dailydatewithgod

We open our eyes to a whole new world when we ask God to help see as God sees.  We awaken our hearts to the truest sense of reality when we ask God to align our thinking with God’s thinking.  We enliven our spirits when we surrender to the love that God has for us and recognize it as being with us at all times when we are willing to return to it.  I know that when I am walking through a difficult emotional experience, physical pain, or find my default mode as one of irritation, it is hard to remember the truth of who I am or anyone else for that matter.  I cannot by my own will make room for the sight of love because my perception is clouded by the outer appearance of things not being what I want them to be.  I need God’s help.  When I become attached to the form I forget that which created it.  When I become mesmerized by what I believe I will feel as a result of obtaining a certain outcome or having a certain thing, I forget to enjoy the journey.  I not so sure it is about not becoming attached or mesmerized or if that is possible, but rather about noticing when it happens and utilizing it as the opportunity to return to center.  I believe life is about learning and if humility is being teachable, then sometimes the most opportune time to learn is when I’ve gone somewhere my heart does not truly want to go.  When I wake up to the incompleteness of the form that I worked so hard to obtain, I am willing to take up God’s opportunity to learn a different way.

My prayer for us is a willingness to learn from all that happens in our lives and see those happenings as opportunities to be reminded to return to God today.

If we are given limitless opportunities to return to love, how might you like God to gently guide you back to your heart today?  Share in the comments.

God’s vision is beyond our understanding. Our vision is limited. Sometimes the most powerful prayer for me is, “God help me to see this as you see this.”  And in God’s fashion sometimes that happens automatically, other times it happens slowly over time.  My sight will sometimes shift so slowly that I don’t realize the shift has happened.  Then someone asks me a question that I have been asked a million times before and out of my mouth comes a completely different answer.  I find myself saying and doing things that seemed to baffle me before.  I am not bothered by a situation or afraid of something that I was sure would harm me.  It is as though God has changed my eyes.  There is a sense of peace in who I am being that was never there before.  I find myself feeling as though life really does happen for me, not to me.  This sight of life is the biggest gift of my dates with God.  I realized after a time that if I wanted to see more of how God saw me and the world around me, spending dedicated time with God as well as listening and learning from others who have done the same needed to take a priority in my life.  I do not understand God’s perspective nor do I think I ever will but as far as I am concerned as long as God is, I want to be a part of that vision.  It makes no sense that coming to a place of forgiveness for my father’s incestual actions is what has taught me to love.  It sounds ridiculous that I had to get to a place of killing my body with food and blow up to over 300 plus pounds to recognize the beauty and the sacredness of the vessel through which God has called me to live out this life. It does not matter that my mind could not envision either of those outcomes, God’s vision is greater.  It is God’s vision that has brought me to a place of peace that I did not experience until I asked to see it as God does.  Yet each time I reach another level of reconciliation of a different layer of either of these factors in my life I am right back to thinking it can’t be done.  So I come to God on our date, tell him so, and ask to see it differently.  And so, like C.S. Lewis said, “Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.”

My prayer for us is the courage to admit that God’s sight is greater than ours in situations big and small and all that we need is the willingness to ask to be lent His sight for today.

If you could have God’s sight on a source of grief or strife in your life, who might you be free to be today? Share in the comments.

 When we embark on the pathway of love by accepting our breath at the start of the day we are saying yes to life.  We are receiving the gift of the spirit to move through us and set us on the path.  The passageway that we embark upon is one filled with mystery, expectation, uncertainty, possibility, and learning.  If we want to pass through life to reach a place of peace and love we must be that on the passage of peace.  We cannot get there expecting ourselves to be something we have not become.  The destination is not about getting somewhere but realizing who we have become along the way. The passage through our lives are the stepping stones in a way of being.  We can choose which path to travel as we set out on our day.  If we veer off course we need not fear but use our breath to reunite us with spirit and get back on the path we want to be on.  I want to be on the path of peace not because it is the right thing to do but because when I am on it my passage I breathe easier, my heart is lighter, love seems real, and I am not looking behind me to see what I missed.

My prayer for us is as we start our day we use our breath to choose which passage to travel upon this day with open eyes and hearts so that we may experience ourselves as we truly are.

If whatever passage you chose there was an opportunity to get on one that showed you the love that you are, how many breaths would it take you to choose it for yourself today?  Share in the comments.

As we choose to focus our attention on growing each day in the knowledge and understanding love, we find ourselves many time in a day at a crossroads.  Our commitment to grow into the vision that God holds of us and knows of us to be true at any given moment is ours to resolve to live or not.  The beauty of this process of returning to the love that we are is that the stretch is not nearly as far and as hard as we perceive.  Part of the resolution to live as we are designed is to recognize that the biggest stretch is in the reality of our minds.  It is our perception that we are separate from God and therefore somehow different from God that makes us think it will take an act of God to get us to be in alignment with the truth of who we are.  My resolution for this day is  simply a request of God to help me see myself and others as God sees them.  Grant me the willingness to let go of my ideas of people, places, and things and be open to the truth of love that is taking place at every moment I resolve to see it.

My prayer for us is the resolution to ask for God’s help to make the step which seems like a leap into the acceptance of the truth of love that is already residing right before our eyes today.

If God is resolved to know and experience us as the love that we truly are, how might resolving to adopt God’s perspective in this day change your next few moments?  Share in the comments.

In the midst of our minds there is a capability to be with whatever we are experiencing.  It is called having the observer’s mind.  It is a technique that is cultivated in meditation.  Our minds are constantly going and our thoughts come one right after another.  We then attach to particular ones like picking them up off of a conveyor belt on an assembly line and inspecting it.  Our attachment to a particular thought and giving it further meaning creates our experience.  Meanwhile we stop being present in the moment and don’t notice the other thoughts that go through our mind.  We are too busy collecting other thoughts that support the one we picked up.  On my dates with God I have been shown the power of stopping and observing which thoughts I pick off the conveyor belt and decide if focusing on them brings me closer to love or if I want to pick another one.

My prayer for us is the recognition that we can choose at any point to observe our thoughts and our lives in any moment of this day.

If you were given the option to observe your growing toward or away from love which thoughts would you pick off the conveyor belt to focus on today?  Share in the comments.

God is the choice. God is the answer.  We face all kinds of problems or challenges each day. Each one comes at us at varying degrees and speeds. If the choice has a lot of varying outcomes we can become paralyzed by focusing on the outcome instead of the process of making the decision.  We might play through in our minds all the possible what ifs and if you are anything like me sometimes drive yourself crazy doing so.  It is then that I ask for God’s hand to be placed on my heart and slow the speed of my racing mind.  I have learned that the more I stay in my head without connecting my heart, the harder it will be to come to an answer.  This practice over and over again creates a way of being that reminds me to always connect to my heart.  It is a simple acknowledgment of where God resides at my deepest core and my desire to have my answers come from that place.

My prayer for us today when we get frazzled by needing to make a decision is a willingness to stop and embrace the process of remembering to connect with our hearts.

If you wanted to remember to return to your heart for your truth, what kind of reminder would you ask of God today?  Share in the comments.

God’s gentleness is something to be cherished.  It is the still small quiet voice that nudges us amidst the chaos of the world to pause and breathe. God wants us to be present to the respiration of our physical bodies and the inspiration of our spiritual reality.  God wants for us to know the love that we are with every breath we take.  This is why breathing is a constant happening in our lives, more so than any other function in our bodies.  We may not pay attention to how often we breathe in and out but it is constant all day and night long.  It mirrors the constancy of God.  We need to take those breaths to keep living just as we need God to keep living. We can choose to be aware of our breath as many times as we wish in the same way we can choose to be aware of our connection to Spirit.

My prayer for us is the recognition that within our physical system is the mirror of the constancy of God who wants to reside in our hearts and that we can be present to it as many times as we wish to be inspired.

If you knew in your heart that with each breath you were connecting with spirit and it was God’s way of constantly requesting to be in your heart how many times today would you want to be present to your re-spiriting?  Share in the comments.

God creates space for us to lean in.  It is a welcomed gesture from someone like me who has often veered towards pushing away.  When I find myself under stress and uncomfortable, I often feel like the world is closing in on me and I want to push back.  I want to shut people out and go into my little cocoon.  Until my dates with God it never occurred to me that I might be pushing away God’s arms of comfort.  What looked like an effort to make sure I was protected ended up being the very thing that kept the ultimate protection from reaching me.  God gestures for me to come closer when I want to put up my walls to protect me from what I perceive as a hostile world.  God quietly tugs at my heart and says I AM here.  I AM with you.  I AM within you.  God is calling on me to perceive my reality differently.  God’s protection which is about residing and taking comfort in the love of all that is, is what nurtures and restores my heart.  God’s protection is what allows me to gently move from the thinking of the world and all around me as hostile and the restoration of my own heart to the reality of love.

My prayer for us is the courage to draw into God’s protection which will create the restoration of love in our hearts that we are seeking when we want to push back today.

If God was offering the protection of your heart by reminding you of the love that resides in it, how would you like to be protected by God today?  Share in the comments.

 God is love therefore God only sees love.  I am sure God gets a kick out of how much time we spend looking for love in all the wrong places.  Recognizing that it resides within our hearts where God began our creation is both freeing and baffling.  It is freeing to our spirit and baffling to our mind.  It calls upon us to see things differently.  We can easily focus on the difference that we see physically around us.  We have no problem recognizing the separation between ourselves and others.  Courage is what gives us the willingness to see the difference in our thinking from God’s.  When we identify the limits that our mind places on our perspective and choose to be opened to the possibilities that are present in love, we begin to see the difference.

My prayer for us is the courage to ask God to see the difference between our thinking from God’s thinking today.

  If you realized that you wanted the difference in God’s thinking to be ever-present in your life today, how would you ask God for help?  Share in the comments.

God is boundless.  The far reaches of the universe cannot begin to encompass all that God is.  When we remember that from which we were created we recognize that the love that resides within us is also boundless.  We need not concern ourselves with boundaries because love is the boundary.  It has us from all sides.  There is no where we can go real or imagined that love is not already present. Our mind wants us to think that we need to protect ourselves from the unknown because we do not know what dangers are lurking there.  Our heart knows that the only thing lurking is the possibility of love’s expression.  When we are willing to stretch our thinking past its own understanding, we can embrace the love that we are.  When we remember to turn to God and ask to see our lives and the lives of others through the lens of love that is the truth of who we all are, our hearts stretch to their capacity and love comes alive.  I know that when I am focused in my head on what is wrong in any situation or what someone else is doing that is wrong or bad, I close off my heart.  When I am in fear that I will not be okay or I must protect myself, my heart grows small, my breathing becomes tight, and I am restricted in mind and body.  The stretching comes when I humbly reach for God’s hand and open my mind to ask God to help me to see the situation or person as God sees them.

My prayer for us is the trust to know that God can help us to stretch our hearts and experience the love that is present in this moment despite all evidence to contrary.

If you knew in your heart that whatever was in front of you would allow you to grow more in love, how would you ask God to stretch your mind and heart today?  Share in the comments.