In this busy age, the fast-paced life causes our hearts to be occupied by all kinds of people, things, and matters, so that we have very little time for quietening ourselves before God, drawing close to Him or contemplating Him. Because our hearts frequently grow apart from God and we don’t give them to God, we cannot gain the work of the Holy Spirit and don’t have God’s guidance and leadership in our lives. As a result, we are very busy in dealing with various people and events, feel physically and mentally exhausted, and cannot achieve good results in doing things. Below, I’d like to share with you three critical aspects of practice of how to establish a normal relationship with God.
1. Consciously Allotting Time to Pray and Read God’s Words
Frequently praying to God and reading His words are the most fundamental lesson in our faith in God, and are the most basic condition for maintaining a normal relationship with God. If we pay no heed to our spiritual lives, even though we occasionally pray and read God’s words, it’s just going through a process. As time goes on, because we have no true communion with God, we will gradually become distant from Him. Therefore, in our busy and fast-paced lives, we must forsake ourselves with awareness and make time to calm down and read God’s words. For example, we can get up early or stay up late to spare half an hour every day, find a quiet place and avoid all that could distract us, quiet our hearts and pray to God, and then diligently read a passage of God’s words. Although it is not a long time, we can understand God’s will and demands, and so we will have the guidance of God’s words in our work and lives and can get things done in half the time. It is evident that keeping a normal relationship with God is very important.
2. Constantly Calling on God, Praying to Him, and Having Spiritual Communion With Him Within Our Hearts
What should we do if we really cannot find the time? Don’t worry. Let’s first read a passage of words, “How can people maintain a relationship with God? And what should they rely on to do this? They should rely on supplicating God, praying to God, and communicating with God in their hearts. With a relationship such as this, people live always before God, and such people are very peaceful. Some people spend their whole time in external actions, busying themselves with external tasks. After one or two days without the spiritual life, they feel nothing; after three or five days, or one or two months, they still feel nothing; they have not prayed, made supplication, or held spiritual communion. Supplication is when something happens to you, and you ask God to help you, guide you, provide for you, enlighten you, and allow you to understand His will and know what to do in line with the truth. The scope of prayer is wider: Sometimes you speak the words in your heart, talking to God of your difficulties or negativity and weakness; so, too, do you pray to God when you are rebellious, or else you speak to Him of the things that happen to you each day, whether they are clear to you or not. This is praying. The scope of prayer is basically talking and opening up to God. Sometimes it is done at regular times, sometimes not; you can pray whenever and wherever you wish. Spiritual communion is not overly formal. Sometimes it is because you have a problem, sometimes not. Sometimes it involves words, sometimes not. When you have a problem, you talk of it with God and pray; when you do not have a problem, you think of how God loves people, how He is concerned about people, how He rebukes people. You may commune with God at any time or place. This is what spiritual communion is.”
From these words we can find a clear way to practice. Sometimes when we are very busy and have no time to pray or read God’s words, we can practice drawing close to God in all matters and constantly calling on Him, praying to Him, and having spiritual communion with Him within our hearts. These ways are not restricted by time or the environment we are in, there are no fixed rituals in them, and we can communicate with God at any time and place. For example, when we are waiting for a bus, when we are in a bus, we can confide in God our real state to seek His help or we can contemplate a passage of God’s words. This way, we can understand more of God’s will and demands. When we encounter some thorny problems in our jobs and we don’t know how to solve them, we can pray to God and ask Him to lead us. We can also speak the words within our hearts to God anytime and anyplace, draw close to God, and think of God’s love. And so on. In this way, although we are very busy, through frequent prayer, spiritual communion with God, and imploring, our hearts won’t grow apart from God, and our relationship with God will become normal.
3. Seeking the Truth and Acting According to God’s Will in All Things
Our lives are fraught with changes every day, and we don’t know when we will encounter things that are not to our liking. If we don’t have God in our hearts nor seek the truth, we could only analyze matters with our own minds and get stuck in the idea of right and wrong, couldn’t obey God’s sovereignty and arrangements, perhaps could even misunderstand God or blame God, and end up sinking into darkness and pain. Just as recently I was passed over when competing for the job of corporate executive in my company, which caused me to feel embarrassed. I thought, “According to seniority and skills, I’m the best one in my company, so how could I have not been elected?” When thinking of that, I became brooding and couldn’t quiet my heart in God’s presence. Later, through praying, seeking and reading God’s words many times, I finally saw that behind my failure to compete for the job of corporate executive were indeed God’s good intentions. I thought of how after I had some success in my company, I was full of ambitions and desires, wanting to seek greater developments and have a better future. In order to realize my plan, I had been busy with work all day long for a long time, and I even didn’t regularly say my prayers, read God’s words or attend gatherings. As a result, my heart began to move further and further away from God, and I felt no reproach even though I lived in sin, so much so that my sins grew apace. Seeing me living in a state of pursuing fame and fortune from which I couldn’t escape, God reminded me and forced me to come before Him and reflect upon myself in my pain through my failure in the competition, so that I would not continue down that path of depravity, but could return before God once again and do things in a down-to-earth manner. I finally saw that these bad things turned out to be good ones, and that behind them were God’s earnest intentions. Thereupon, seeking the truth and acting according to God’s will in all things are also the practice of how to establish a proper relationship with God.
I believe that as long as we can persist in practicing the three aforementioned aspects of the path, our relationship with God will become more and more normal.
