If I could give you five practical tips that work for me on kind of strengthening and developing a relationship with god. These are the 5 tips. First thing I would say is to realize that your relationship with god is a relationship with god the same way that we prioritize, we make time for, we spend time with, we understand the person that we’re in a relationship with is the same way that we have to treat our relationship with God. And so to tap on this point real quick, for somebody who says I want that relationship but I struggle to pray, Facetime texting and regular phone calls are different methods that we use to communicate with our significant others. Praying doesn’t always have to look like kneeling on the side of your bed and talking to guy for 25 minutes. It can be in the car and you don’t always have to verbalize these things. It can be in your mind while you’re driving the car, while you’re at the gym. I would just say find something that you do alone that you can give God whatever the time is to pray, to talk, to communicate with him that you want to give, whether that’s some time when you’re at home or if you go to the gym and you’re like, I go to the gym and I rock up with my headphones on. Use that as an opportunity to speak to God as you’re working out. I’m speeding up cuz this time is going on.
Second thing I would say is read the Bible. I think there are a lot of different stories that I heard in the Bible as I was growing up in Sunday school, in church and Bible study. And it wasn’t until 2024 that I started actually making it an intentional part of my lifestyle of reading the Bible, that I got to read and understand on a deeper level stories that I did not, stories that I heard when I was younger that now make sense to me on a different level.
1, I have a different, from my capacity to understand it now, and 2, it’s more relevant to the place that I’m in my life, where I can relate to different people going through different things in the Bible. And so I would say read the Bible, understand God the same way that we understand and I are significant others. It always goes, it all goes back to relationship. Same way that we make time to understand how significant others, how could you understand the word if you don’t read the word, right? Okay. No. 3, I would say, could you imagine being married and then all your friends are single? Aren’t you gonna eat? You gonna be doing all single people activity, right? Find some people, some Christian people who also are, they don’t have to be super. I would not say they gotta be super head of where you are, but some people who also have the same desire of loving Christ that you also have, but also people who understand that ain’t none, nobody in this group perfect. We all got struggles. We all deal with different things. So we’re not all perfect. But finding people who also are just as Christ minded as you are.
No. 4. I am gonna say, find a church that you enjoy going to, a church that preaches the word, a church that does all the things the way the Bible says to do them. Hello, sir. But ultimately a church that you actually enjoy going to, that you’re actually motivated about when it comes to waking up and having to go to that place every Sunday. On the flip side of that, y’all gonna hit me, so I’m gonna say this fast, is don’t allow the church to consume you. I think sometimes we get so consumed with church that we don’t get consumed enough with God. And so our life becomes more about pleasing the church that it does become about pleasing god. And when you don’t have the balance between the two, you won’t fall down. And then the last thing I would say, and y’all probably gonna disagree with this, with that, is mighty fine cuz you probably could disagree with any of the other tips that I gave.
I was on a challenge at the side of this year to read all of the Gospels. And the first, I think it was the first three months of the year. And then I realized that I was spending most of my time reading just to say that I reached a goal rather than reading to actually understand what was going on and how I should be applying that to my life. And so I would say don’t consume yourself with the goal of getting closer to god or the goal of reading the Bible or with the goal of finding a good church or the goal of finding like minded friends so much that the desire becomes more about achieving the goal than it actually is about understanding god and being and becoming closer with god.
I think sometimes we can get a rat race with everything from social media to our job, too, even getting closer gotten. So I would say be intentional. Be more intentional about wanting to be close to God. Even having the desire alone to say that I want to be closer to God, I think it strikes God’s. I think it pulls on God’s heart strings. But I would definitely say don’t become more consumed with the goal of getting closer to god or the goal of reading the Bible that it causes you to stumble into a pattern when you’re chasing a goal rather than chasing after god. To that point, though, real quick and last thing I would say is with my goal to read the gospel currently on the last part of John and we are in June. And I was supposed to be done in March, but I enjoyed the fact that I got to sit and actually enjoy everything that I read and get fresh revolution from everything that I read rather than just reading just to say I am a person who read all the gospels and yeah.