So intensely personal and so passionately in love with you is the King of the universe that he is with you every moment of every day, eager to respond to anything you might tell him. You mean everything to him. If you struggle to believe this, I understand. The intensity of God’s personal love and devotion to you is truly mind-boggling. Begin the long journey to grasping the magnitude of this truth by remembering the torturous death the Lord of glory willingly suffered, just to be on intimate terms with you.

Despite it being so astounding as to seem almost beyond belief, the most exciting, most breathtakingly exalted and most in-love-with-you person in the entire universe is with you every second, 24 hours a day, longing for your companionship. So why for hours at a time do we daily ignore the most precious person in our lives? Why is it that, often despite our best intentions, we rob our Lord and ourselves of priceless privileges by pushing the most astounding person out of our consciousness for hours at a time? He never leaves our side and yet our mind is continually wandering away from him, not only ignoring him but actually forgetting that he is even there. A friend of mine began each day with three hours of prayer and yet to his dismay he still found this happening in the rest of his day. Even when I am thinking about God, most of the time it is more like thinking of a friend who is elsewhere, than someone who is with me, intensely interested in my every thought.

I share with you Twenty First Century pressures. To provide my web ministry without charge, I work in a secular job and squeeze this ministry into every remaining spare second. Don’t imagine, however, that I find what Brother Lawrence called “practicing the presence” any easier when I’m not in my secular job.

The Spiritual Side of Going to the Movies

Can someone explain to me why dating couples go to movies? Honestly, I can’t understand it. To have someone special is so rare for me that I would want us to spend every second focused on each other, not squander the opportunity on a movie. Nevertheless, the popularity of movie dates is of immense spiritual significance to me. It demonstrates that ordinary people can be absorbed in something else and yet simultaneously draw comfort and even excitement over someone’s presence. That charges me with hope. Living, as we do, in an era in which most relatively mindless tasks have been replaced by machines, the majority of us are left with days crammed with activities that demand full concentration. Can we, like moviegoers, be intensely involved in a task and yet retain such an awareness of God’s presence as to be able to draw strength and comfort from that awareness?

If you find keeping in touch with God throughout the day almost impossibly hard, you and I are made of the same stuff. I’ve known repeated frustration, disappointment and defeat attempting it. I tend to flip from stressing out over trying, to giving up. Obviously, God wants us to suffer neither attitude.

If you need excuses, I have bagfuls, but I believe you want answers. Let’s find them together. A head-in-the-clouds theory is of no use to me. Like you, I want practical solutions that really work.

The first two pages in this series, explain how to make prayer exciting. Without the foundation they provide, this current webpage is much less likely to spur you to the heights you were created for. So before proceeding with this webpage, please ensure you have read Prayer Secrets.

Why Try?

Let’s begin our journey by considering reasons for attempting moment-by-moment contact with our mighty Lord.

Our Desperate Need

For me, one of the most staggering and life-changing statements in the Bible is Jesus saying about himself, “I can of myself do nothing.” Let the impact of those words shake you to the core. If the eternal Son of God could do nothing without Father God, how great our moment-by-moment dependence upon God must be!

Our desperate dependence extends far beyond purely spiritual concerns. Only divine genius could calculate the chain reaction set off by the smallest action. Who of us, for example, can step into a car and be sure we will arrive alive? I presume that most car trips that end up inflicting pain or death would have been uneventful had the trip begun just a few seconds earlier or later.

Conflicting results from research into the benefits/dangers of common foods confirm that, without divine help, even in a task as simple as deciding what to eat we could be dicing with disaster in the long term.

We need divine guidance for the smallest of things. I cannot even type and be certain I will do more good than harm. Anxious to impress a woman I had never met who held an important position in a significant Christian organization, I thought I was typing in my e-mail to her, “I guess you are very busy.” My finger hit two adjacent keys at the same time. The sentence ended up, “I guess you are very busty.”

We don’t need a weak mind to passionately agree with the thought expressed in the hymn of yesteryear, “I need thee every hour.” On the contrary, it is a failure to think deeply that keeps us from grasping the extent to which life is just too complex for any sensible person to dare attempt the tiniest task without involving God.

Making God More “Real”

If we thought of God for a total of an hour a day (that’s less than one-twentieth of the day) should we be surprised if non-spiritual things seem twenty times more real than spiritual matters? If we doubled our prayer time, would God seem twice as real to us? The proportions might not work out with that degree of precision, but surely there is a degree of truth here.

Don’t Hurt Your Best Friend

The greatest friend anyone could ever have is with us every second of the 24 hours, so why ignore him for 23 hours a day? If you walk with someone, isn’t it rude to go fifteen minutes without speaking to him? Would we do that to someone the world considers highly important?

A Torrent of Inspiration

Trickling through the Word of God are many streams related to continually reminding ourselves of God’s presence. Here is a representative Scripture from each stream:

Colossians 3:17 Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus . . .

2 Corinthians 10:5  . . . bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ

Ephesians 5:20 giving thanks always concerning all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to God, even the Father

Psalm 1:2 but his delight is in the Lord’s law. On his law he meditates day and night.

Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always! Again I will say, “Rejoice!”

Psalms 34:1  . . . I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise will always be in my mouth.

Psalms 71:8 My mouth shall be filled with your praise, with your honor all the day.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 Pray without ceasing.

Of course, for each of these themes there are numerous supporting references scattered throughout the Word of God.

As tributaries of a powerful river, these significant streams merge to form a mighty torrent of reasons for practicing the presence of God. Not only are these reasons for us trying: they are reasons for believing that we can achieve this goal. God clearly wants it, since he has emphasized it in the Bible, and if the Almighty wants it, he wants to empower us to achieve it.

The Lord wanting it to happen ensures that we can do it, but that does not necessarily mean it will be easy. Above everything, the Lord craves our love. And the greatest demonstrations of love are costly.

Enjoying God’s Companionship

Your enjoyment of God is the motivation I most want you to focus on. It’s not a selfish motive. Enjoying God is another way of saying delighting in God or loving the Lord with all your heart. It is a positive motivation that will draw you on. It’s a carrot rather than a stick. If whipping ourselves were so effective, the devil would not major on condemnation.

Please don’t let trying to increase your hourly awareness of God become a burden in which you chide yourself whenever you forget. Instead, treat it as an exciting adventure. Rejoice when you remember rather than mourn when you forget.

The goal of this webpage is not to provide prayer topics for people whose minds are free. Although the page might help such people a little, the focus is on those of us who of necessity are so caught up with our daily affairs that we could benefit from someone tapping us on the shoulder every now and then and saying, “Hey, God is here!” This webpage is for those times when we are too busy to give God our undivided attention but, when reminded, we are capable of communing with God for perhaps as little as one second every fifteen minutes and doing so will help keep us conscious of God’s presence for perhaps several more minutes.

toward a Solution

I’d like you to read two Scriptures with new eyes:

Numbers 15:38-40  . . . they should make themselves fringes in the borders of their garments throughout their generations, and that they put on the fringe of each border a cord of blue: and it shall be to you for a fringe, that you may look on it, and remember all the Lord’s commandments, and do them; and that you not follow after your own heart and your own eyes, after which you use to play the prostitute; that you may remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God.

Deuteronomy 11:18, 20 Therefore you shall lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul. You shall bind them for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. . . . You shall write them on the door posts of your house, and on your gates

The Lord wanted all his people – not just in Moses’ time but “throughout their generations” – to put in place a means whereby things would catch their eye throughout their normal day that would remind them of God and his Word. I would like to share some ideas based on this divine principle. Whether any of the suggestions appeal to you is not the point. My hope is to stimulate your creativity to develop your own methods.

Roadblocks

If you are like me, the enemy of your soul is continually trying to sabotage your progress by spearing into your head such thoughts as, “If God really wanted me to keep remembering him throughout the day, he would do something to remind me of him every few minutes.” The Lord, however, takes the opposite stance. He says, “If you really wanted to keep remembering me throughout the day, you would do something to remind you of me every few fifteen minutes.”

Let’s avoid a standoff. Our Lord is forever taking the initiative, even though most of the time we don’t even realize it. You are reading this webpage, for instance, only because God took the initiative, both in causing it to be written and in causing you to find it. You might think you deliberately searched for this webpage, but who put it in your heart to search for it and who caused you to find this one now, rather than all the other pages on the web on this topic?

Over and over and over, God has taken the initiative. Now it’s time for us to do something. This principle is emphasized throughout Scripture. For example, God pleads, “Call to me, and I will answer you, and will show you great things, and difficult, which you don’t know” (Jeremiah 33:3). He doesn’t say, “Lounge around doing nothing and I’ll speak to you when I’m good and ready.” Scripture promises that God “is a rewarder of those who seek him” (Hebrews 11:6); not that he rewards those who expect God to do everything. The Almighty did not do such things as put Scriptures on the Israelite’s doorframes as reminders; he told them to do it (Deuteronomy 11: 20).

Let me run past you some ideas that might serve as a spring board for developing your own personally tailored list.

Triggers

* We are more time-conscious than any other culture in the history of humanity. It’s a symptom of our hectic life that makes it exceedingly difficult to remain conscious of God throughout the day. But we can use our enemy to spur us forward. Why not train yourself to say in your mind, “Eternity” whenever you look at your watch or a clock? What you then do will depend on how many milliseconds you can spare. You might offer a quick prayer or be reminded of the eternal perspective to what you are doing.

Using checking the time as a reminder to think of God is a great idea, but if you suppose it’s easy, you either haven’t tried yet or you are streets ahead of me. Birthing a new habit seems to take as much effort as killing an old one. For weeks I kept forgetting: the link between checking the time and thinking, “Eternity,” was just a good idea rather than a firmly ingrained habit. If you’re like me, you’ll even need reminders to use the reminders. Here are some suggestions:

* Put a sticker on the face of your watch. Seeing the sticker – even a wordless one – will jog your memory, reminding you to link the word eternity with consulting the time.

* Wear your watch somewhere different, such as on your other wrist or on the inside of your wrist. When you can’t find your watch where it usually is, you will remember why you put it in a different position.

* After a while you’ll adjust to the new position and it will cease to be such a powerful reminder, so if the link between looking at your watch and thinking, “Eternity” is still a little weak, move your watch to yet another position.

* If you need a password to enter a computer system and you can choose that password, try to link the password to something that will remind you of God. For example, you might set a password by thinking, “I love you Lord, help me to pray,” and each time you say one of the words in your mind, type the first letter of that word. In this case, the password would be ilyLhmtp. Such a method makes it easy to remember the password but virtually impossible for anyone else to guess (assuming you don’t use my example exactly and someone you know reads this webpage). More importantly, it will remind you of God. I eventually ended up using such a password rather mindlessly, so that’s my cue to change my password.

If you need a four-digit security code, you could use the reference to a favorite Scripture. For example, Psalm 23:6 would be 2306.

* We tend to take our safety for granted, forgetting that at almost any moment that we are on the road we could end up contributing to road statistics. Every time you enter a means of transport – bus, car or whatever – you could train yourself to remember the danger and say to God, “Thank you for being my Protector.”

Again, the challenge lies in establishing this as a habit. All good habits initially take a frustratingly amount of effort but the exciting thing is that eventually they become effortless.

Once it becomes a habit, it will serve as a valuable reminder to think of your glorious Lord and involve him in your hectic life.

* Helen, my treasured ministry partner, lives so far from me that we have seen each other in person only a couple of times. Upon visiting me, she discovered I drive an old, yellow car. Now, whenever she sees a yellow car she is reminded of me and offers a prayer on my behalf. I get spoilt whenever Helen visits relatives in another city. There, by law, all taxis are yellow.

Hmmm, I wonder if there’s some way I could talk my readers into praying for me every time they see a yellow car? Okay, I’m admit the key point is that there might be some variation on Helen’s memory-jog that fits your particular prayer needs and memory.

* When something goes slightly wrong I involuntarily exclaim, “Oh, no!” in an embarrassingly loud voice. Everyone in the office looks at me thinking it must be the end of the world, when it’s quite minor. I wish I could break the habit and act more normal but I seldom claim to be sane. Anyhow, when I catch myself exclaiming, “Oh, no!” I can immediately smile to myself and pray, “Thank you, Lord! You’ll help me sort this out,” or some such thing. That’s much closer to rejoicing in the Lord than my usual moaning. It brings God into my consciousness and into the situation.

* People commendably trying to quit swearing, can use the same approach just described every time they catch themselves swearing. That would be far more positive and produce less bruises than kicking themselves for again slipping. More importantly, it strengthens one’s connection with God.

* Some people think or say, “Praise the Lord!” every time something goes wrong. It serves as an instant reminder not only of God but of the Almighty’s promise to turn all things around for good.

* As explained in a previous page, it is particularly helpful for our relationship with God if the moment we notice anything remotely nice or beautiful or pleasing, to savor it for as many milliseconds as our busy schedule allows and say silently, or even out loud, “Thank you, Lord!” or, better still, smile and inwardly say, “I love you, Lord!”

A prayer of thanks before a meal – what some people call “saying grace” – is a good start, but the idea can be broadened. And try making it as joyful as you can. If you find formally giving thanks before eating embarrassing or a somber delay to enjoying your meal, you might be better off trying something else, such as silently thanking God while enjoying your meal. What we should be continually seeking is not a ritual but things that genuinely help us fall more in love with God.

* Imagine how annoyed the devil would get if every time he tempts you, it draws you closer to God because you have taught yourself to offer a quick prayer whenever a temptation comes. That’s putting that old loser in a no-win situation: he either stops tempting you or ends up deepening your walk with God!

So try to think of God every time a temptation hits. Keep working on this until it becomes an ingrained habit.

I shudder to share my personal battle with you. If I’m brave enough to reveal it, are you brave enough to keep reading the rest of the page or will I completely turn you off? I can only say the rest of the page is not controversial.

Some Christian women seem to have never wondered why men typically wear loose fitting shirts that cover them up to the neck. Unless it is exceptionally hot, men in western society typically cover even their arms and feet more than women. Men are not trying to hide anything; it’s just a normal way to dress. In contrast, western women typically dress so as to put their sexual parts on display, with most women actually hoping to give the impression that they would look sexier naked than they really do.

If you are a woman and a complete stranger started fondling you, you would feel as offended as I do when someone exposes her cleavage or some other sexual part of her body. For a woman to consciously or unconsciously exploit the fact that men are aroused visually is in my experience indistinguishable from sexual molestation. And I find anyone saying, “Men like it,” as offensive as someone saying women like being raped.

Yes, I can look away, like you could turn away from a stranger trying to kiss you, but it is still offensive and it doesn’t erase the image from my mind. I find it not quite infuriating but more than annoying when I’m forced to keep adjusting my field of vision. I see it as a huge infringement of one of the most basic of liberties – the freedom to look wherever one’s eyes casually roam, just as I could on a deserted place. I mentioned in a previous webpage my conviction that lowering one’s eyes is depressing.

I can’t stop the sexual assault when tight clothes or exposed flesh are thrust into my field of vision. I can’t undo the damage or magically delete the memory. I can, however, prevent it from escalating, and I can turn an offensive act into an occasion to draw close to God. Rather than lust or stress or become embittered, I can use the distasteful experience to help me practice God’s presence by training myself to look away and immediately think, “I look to you, Lord,” and feel warmly toward my Lord. If time permits I might then add, “I only have eyes for you.” That makes me smile as I recall a corny cartoon in which a man said that to a woman while offering her a bunch of eyes instead of flowers. It further warms my heart toward God because it reminds me that God is the love of my life.

If time permits I can then proceed to thanking God for the purity that my sisters will display in heaven. I can think of how western decadence contrasts with Muslim modesty and repent on behalf of the western church for the offensive stumbling-block our immodesty has been to Muslims who might otherwise have not rejected Christianity as being too immoral to possibly be of God.

* Every time you are tempted to think ill of someone, bless that person in a quick prayer. Not only is this Scriptural – we all know Jesus told us to bless those who curse us and pray for our enemies – it will be another precious aid to practicing God’s presence.

* Whenever you see yourself in a mirror, pray, “May I radiate (or reflect) your beauty to the world. (I’m thinking of the spiritual beauty of divine compassion, gentleness, patience, goodness, empathy, wisdom, and so on.)

* Whenever you see or hear the number seven, think, “Heaven.”

* If you feel a jab of pain, tell Jesus, “Thank you for suffering for me.”

* Whenever you see sunglasses, pray, “Help me see things through your eyes.”

* Each time you see a Bible, pray, “Speak to me, Lord.” You might not at that moment be able to read from it but you can believe that God will at some time and in some way communicate to you because of that prayer.

* Whenever someone smiles at you, pray, “Love him/her through me.”

* When someone catches your attention pray, “Bless him/her, Lord!”

* Whenever you find yourself smiling, think, “Smile, God loves you,” Then direct the thought to God by saying, “Thank you, for loving me.”

* When someone uses the Lord’s name in vain, pray, “Bless you, Lord!”

* When you feel tired or stressed, tell the Lord, “I rest in you.”

* Every time you think of someone you love, say, “Thank you, Lord.”

Principles for Developing Your Own List

I suggest you prayerfully consider what will work best for you and tailor-make your own list.

The triggers you choose should, of course, be things you usually encounter several times a day.

Try to link each trigger to no more than a few words. There will be times when if your method takes more than a split second, you won’t be able to squeeze it in, or will be tempted not to. It is better to have something that can be done in a flash. If you are able to do it even when you are at your busiest, not only will it help you think of God more often, the very act of doing it more often will enable it to be more firmly established as a habit. The goal is to reach the point where it is an automatic response.

The ideal is something that is not only lightening fast but can easily stimulate other prayers when time permits. For instance, thinking “Eternity” when you check the time is not only fast, it opens up a vast variety of prayer possibilities.

Try to choose something that will help you feel warmly toward God and increase your faith; not things that will make you anxious. For example, I suggested that upon entering any means of transport you say to the Lord, “Thank you for being my Protector.” I could have suggested praying, “Protect me, Lord,” but that could increase anxiety, whereas the suggestion I decided upon could help you feel secure and thankful to God.

I suggest you don’t try to memorize too many new triggers at once. Perhaps start with half a dozen or so, and build up the number after these are firmly established.

To remind yourself of the triggers that you are trying to remember, review the list of triggers every night. Perhaps you could pin the list to your pajamas. If nothing else the pin should remind you when you roll over. You might like to read through the list first thing in the morning as well. Better, still, carry the list with you in your pocket or handbag and scan it several times a day. You can each item on your list quick brief, such as:

Clock – Eternity
Transport – You’re my Protector
Yellow car – Grantley

Okay, you might not choose the last one but can you blame a guy for trying?

Other Approaches

* Some young people have worn a WWJD (what would Jesus do) wrist band. This has similarities to the Lord telling the Israelites to wear Scriptures on their hands (Deuteronomy 11:18). Perhaps you can think of something along those lines that would work for you. It would not have to be meaningful to other people – just a bracelet or ring or something that occasionally catches your eye and reminds you of the Lord.

* Earlier I mentioned dating couples being absorbed in a movie and yet still finding the experience far superior to sitting there alone. You might have objected – I certainly do – that it is much harder with God because we can see and touch a human friend. However, you can imagine yourself holding God’s hand or Jesus having his arm around you. This can be a significant help.

* When reading/hearing/watching the news or current affairs, offer brief prayers, like “Help them, Lord,” “Move in that situation,” and so on.

* Wear a watch that gives a tiny beep every 15 minutes and use that as a reminder to fire a thought heavenwards.

* Put a Christian ring tone on your phone, so that whenever your phone rings you hear something that reminds you of God.

Grappling with Reality

It’s easy to involve God in our thoughts, say some. Instead of thinking to yourself, just “think to God.” That sounds so simple, but like everything else in life, some people find it much easier than others. There is no point in beating myself: the fact remains that no matter how easy I might think it should be to consistently direct my thoughts heavenward, I sometimes wonder if climbing Everest could be any harder. But there is no glory in achieving anything that is easy and it is no proof of love to do something that costs little.

Although I’m skilled at moaning about my difficulty, the truth is that finding it so hard gives me a brilliant opportunity to express to God my love for him. King David refused to offer to God anything that cost him nothing (2 Samuel 24:24). The more effort it takes, the better I can express my love to God.

There are people who in my eyes are heroes for doing things that I find easy. I am thinking of people battling a handicap, such as having no arms, leaving me spellbound by performing what for able-bodied people is a simple task. What makes a hero in heaven’s eyes is not so much what a person achieves but what it costs the person to achieve it. My very struggle is my glory and my love-offering to God. And that is equally true for you.

When the Bible speaks of being continually in prayer or praying frequently, it is usually in the context of being thankful.

Daniel 6:10  . . . he kneeled on his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks before his God, as he did before.

Ephesians 1:16-17 don’t cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may . . .

Philippians 4:6 In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

Colossians 1:9, 12 . . . since the day we heard this, don’t cease praying and making requests for you . . . giving thanks to the Father . . .

Colossians 4:2 Continue steadfastly in prayer, watching therein with thanksgiving

1 Thessalonians 3:9-10 For what thanksgiving can we render again to God for you, for all the joy with which we rejoice for your sakes before our God; night and day praying exceedingly . . .

1 Timothy 2:1 I exhort therefore, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and givings of thanks, be made for all men

2 Timothy 1:3 I thank God . . . unceasing is my memory of you in my petitions, night and day

(Emphasis mine.)

It is hard to be both miserable and thankful at the same time. To be thankful is to look on the bright side. It is to stop bewailing the emptiness of the bucket and instead rejoice in the whatever is left in the bottom. It is rejoicing’s first cousin. Look at the sentence into which “Pray without ceasing” is sandwiched:

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks . . .

So praying continually is divinely intended to be a joyful experience, but it is not automatically so. If continual joy were an inevitable consequence of being a Christian, the Bible would not bother to tell us to “Rejoice always.” It is something we have to work at. Nevertheless, just as it would be a pity to turn marital intimacy into a grim duty, so it would be to turn praying continually into a grim duty. We need to keep trying to lighten up.

As explained in a previous webpage, prayer is like riding a bicycle. Go far enough and you will inevitably encounter discouragingly hard uphill stretches but if you keep going you are sure to enjoy the exhilaration of zooming down the other side, even though there are more hills ahead. Overall, prayer is a joy. Don’t beat yourself just because uphill stretches are hard, but know that as you keep going, exhilarating times are ahead.

When learning to play a sport, your enjoyment of the game would be ruined if you found yourself continually frustrated over not yet being at professional level. Not only would it spoil the experience, you are likely to get so discouraged that you eventually give up and never reach your potential. So try not to stress over your efforts to think more often of your Lord. Rather than give yourself blue ankles kicking yourself over times you forget, aim to be thankful to God whenever you have the tiniest success in remembering.

Be alert to any way you could be turning it into more of an ordeal than it need be. Add more thanks, more smiles, more joy, more peace, more fun, more love to your prayers.

In the long term, it is draining to keep even positive emotions continually at fever pitch. Rather than feel obliged to keep, as it were, the name of God displayed in blazing lights to the sound of a blaring hundred piece orchestra, it might be more realistic to ease up and aim to have God, in the words of the old love song, “ever gentle on my mind.”

The Sacred Versus the Mundane

Involving God in your workaday life is important because he is the God of your life, not just the God of your spare time; the God of your years, not just of your weekends. Bringing God into the mundane can make the mundane sacred. What alarms me, however, is that attempting this might have the unwanted effect of making the sacred – the most awe-inspiring Person in the universe – seem mundane. I don’t want my view of God to slide, or my relationship to grow stale. It would be devastating if I were to allow frequent, superficial contact with my Lord to cause the romance and excitement to ebb from the relationship.

Suppose you worked in the same building as your marriage partner. The practical realities of work pressures mean that all you can usually do during working hours is occasionally pass each other in the corridor and exchange a one second acknowledgement. Unless this were later supplemented by special times of intimacy, your partner would increasingly seem to be just one of the crowd.

For me, times of special spiritual intimacy are usually associated with worship. By that I mean not merely thinking or singing about God, but singing love songs to him.

In the above analogy, what would reverse the possibility of superficial encounters detracting from your marriage is if every time you catch a glimpse of your beloved, you think, “Isn’t he/she breathtaking! What matchless times we’ve had together! I can hardly wait for our next time of exquisite intimacy!” That would stoke the fire.

So try the spiritual equivalent in your busy times. Recall special moments you have had with God and cultivate a yearning for times of giving your Lord your undivided attention.

My Attempt to Avoid Ending Up in the Nuthouse

One of my difficulties is that I’m not particularly talkative and yet silences when I’m with someone make me feel cut off from the person and also make the person seem less interesting to me. So when I draw near to God, silences disturb me. I fear the lack of simulating conversation might tempt me to find Almighty God, the most thrilling of persons, boring.

I like having talkative friends who can compensate for my lack of talkativeness and fill up the silence. When it comes to my relationship with God, that hits a raw nerve. Why does God seem so silent? Does it mean he loves me less than people to whom the Lord always seems to be talking? Does it mean there is something wrong with me?

Biblically, I know that God seeming silent does not mean he loves me any less, but knowledge of that fact does not stop me from feeling uncomfortable and wanting to avoid silences.

Sometimes, God seems silent simply because I miss what he is saying. I repeatedly fall into the trap of expecting God’s voice to be loud and unmistakable; forgetting that the Almighty usually reveals himself in far gentler, easily missed ways. I explain this in a link about hearing God’s voice, listed at the end of this webpage.

I might know at least some of the theory, but silence still tends to make me feel insecure in my walk with God and so I find myself trying to avoid it. But isn’t when everything else is silent the best situation in which to hear?

In the silences I make in the midst of the turmoil of life I have appointments with God. From these silences I come forth with spirit refreshed, and with a renewed sense of power. I hear a Voice in the silences, and become increasingly aware that it is the Voice of God. O how comfortable is a little glimpse of God.
              – David Brainerd (1718-1747), famous as an intercessor

If practice makes perfect, how can I learn if I keep running from practice sessions?

A serious problem of mine – and almost everyone in our society suffers from it to some extent – is that I tend to push God out by cramming my mind with too much activity. We have become so addicted to entertainment and mind stimulation that to be still before God is rare indeed. We seem, like no other society in human history, to shrink from silence or being alone with our thoughts. Not only is our era unique in having canned music, radio, television, the internet, and video games, but even crosswords, magazines, newspapers and ready access to affordable books are, historically speaking, relatively new on the scene.

It is said that couples reach a special place in their growing intimacy where they can be comfortable with silence when they are together. For them, there is no such thing as an embarrassing silence and a desperate need to kill silence with chatter, but there is a warm contentment just knowing that one’s loved one is close. That’s something I need to cultivate, without using it as an excuse for being less talkative with God than I should be.

Someone once advised me to stop to smell the roses. My subconscious has a philosophy of life that goes like this: “There’s a whole world to save and I’m just one person. So if I don’t do my utmost to meet this catastrophic need, it won’t be through lack of frantic activity (translation: running around like a headless chicken) on my part.”

By the way, the heading about avoiding ending up in the nuthouse was just my attempt at humor. Of course I’ll end up in the nuthouse! Why should it only be others who get a nice enforced rest? I don’t care what you say, I’ve worked jolly hard for a breakdown.

Stop to smell the roses? Sure! I can just see me standing before God on Judgment Day saying, “Well, I mightn’t have helped many people, but I found some nice roses.” I’d be devastated to discover I could have done more to please the One I love. From this side of eternity – I can’t speak with authority about how I’d feel the other side – it seems to me that discovering I had failed to delight God as much as I could have would devastate me more than any loss of heavenly rewards.

So my typical response is feverish activity, rather than spending even a second to notice something nice the Lord has caused to cross my path and to let my heart warm with thankfulness to him for his loving gift. Maybe if I can make enjoying God’s gifts more of a habit, doing it not for myself – which proves no motivation to me – but for the Lord, I’ll come up smelling like roses.

My nephew, Leigh, who is less than half my age and in so many ways superior to me, including at practicing God’s presence, read the above and commented:

I cringe at the thought of being so busy trying to delight God, that I fail to give him his greatest delight, which is me delighting in him.

Talking to Myself Versus Talking to God

One day, when listening to talkback radio, I was astounded to learn that some people actually address themselves by name when talking to themselves. Now that I’ve adjusted to the idea it sounds quite normal but because I never do that, it initially seemed bizarre. Another caller on the talkback show, a retired footballer, said that when playing he would speak to himself as if he were a radio commentator in the grandstand describing the footballer’s actions. Many preachers often think by imagining themselves preaching what they are thinking about. I think it would be fascinating to know the full variety of different ways that people think.

My most common way of thinking is by imagining I am talking to someone. My choice of person who I imagine myself talking to varies considerably. I frequently find the process quite annoying. I’m usually boring myself, repeating over and over in my mind something that is in no way new to me. But I find it exceedingly hard to stop. A man, when asked what he does in his spare time, said that sometimes he sits and thinks and sometimes he just sits. I don’t have that option. While I am conscious I have to think of something.

What particularly frustrates me is that, in theory, it should be so easy to make God the person I imagine myself talking to. That way it would not be low value imagination but a real life conversation because, of course, God can actually hear my thoughts. Then the thoughts that I can’t stop anyhow and largely seem of little value – often a total waste – would at the very least be reminding me of God’s presence and drawing me closer to him and often would be valuable prayer. What a simple way to multiply – in fact revolutionize – my prayer life. My entire walk with God would soar to inconceivable heights.

Well, it’s a superb theory. I can’t believe how hard I find it to put into practice. Surely it should be one of the simplest things in the world to substitute God for some human I’m imagining myself speaking to!

One of the problems I’ve discovered is that in my imagination I’m talking to someone who is not familiar with what I’m saying. It therefore makes sense that I’d be talking to the person about the matter. God, however, knows me inside out. It seems less meaningful to tell him something he already knows.

Another issue is that when I’m puzzling over something by imagining I’m discussing it with someone, I’m not surprised that the person in my imagination is no smarter than me. After all, my own mind is producing both sides of the conversation. God, on the other hand, knows the answer. I find it hard to avoid feeling at least a tiny bit hurt if he does not immediately tell me the answer. It makes me feel he is not too interested in talking to me. No matter how irrational that feeling might be, I cannot seem to avoid feeling at least a little rejected by God in such circumstances. Since the Lord is the most important person in my life, this feeling is something I want to avoid like the plague, and so I long to avoid putting myself in that situation.

I’d be a lot wiser today if I had asked God much more because I’m sure he would sometimes give me answers – if not right at that moment, then later. But I keep wanting to protect myself from the possibility of hurt.

A further problem – and one that I understand even less – is that substituting God for an imaginary conversation with a friend somehow makes the thinking harder work. For some perplexing reason it becomes more taxing. For example, when I’m lying in bed, the extra effort seems to keep me awake when I need to sleep.

Discouragement is my fiercest enemy. It tempts me to give up. I concluded that my best tactic in fighting discouragement is to congratulate myself every time I manage to direct my thoughts to God, rather than beat myself every time I forget. Congratulating myself rather than beating myself seems easy and yet I even find that hard to do consistently. So now it’s time to beat myself for beating myself.

Part of the problem is that directing thoughts heavenward seems so simple as to be no achievement, and not doing it seems so foolish as to warrant beating myself. Perhaps if things seemed harder, I would not get so annoyed with myself. I suspect that a further complication is that I so much fear pride that a part of me will not dare let me praise myself.

I went for a walk with the Lord – quite a rare event for workaholic me. It was a beautiful summer’s, evening with my consciousness of the Lord making everything I saw so much more beautiful. I was chatting to the Lord as I strolled and at one point I thanked him that at least this time I had focused on him for most of the walk. Then it hit me. Of course! Congratulating myself is the way of the world. No wonder it wasn’t working. “he who boasts, let him boast in the Lord” (2 Corinthians 10:17). Instead of trying to pat myself on the back – something I’m pathetic at anyhow – I should be thanking and praising God when I make a little progress. Rejoicing in God will lift my spirits and encourage me and it’s something that should come more naturally to a Christian and is spiritually healthier than self-praise.

Of course, praising God whenever I make the tiniest progress is yet another thing that is more easily recognized as a good idea than concreted into my life as a habit but I decided to seek God’s assistance in converting it into a habit.

Then my heart warmed because my struggle reminded me of what the Lord had shown me many years ago about how to write in a way that most glorified him. I had discovered that God wanted me not as a dictating machine but as his lover. His longing was that in union with him – my hard work and his divine revelation and assistance – I could birth a unique creation that bore, as it were, both his genes and mine. As much as I had wanted my writing to be all of him and none of me, he was not interested. The result would be much more exquisite if he did it all himself but his unfathomable love compels him to want me to want me to play a significant role and to share in the reward.

Something similar is happening in my attempts to practice his presence. If he did it all, it would be instantaneous and perfect but because he cherishes my contribution he wants me to a play a significant role in this. He is being robbed of fellowship with me while I’m stumbling around trying to get this right. That pains him, but he wants you and me as his valued son/daughter, not as a robot.

At times I’m on the knife edge of feeling at least a little rejected because of God not doing more to make it easy, when I should actually feel deeply loved because of God wanting my contribution. That’s amazing! It turns out that what makes me feel unloved is the very thing that should make me feel more loved that ever!

Wrap Up

Such are my time pressures that this webpage has been published prematurely. I haven’t as yet had a chance to polish it, much less find more answers but rather than keep from you the few hints I’ve so far found I’d prefer to share them with you.

I’ve come to the end of this webpage – for the moment at least – and I’m still looking for answers. Whether my agenda is jammed-packed or I’m alone, cut off from distractions, I still struggle with continually communing with God. I’ve bared my heart because I don’t want you to feel inferior or discouraged if you struggle, too. I pray, however, that my practical suggestions provide a helping hand and that you will be inspired to keep pressing on in your quest to draw full value from our Lord’s continual presence.