Wanting More...

...In Your Relationship With God

Sometimes we want more out of life. Sometimes we want more out of our jobs. Sometimes we want more out of our relationships. In wanting a greater experience of the presence of Christ in your life, you will find you can gain more in each of those other areas of life according to God's unique plan for you!

YOU are represented by one of God's keys to understanding life with Him!

God wants more in His relationships with us... and He's taken all the first steps in making that available to us. So... the ball is in our court in a way. This is why YOU are represented by one of God's "Keys" to understanding life with Him. Wanting more, and getting more from our relationship with Christ, involves learning more about how to take the steps of faith He asks of us, so we can experience Him more.

The desire for more can be pretty powerful. However, it can also be a pretty general desire. It is useful if we look closer at wanting more, in order to focus on what it may mean to "want more" in our relationship with God. Let's take a look at counting that cost.

Wanting More of God in Our Decision-Making

Many passages in the Bible describe various experiences and possibilities available to us in Christ. So, when we feel the discomforts and pains that often come with life difficulties, it is natural to want more of the peace and rest the Bible describes. When you really look at some of the stories of people in the Bible, we see that their sense of peace and of connection with God was heavily influenced by how much they followed God's lead in their decision-making!

God typically doesn't just "take over" our decision-making every time we face a toughie... even if that is our prayer! If God simply took over, then we'd never have a need to grow! This is why getting more of God's lead in our life decisions involves discovering how to yield our God-given free will to Him!

Wanting more and letting Christ lead in our problem-solving processes involves learning to let Him live through us the Biblical principles related to discerning the Lord's lead. We have to discern Christ's lead from the variety of ways Satan and the flesh seeks to tempt, mislead and influence us. We have to accept the fact that God gave us the power to tell Him, "No," (not that we should of course). The truth is it is possible to tell God "no" without realizing it until after we've acted (Romans 7:15-25)!

Wanting More of God In Our Trials

Of course we want more of God in our trials! We want Him to protect us, protect our loved ones, to deliver us, to rescue us. But part of wanting more in our relationship with God means we need to want to do our part more, in order to connect with and follow Him during trials. He died for us, can we handle that?

When trials come up, things are usually pretty uncomfortable. We want the peace of Christ. Often it isn't enough just to WANT to know God's will for us in a trial. He seeks to teach us the truth that we are not alone, He is giving us all we need, He loves us. We have to learn to believe that! We have to learn to know that in our hearts! We have to be able to feel God's peace, even when a situation causes us to feel otherwise at first!

Many times we don't know for sure what steps Jesus wants to take through us. To overcome this, we have to be willing to let go of the notion that God is often "quiet" about how we are to handle our painful life situations. Actually, God IS trying to communicate to us through our hearts! Knowing how to discern His voice in our hearts is vital to figuring out what He is saying and why we aren't "getting it." Until we learn how to let Him live through us the Bible's principles for discerning His voice, it may seem like the Lord isn't saying anything to us very often. Or, it may seem the Lord is saying to wait longer for a clear answer.

Wanting more of God and His peace in trials means we have to want and be willing to notice how Satan and the flesh actually managed to succeed in fooling us in the past. If you think that there is no spiritual relationship between today's trials and those of the past, then you may want to reconsider. There are spiritual patterns that run in our trials. If you want more of the peace of God and more of a sense of the presence of Christ in your daily life, then be willing to learn more about what's going on in your trials and how to let the Lord fight them through you.

Wanting More with God Means Wanting to be Changed!

Wanting to know more about how to better to discern and follow the Lord's specific guidance to you means wanting to surrender to God so He changes you to be more Christ-like. Transformation in trials deals with change.

The Lord wants to help us get better at experiencing His presence daily living. That starts by learning to let Him change your heart whenever it is disturbed (i.e., not at peace). Being changed, or transformed, simply means that you don't function the same way 3 months from now. It means that 2 weeks from now you should notice that you are different than you are today. Discerning WHAT God wants us to change in you in a trial enables you to understand why you experience whatever uncomfortable, difficult or unwanted inner experiences that come into your life.

Wanting more in Christ by implication means wanting to focus more on the spiritual goings on behind everyday living. When we don't have a strong focus in that area, we might unwittingly use distractions to get our minds off things that we do not like in life... because they are painful. Getting distracted only delays us from seizing the opportunity to connect with the Lord in our hearts. It keeps Him from revealing greater spiritual perspectives we need at the moment He really would like to reveal that stuff to you. Be willing to let Him change you - after all, He paid the price for you. Want more! Want to be discipled by God's Spirit - life is much better this way!