the answers I receive from Spirit.  Often, what appears to not be what I want, is simply my inability to see all the possibilities with my heart.  Asking to remember the vision of my heart is a quiet and ever emanating longing residing with me with each breath.  Our daily dates provide me a chance to be in the presence of that remembrance and ask until my heart’s content.

We are much closer to God that we think we are.  Often God is described as something “out there”.  We are taught to look upward to see the heavens. Places of worship often have high ceilings and ornate depictions of the world beyond.  God is something greater than I am and thankfully I am reminded of this often.  Yet the idea of God as outside of us only tells part of the story.  God desires to be in as close proximity as possible.  God is the soft whisper of love in our ear.  God is the gentle nudging of our hearts when it is alive.  God is the exhale that gets released when we stop holding our breath in fear. God shows up in our lives as people, circumstances, experiences, ideas, and nature.  God also is the steady state of our hearts, beating within us even when we don’t notice it.  God invites us into closer proximity by extending a hand and drawing it to our hearts. God wants us to be as curious about our inner nature as we are about the cosmos.  God desires for us to know the love residing in our design in an unexplained way.  The invitation to the proximity of love is in letting go of the walls we have placed around our hearts out of fear.  God knows we come to see God more clearly in our lives by being willing to see ourselves more clearly.

There are a plethora of choices when it comes to leaders and ways of life.  You can find various styles and personalities in every realm of business  academics, spirituality, and politics. We are going to follow something.  Choosing what to follow whether it is a path, a way of life, a person, a style, a philosophy, or a way of being is an important decision   God encourages us to follow the longings of our hearts where love resides. This asks of us to pause and check in with our own internal knowing before following anything outside of ourselves.  On our daily dates each day, I show up because I want to become better acquainted with the knowing in my heart which God designed.  I present myself as is in the moment with a curiosity and a slight sense of hopefulness that by engaging in this relationship I will know better what to follow outside of me when the decision presents itself.  There was a time when I had no connection to an internal compass and was easily swayed by what the people I gave power to in my life saw as important. As long as you approved I am okay.  I thought what was within me could not be trusted.  Slowly God has reintroduced me to the greatest presence of power and love residing in me and in all of us which can be accessed by simply taking a breath.  I often pause in my day, especially when agitated or doubtful, touch my hand to my heart, take a deep breath and reconnect.  It started earlier that day on my date and it is kind of way to make the date last longer.  I believe it gives me a sense of knowing I am following the path of the one who created me and knows me best.

Living our lives to the fullest comes with the recognition of what our role is.  We discover it in our relationship with God.  It is there we find what it means to be messengers of God.  The only way the world begins to understand the presence of God is through us.  We do not need to worry if we are doing it right or how much impact it will have.  Our readiness and willing nature is all that is asked of us.  When we are open in this way we are free to receive the messages we are asked to impart.  When we receive the message first our deliver has the power needed to reach further and wider.  Our authenticity carries the message past the minds of those who receive it and reaches their hearts.  Our willingness to embrace our role as messengers becomes the gift we long for and fulfills the longing of our hearts.

The gentleness through which God operates defies our human expression.  The reality is that most of us approach ourselves with a harshness with which we would not speak to our enemies. Yet it is the resounding tone in our own heads. From our daily prayer and meditation dates, God shares this gentle expressiveness through invitation. God does not demand the way the voice in my head does, God invites. Whether it’s the gentle nudging of being open to an idea or the way a choice is presented to me when I thought I had none.  The invitations are as various as the possibilities of God’s imagination.  The creativity through which God conveys the power of choice is immense.  God is constantly reminding me through invitation that I always have a choice.  I may not like the choice or feel blocked by the options I appear to have, but I always have a choice. Thus the power of inviting God in by saying, “God, please help me to see this differently.”

As messengers of God’s love we become the echoes of God.  Our lives reverberate the energetic symphony of love when God is able to move in and through us.  One of the side effects of being an incest survivor is a hyper-awareness of the details of life.  I notice the turning of a door knob or the change of placement of a painting on the wall.  I also notice the shift in the energy of the people around me.  As a child it was useful for protective purposes, but now it is an opportunity to practice compassion and understanding.  I can laugh at the minute changes I am aware of and celebrate the attunement to others remembering we are all one in God.  I also know as a survivor that I do not need to match the energetic shift of those around me because I am not dependent upon them for my survival.  It is almost as though I developed super powers to help me survive.  Now those same capabilities enable me to be an echo of love because I am aware of my safety in God and do not need to seek it outside of myself.  We all have our trials in life we can overcome.  Sometimes we develop unhealthy coping mechanisms but the power of God is such that if we let them, those mechanisms can also become echoes of God’s power and used for good.

Growth of love is the aim of our hearts. It is in our design to expand the awareness of the presence of love for ourselves and the world.  Each moment is a decision to either seek love or bring love.  We have a fruitful heart ready to embark on the task.  It is connected to the Creation and Force of love that governs the universe.  Love is always present it is just a matter of the lens through which we are seeing things.  The world tells us that love is only the niceties of life.  The very idea of love being present in all things like pain and frustration does not match.  It is not within our expectations.  Love is the presence of the light of life which lives and breathes in all.  God has given us the opportunity to explore the multitude of possibilities of love’s presence with every moment of our lives.  Each breath we take is a chance to engage.  We get to live the variations of our fruitful heart when we remember it is not limited by our thinking of what a heart can do or be.  With each exchange we can decide to live fruitfully in our hearts or rely on only what we know.  We can choose to remember our connection to all of life or play out the disconnection like a movie on replay.  There were many years of my life when I was not even remotely aware of my connection to any sense of fruitfulness in my heart.  I was convinced my heart and soul were darkened somehow and it was my job to keep you from finding out.  I believed in God but my belief did not mean I allowed myself to sit in the awareness of God in my heart.  I chose to use my fruitful nature to encase and entomb my heart for protection.  Life had dealt me a raw deal and clearly I could get away with keeping up the guards while playing the role of someone who was letting you in.  A few hundred or so extra pounds of physical protection does a pretty good job of it.  Learning to live life while not encasing protection over my heart physically, emotionally or spiritually means I feel the experience of what happens when I allow the fruitfulness of love to live in and through me.  It breaks my heart and is also beautiful.  Most importantly because of my daily dates with God, I have greater courage to choose the fruitfulness of love in my heart with each new breath.

In the realm of thinking there is an option as we look at our lives to review, to re-see the patterns.  It is helpful to be able to look back at where we came from and see how we have grown.  There is equal value in being able to notice in the review what elements we seem to keep repeating.  The patterns we develop create a path in our lives.  When we repeat the path it becomes a well-worn instrument of non-thinking reality.  This automatic pilot on which we function can go unchecked until something disrupts it.  The disruption can be interpreted as annoying, something in our way,  or as a wake up call.  Maybe the path is deteriorating.  Unless we give ourselves a chance to review we will not be able to return to a place of choice in our lives.  One of our greatest freedoms as human beings is the ability to choose.  God invites us to review what is working towards our growth in love and what is not.  Review allows for re-seeing the truth of what is there.  God’s hand of guidance can provide the willingness to do so without condemnation.

Knowing who we truly are is not a process of discovery of the unknown but a recognition of what is always present within us.  The world will tell us that our seeking must be outside and beyond us, our spirit reminds us that what we seek is within us. The longest journey is the one from our head to our hearts.  Deep within us in the space of All-knowing is the recognition of the blueprint of God.  It resides with us at all times but we can be very clever about how we cover it up. Often circumstances occur requiring us to cover it up but it will continue to stay lit even just a little because at the end of the day we cannot undo God.  The recognition of the truth of who we are in God by design is the journey of a thousand breaths. It is one we embark on each day as God invites us into a space of stillness where we can hear the call of our spirit and our soul to recognize ourselves and others.