dailydatewithgod

God is with us.  God is within us.  God transcends us.  It is no mistake that we are all here for a reason. We were created out of love to be love and bring love to all the world about us.  God never stops seeing us as we were created.  God is connected to us and continues to connect to us in as many ways as possible.  Nothing we can do nor have we done that will change what God created.  It is easy to get distracted by our world that seems more real simply because of its physicality.  It is only a tool to connect us with our true selves in hearts and spirit.  When we begin to seek something deeper than just the physical experience we commence to travel a path of wholeness.  The first step is to remember that the one who abides in and with us never forgets who we are.  Our journey is to awaken to the realization of God’s knowing being different from our own. In my years of dating God I am continually reminded that as smart as I am I cannot ever know the true mind of God.  God’s constant pursuing of me defies explanation.  If it were up to me I would have given up on me a long time ago.  I would have seen that I could never measure up and it was hopeless.  Had I not wandered into the darkness that caused me to breakdown, I never would have witnessed the light that had been there all along.  I could not abide in me.  I thought it easiest to abandon me.  I was sure on some level that God felt the same way. Funny thing when your back is against the wall, you either find another exit or create one.  Face to face with only myself and God I had no where else to turn.  It was either take a chance that God was more than I thought or blot out the rest of my time on the planet just hoping it didn’t get much worse.  Today I have learned how to abide in me with God’s help.  In doing so I have learned greater tolerance and practice more love with all people.  My prayer for us today is a willingness to take a chance that God can abide in us even when we don’t want to abide in us.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

Right here, right now is the moment we are all in.  Right here, right now is the only moment that exists.  The present moment is the time and place where the Eternal meets the temporal.  When I want to fully engage in relationship with God I know that centering myself and bringing myself to the present moment is the best way for me to feel the most connected.  God is not limited by where I am, but I can be.  God is attentive to me right now in my thoughts, in my feelings, and in my physical experiences.  My attentiveness to the current moment means all my faculties are focused and intentional.  I am more alive in the present moment.  This is what make it a gift.  My prayer for us today is a willingness to be attentive to the very moment we are in so that we can fully experience God’s attentiveness to us.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is present.  God is alive.  In our daily lives we get involved in a routine that has the potential to take us out of the present. We are familiar with the action and so we do not need to think about it in order to do it.  This is extremely useful.  Can you imagine having to talk yourself through tying your shoe laces like you did when you first learned how as a kid?  How long would it take you to get to work if you had to pay close attention to directions or your GPS system every day?  The fact that we embed a pattern in our brain to handle common routine things is helpful so that we can utilize our energy for all the new things we are going to encounter in our day.  The challenge is when we approach every thing in our lives as a known quantity.  We are constantly growing and changing and everything is alive.  Whether we see it or not, there is always something new in the familiar just by virtue of the fact that it is alive.  When we lose sight of the novelty of the people we are connected to, the jobs that we perform, the way we see ourselves, or even the path we drive to work we lose out.  We no longer interact with our lives in the present,  We only interact from a known experience in the past.  Being present where God is calls us to be awake and alive and embrace the littlest of newness.  We then remember the fascination of life and the novelty of being alive. My prayer for us today is the willingness to be present to the novelties in something that we just assume will be the same today as it was yesterday.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is all heart. God’s heart and mind are one.  The reach of God’s love knows no limits.  If we want to experience the boundless design of love in our own hearts we must be willing to let go of what we know of love.  Or what we think we know about what love is.  On my dates with God I have found more time spent in my heart when I let go of the things I think I know in my head. If I think I know something I am less likely to be present to it because I already know it.  In my mind there is nothing to learn or be present to. I can do this when it comes to love or with anything. The point is that the connection between my heart and my mind is stronger when I am not blocking the open nature of my mind.  If I am willing to let go of what I think I know and be open to being in an experience, it is there for me to be with it in my heart as well as my mind.  Scientists have discovered that the cells in our hearts have the same capacity to regenerate as the ones in our brain.  We can also strengthen the pathway between our heart and our mind but it begins with an openness and letting go of barriers.  My prayer for us today is an openness to letting go of what we think we know so that we can experience things through our heart and our mind.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is permanent.  God is everlasting.  God reminds us always that we are connected.  Life reminds us that we want to remember that we are connected.  At any given moment there are many things to be grateful for.  A practice that I have developed over the years is to end my day expressing gratitude.  This way when my head hits the pillow my last thoughts were of the gifts of my life.  My intention is to come up with at least three new things to be grateful for each night.  I have noticed a direct correlation between that practice and the eyes through which I see the world around me.  I find as I go through my day I see things and instead of spending my time reflecting from a place of good or bad, I am able to see what I am grateful for.  A woman crossing the street hunched over and slow and I am grateful to be able to walk with my head high.  I see a couple walking hand in hand and I am grateful that there are people who are not afraid to share their love for one another with the world.  The homeless man on the corner on my way to work reminds me that I am grateful for my job and the roof over my head.  The doctor I am training at the hospital reminds me that I am grateful that I am healthy and not meeting him under other circumstances.  Waiting in line at the grocery store I am grateful that I have money to pay for groceries and all the hands that went into creating and bringing the food to the store for me to buy.  At any given moment there are so very many things for which I am grateful. It just takes practice to see them.  Being in gratitude strengthens my relationship with God and with myself.  My prayer for us today is to discover at least three simple things for which we are grateful that we never noticed before.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is fullness.  God is all heart.  When we engage in an authentic relationship with God our hearts becomes full.  God knows how to fill us in a way that defies imagination.  God wants nothing more than to help us remember the heart from which we were born.  God works tirelessly to provide opportunities for us to return to God and remember how to love.  Our spirit rejoices in these opportunities even when our mind and our body do not.  This is what allows us to move forward in hope.  Our hearts recognize what God is offering and propel us to inch in a little closer and see what it is all about. My prayer for us today is a level of curiosity that will allow us to explore God’s plan for our heart.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is discovery. God is closeness.  When we connect with God we have access to the clarity of mind that only God has.  This allows us to take a closer look at our lives.  We can easily go along in life not stopping to reflect on the way we are being.  We exist a lot of the time on automatic pilot.  Our brains are designed to ensure our survival and as long as we are breathing, the  mind sees no need to stop and examine how it is doing.  Then something happens to wake us up.  Our wake up call is a chance to examine life as we have been living it up to this point.  I have had several wake up calls in my lifetime and they come in big and small packages.  The biggest one for me was when I had to face the reality of my sugar and food addiction and the extra 160 plus pounds I was carrying.  I was in pain, shut down emotionally, and life just wasn’t working. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore that things were okay. I had no true sense of peace in my heart.  I needed help and thankfully I reached out for it.  I could look upon the examination as resulting in a terrible prognosis. Instead I saw some hope when I found a solution.  God knew it was time for me to stop trying to figure it out and learn to fully rely upon Him.  It has been a humbling experience these past 13 years but I would not change a thing.  The evaluation in my life continues because I do not want to fool myself back into the mind or body space I lived in before.  Today my relationship with God is the single most important element in my life.  My prayer for us today is an openness to an honest evaluation of our lives to assess for the level of peace.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God is joyful.  God is bountiful. God is God wants us to experience the joy, bounty, and beauty that is within us.  God knows it is there because we are God’s creation and thus an extension of God.  We tend to look outside ourselves for happiness and sometimes we find it.  But it is not the kind of lasting happiness that God can provide.  The power of God’s kind of happy is the eternal.  The simplicity of God’s kind of happiness seems to elude us because it can only be experienced in the moment.  The moment is when we the eternal meets the now.  The more time we spend with our minds in the past or the future, the more it eludes us.  Knowing that we are completely taken care of and looked upon by our creator allows us to breathe a little easier and enjoy where we are in the moment.  I have spent a lot of my life looking for someone, something, or some situation to make me happy.  It wasn’t until I started dating God that I found that those kinds of happiness were fleeting and my eternal source was so close to me I couldn’t see it until I slowed down to look into my heart.  My prayer for us today is the courage to slow down and be present in the moment so we may experience a happiness that transcends any circumstance.  Make it  a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God dwells deep within us.  God is in the places of our heart and soul that speak love. God always sees us as the light that God created.  There is no where in our experience, good or bad, that God is not willing to go.  We stop God.  We act in fear to look at the parts of ourselves that we do not want brought to light because we think that they cannot be enlightened.  We have not been able to do it, so we don’t think that God can either. We forget that God is light and the light exists to dispel the darkness.  We forget that the darkness is something we are experiencing, not who we are.  We can invite God in to the interior of our hearts.  God will not come uninvited.  If we are willing to take a chance that God does not see darkness the way that we do then we can hope.  My prayer for us today is the courage to believe that God does not see darkness in ourselves or others the way we do and invite in God’s view.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen

God always has right perspective.  God is present in every moment in our lives, even the ones when we don’t feel God’s presence.  As we go through our day we can carry an attitude of connection with God.  Or an attitude of going it alone.  If we don’t feel it we can reach for God’s hand and act as if.  Our attitude determines our focus. Our attitude feeds our mindset. Our attitude determines our perspective.  We can approach our day that God is with us or not.  We can adapt an attitude of gratitude for what we have or focus on what we are lacking.  We always have a choice.  When I am in an attitude of kindness, gratitude and patience I am connected with God’s perspective.  When I am in an attitude of dislike, focusing on differences, ungrateful and irritated I am lacking God’s perspective.  It is not about right or wrong it is about recognition.  I simply need to pause and ask myself if I am finding myself in a space of freedom from the latter or the former.  My prayer for us today is the courage to ask for God’s help in adopting an attitude that align’s with God’s perspective or if we are already there be grateful for it.  Make it a great one!  Peace~Colleen