How to Feel Closer to God through Christ

When someone approaches me about finding a closer walk with God, I don’t say, “Well, just read the Bible and go to church,” because this answer wears thin if you've tried tried it and still feel emotionally distant from God. I suggest instead taking a risk by initiating a conversation with God. And watching how the Lord responds.

What happens when you risk a spontaneous little prayer? When you include the Lord in your inner life. Over the years you learn to invite him into every imaginable situation. But there’s something else. Little heartfelt prayers fulfill the Lord’s desire for companionship with you!

Answers to prayer vary as much as blooming flowers. Some are like pansies that blossom overnight. Others are like bulbs planted in winter soil, which seem not to grow at all; then springtime comes and they erupt with life. Still others are like roses that require care over many years, but their delicate petals and distinctive fragrance make them well worth the effort. Whether God’s reply is quick or seemingly takes forever, you can count on a response.

A Little Prayer of Longing

Gwen made an appointment to see me at a college where I was teaching. A student in my Psychology of Religion course, she had met the assignments, but stayed silent in class.

When she arrived for the appointment, I invited her in and offered her a seat. My desk lamp cast soft light on her frowning face.

“I want to talk about something you said in class the other day,” she said.

I nodded my encouragement.

"You said that God wants a real relationship with each of us. That he knows us by name. That he wants to walk and talk with us.”

“Yes, I believe that’s true,” I said.

“Well, I have a problem. I was raised in a Christian home and went to church all my life. But I don’t feel close to God. It seems like the Lord is way too big to really know about me. I feel like I’m this little grain of sand who shouldn’t bother him.”

“Is it like you know God loves humanity, but why would he want Gwen as his personal friend?”

“Exactly. I’m so ordinary. I’m not that good in school and half the time I feel bored in church. I’m not anything special.”

“Yet you care enough about your relationship with the Lord to come here and talk about it.”

“I guess so. I don’t know what else to do.”

Gwen,” I said, “I wonder if you would dare to ask the Lord to come to you in a private way that you can really recognize. Something that would show that he knows you.”

“You mean just talk to him?” she asked, eyebrows arching.

I nodded. “Maybe you could say a little prayer right now, just the way you are talking to me.”

“Well, this feels kind of awkward, but I’ll try,” she said.

We bowed our heads.

After a moment of silence, she said, “God, I have felt lonely for so long. I go through all the motions of being religious, but I don’t feel you in my life. Please show me that you love me. Help me know you’re really there. Amen.”

When I looked up, Gwen was dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex. I sensed that she was opening her heart to God in this little prayer. I wondered how Christ would answer her.

A week later there was a knock on my office door. When I opened it, there stood Gwen with a grin on her face. 

She handed me a bright red greeting card and said, “Go ahead and open it.”

Puzzled, I flipped open the card. The printed message read, “Our friendship will last forever.” Underneath, written in beautiful handwriting, were the words, “Dear Gwen, you don’t know me, but the Lord told me to buy this card and send it to you. He said for you to read Isaiah 43:1. Best wishes.” It was unsigned.

“This card was in my campus mailbox yesterday,” Gwen explained. “I looked up the verse in Isaiah and it says, ‘I have called you by name, you are mine.’”

My heart caught. “And you still don’t know who sent it?”

 “No. But I do know that God loves me!”

What worked for Gwen will work for you: going straight to the Lord when you face a lonely disconnect from God. Like Gwen, you can risk praying to the Lord by "casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you" (1 Pet 5:7 NKJV).

Naturally Supernatural Life for Christians

Christianity begins with Jesus. After dying on the cross, he is raised up on the third day, his personality restored, his human faculties intact. His first recorded act is to warmly greet Mary Magdalene. Then he says, “Go and tell Peter and the boys that I’ll meet them in Galilee,” an especially tender sentiment since Peter had three times denied even knowing him. 

By the time the month is out, Christ has met with the disciples and another four hundred people who believe in him. His death and resurrection have turned history upside down. You’d never guess he’d been recently betrayed, interrogated, whipped, spurned, and crucified, busy as he is creating rendezvous with the individuals he loves. 

Now two millennia have passed and Jesus is making rendezvous with you. He calls your name and seeks opportunities to be in touch with you. Do you hear his whisper? Can you feel his warmth?

How do you integrate this Jesus of Nazareth with your life in the 21^st century? Certainly it tests your capability, since a good part of humanity now believes that science and reason are the primary means of acquiring knowledge, understanding human behavior, and explaining the universe. This point of view has made a worthwhile contribution to humankind by revealing natural laws and improving the quality of life.

Yet for the individual in Christ, a graced awareness of heavenly power challenges the artificial distinction made in today’s world between the natural and supernatural—between reason and faith. 

When your baby gets sick, you not only want a good doctor, you want God’s help. When someone you love is dying, you want more than a prognosis of how many weeks are left, you want to bring spiritual comfort to the loved one. When a dire situation has you by the throat, you want Almighty God to intervene and deliver you from evil!

Jesus Christ is the unimpeachable witness that your life matters to God. He is the Almighty Someone who knows your coming and going, and watches over you. “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). And just as the supernatural became natural for Mary and Peter, so the supernatural can become natural for you.

This world belongs to the Trinity. Far from being a Creator who wound up the universe like a cosmic watch and then abandoned it, our God interacts with us all the time.

The life of a colleague of mine, a physician, once sank to an all-time low. She got several years behind in taxes to the tune of five figures, experienced a painful divorce, lost her home, and underwent gall bladder surgery, all within the space of a year. The only thing she had left was enough reason to call upon Jesus Christ for help. 

I use the word “reason” to emphasize that when you belong to Christ, it is reasonable and makes good scientific sense to call on him for help. No, you can’t set up an empirical laboratory experiment to make God demonstrate how he cares for people and moves on their behalf. On the other hand, millions of people who know the Lord petition him for help and witness his astonishing provision for their needs.

God doesn’t mind scientific exploration. He invites, even empowers the understanding of nature, including the study of Homo sapiens. Yet when it comes to the well-being of persons, God moves freely by exerting his transcendent will to help people out. Without his compassionate heart at the center of things, we would all be transitory blips in a cold dark universe, where names don’t matter and personalities are no more significant than tree stumps. 

My physician friend knew that she was not a tree stump. She called on the Lord for help to restore a miserably broken life. Cooperating with the grace that was offered, she acknowledged her errors of judgment and followed the Holy Spirit’s lead in setting her life aright. At the end of the five years she emerged debt free, with enough income to make a down payment on a home. I could tell that invisibly, yet perceptively, she had joined the cloud of witnesses who have walked through the valley of the shadow and found Christ an able Shepherd.

While my friend’s story helps to illustrate how the Lord moves supernaturally through ordinary trials, I want to share an experience that bears witness to a miracle from God in a life-threatening emergency. 

One night I was driving through a hundred-mile stretch of remote country in the midst of a winter blizzard, when the car heater broke down. It wasn’t long before my feet turned to ice blocks and my breath fogged up the windshield. I crawled along at twenty miles an hour, fearful that I might drive off the road. 

Shaking now from the sub-zero weather, I uttered the most unusual prayer of my life: “God, please bring heat inside the car so I don’t freeze to death.” A minute later a breeze started blowing gently on my feet and legs. It was piping hot air. I didn’t know how God was doing it, but the whole interior of the car gradually heated up to where the fog cleared off the windshield, my bones stopped rattling, and I felt warm as toast. 

Thankfully, I drove the remaining distance without getting stuck in a snowbank, arriving at my destination in a fully heated car. When I checked the heater the next day it wasn’t working. I took the car to a mechanic who replaced a faulty thermostat. 

I don’t know what your needs are right now or what pressures are threatening you. But I do know that I am in your corner, with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are cheering you on, as you and Jesus make the supernatural more natural in your life.

For more, read:

FAITH BEYOND CHURCH WALLS

Why Is Jesus Christ America's Favorite Curse Word?

I was watching Super 8, a movie produced by Steven Spielberg. Four middle school boys are helping the US military fight off an attack by space monsters. But my attention wasn't on the aliens. It was on how those boys were using swear words in almost every sentence.

I found myself counting the times the Christian name for the Son of God is used as a profanity: "Jesus." "Jesus H. Christ." "Jesus F--ing Christ." "Christ." Along with a fair number of "G--Damns!" I quit counting near a hundred.

Before the movie began, I overheard two grandmothers sitting behind me swapping stories about their grandchildren. Now on screen the first alien leaps out to attack the boys. Both grandmothers scream in unison, "Jesus Christ!!"

Does this underscore for you that Jesus Christ is America's favorite curse word? Have you recently heard the Lord's name used in vain? Among friends or acquaintances? In your own speech?

Can you imagine Krishna becoming the favorite curse word in India? Buddha evolving into a profanity in Tibet? Allah an obscenity in the Middle East? Why then is "Jesus Christ!" the favorite swear word in America, not only in daily conversation, but in literature, television, and movies?

In past decades most curse words derived from bodily functions related to urination, defecation, sexual intercourse, or contempt for another human being. Why, then, this choice? This leap from excrement and sex to a sacred religious name, the name at the heart of Christianity? A name held holy by the majority of Americans and over two billion Christians worldwide? Why does Jesus Christ head the list of national vulgarities, so endemic to American culture?

Using Jesus as a swear word used to break a cultural taboo. Its shock value used to surpass those taboos broken by "F-you" and "you A-hole!" However, after three decades of usage, it no longer shocks at all. That's why the curse word "Jesus Christ" is used in so many contexts today -- anywhere from cussing out an enemy, to showing surprise and awe, reacting to physical pain, venting anger, and revealing contempt for a person or idea.

Those of us who choose Jesus as a swear word do it because of the power embedded in Jesus' name.

The power of Jesus' name, used perversely. 

Converting a term that stands for holiness, hope, and heaven into profanity repudiates the holy object, in this case the person of Christ. So in exclaiming, "Oh Jesus!" -- or "Jesus Christ!" -- a person consciously or unconsciously conveys, "I am not a follower of Christ and spurn what he stands for!"

When this particular cuss word becomes so second-nature that grandmothers and children use it to express negative emotional states (shock, fear, anger, or disgust), then, derogatory though it is, the  Christ-expletive becomes a societal merit badge. A badge of mockery. A verbal badge that dishonors Christ, Christianity, and Christians.

Perhaps this is a way of protesting the Gospel of Christ, which invites people to repent from evil and comprehend God's love for them. But rather than protesting Christ's message through derogatory speech, I suggest that we respect the freedom to worship God or not, and find tolerance for the religious differences that make America great.  

Here is a consciousness-raising experiment you might try out this week. When you stub your toe, witness a shocking event, or get furious at someone who crosses you, see if your unconscious flips into automatic pilot by erupting with a desecration of Jesus' name. If not, it means you've successfully averted this national trend. And if so, it means that with a little spiritual vigilance you can remove its influence from within your psyche.

Wouldn't we all find benefit from a constructive separation between religious sensibility and cursing?

For more about Dr. Dan's integration of psychology and theology in the 21st century, read:

COMPASS PSYCHOTHEOLOGY: WHERE PSYCHOLOGY AND THEOLOGY REALLY MEET