Ideas to Nurture A Close Relationship With God

• Ask God for nearness to Him, for He told us to seek Him.

• Look up and out to the heavens, as much as we can, and know God is there, supervising and loving and caring about us.

• Start the day, before we arise, when we open our eyes, with God, and close our eyes at night in sleep with God, and ask Him to be with us.

• Pray constantly, not only formally, but intimately, childlike, for the desires of large things and small things. Take every consideration to the Lord in prayer.

• Remember to accept His will, when and however He answers our prayers.

• Keep open the communication line with God, so that whenever we feel weak or weary we can renew our strength and mount up with wings, like eagles, and walk and run, and be not faint, and wait upon the Lord, serving Him in all we do and say.

• Read the Scriptures, and find Psalms, or other passages, that are special for us, and know that God talks with us personally.

• Talk to Jesus, asking him to be with us, helping us also. Enjoy Christ like, sun shiny and sun filled days.

• Feeling lost? Read the whole of a Gospel. Be inspired by Jesus’ life and words.

• Be confident that God thinks of us as His children and important enough to receive those messages from Him. Surround ourselves with the Godly messages.

• Put His glorious messages into messages for ourselves, using the "I" and "me" words, naming ourselves in those Scriptural messages. Put God’s messages of hope into the now, as well as into the future, for salvation is in the now.

• Find a Scriptural daily message diary, or a day-by-day tear-off calendar, and so daily learn more of Him.

• Learn a new song or part of a favourite hymn so that we can sing (or hum, or mind sing), whenever we need encouragement.

• Expand thanks for food into prayers of praise and thanks for all His goodness. Add requests as well.

• Try a daily Praise and Prayer Journal. Learn to meditate.

• Watch the trees, and the grass, and the flowers, and, yes, even the weeds, for they are evidence of God’s power and beauty.

• Grow Babies’ Tears in the shade, and know that God is happy and laughs with us, but that God also sorrows with us, when, we are in shade.

• Hear the sea, and the waves, and the thunder, and the hail, see the lightening, and the moon, and the stars, feel the warmth of the sun, and know that His storehouse of majestic glory is overflowing.

• Appreciate the insects, and the animals, and the fish, and the birds and know that they are all His creatures, and that not one falls, but that He knows.

• Look at the rocks and the stones. See His splendour there. Find some white stones and black stones, as His children did of old, for blessings and disappointments. Know that He is in charge of the "yes" and the "no".

• Find the good in every little thing, in nature, in events and in other saints as well, and know that all that goodness will enhance us all.

• Care for, and encourage each other, so that we can all rise together and be within the Veil, with Him. Look up, and know that we can all be, near to, and with Him.

Sis Beverley Russell (Hurstville, Australia)