Forming Right Relationship with God: You have choices!

This verse highlights the idea that as followers of Jesus, believers are distinct from the world and its values, and this distinction can lead to opposition or from the world. We're never going to succeed at "fitting in" if we're in right alignment with Him.  Jesus emphasizes that He has chosen His followers out of the world, setting them apart for a different purpose.

You and I are here to fulfill God’s promises to us, to reach toward a higher calling and to manifest the spiritual gifts we were blessed with and ordained to reach out to one another with when we received Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. That’s it.

So, trying to adhere to this as a new Christian (or even as one who’s been around for a while, like me) is going to be difficult for a reason. That Instagram or TikTok feed you religiously adhere to scrolling through every morning isn’t the spiritual food you need. It’s a dopamine hit, pure and simple. I’m relieved to finally be reading this theory in recent magazines and other literature that has hit the secular store shelves as of late. It’s always been true, hence “technology addiction” and the like.

But trying to forgo the dopamine hit your brain is craving AND end up on the same page with God every morning? It’s got to be deliberate or it won’t happen.

I succumbed to the endless scroll one winter as I was waiting to hear about a new place I wanted to move to. I’d sit and studiously observe the performance art on the endless scrolling app of the day every time I'd wonder when I was going to hear good news, and wonder what made the same videos pop up again and again. So I uninstalled the app, partly out of annoyance and partly out of curiosity and opened up my feed again. It was the same exact first five videos I’d seen the first time. The algorithm isn’t a joke, it’s a literal formula social media companies use to get you hooked for the first time and also to get you to open up the app of your choice day after day.

A formula. I started thinking about this. What is the formula to get me more engaged with others or to seek out company rather than scroll alone? What is it about the endless stream of performers that I have no intimate knowledge of but I find myself wanting to be like when I don’t even know if they pay their bills on time or feed their kids anything but convenience food? Why do I want to emulate someone that—in the long run—I really don’t want to be?

It made me take a look at my current values and the values I actually yearned to have. And when I saw the gaping chasm between the two, I realized that it was filled with all sorts of non-sensical habits. The endless scrolling was up there, but so was gossip, talking like an expert about things over which I had no domain, and going shopping randomly either online or in person.

Yikes. At the time I was also attending some group support events and not liking the people around me either. In  short, I was in a rut. I didn’t like many of the habits I had and yearned for something to fill my time and soothe my spirit in short order and what I was doing wasn’t cutting it.

God. In short, I was missing a fruitful and engaged relationship with Him. While I was exercising regularly, I usually was “plugged in” to some device to distract me from the fact that I was sweating. So I unplugged. Intentionally. Then I started noticing things in my environment that my music/podcast or other entertainment was drowning out: nature.

I once played peekaboo with a dragonfly. If that doesn’t sound nutty enough, just wait. I realized in the span of time it took me to notice the animals and plants around me, that the Earth is actually alive with it’s own sound of music. The orchestra contained in a small flock of birds astounds me. And from then on, I’ve made it a point to try to engage. But it takes practice. Normally, if I’m checked out and on a walk, I’ll notice a monarch doing a very close fly-by near me and I’ll look up and wink at God. He gets it.

But instead of stopping here as a “good enough” place to be, I went deeper. Mind you, this took several years. It doesn’t happen overnight. But when I involved God in my prayers about having more mindful moments throughout the day, becoming and having better friends, and being a better person in general, I know He heard me. I felt the gentle (but firm) nudge to read my Bible.

One of my favorite books (and it’s free) is the Our Daily Bread. You can ask them to send these little books to you quarterly. I started with just the daily reading, but they have a set of Bible verses that serve as references for each day’s reading and it opened up my eyes to what I’d been hearing in church all those years. The Bible is literally a blueprint for life. Anything I need to know I can look up what Jesus had to say about it or reach for God’s guidance in the morning.

And if you’re anything like me, it’ll take more than one angle to arrive at the peace you’re seeking. I don’t know about you, but I have a human’s helping of issues in life. I can’t get through a day peacefully without having some sort of nudge from God about what I’m supposed to focus on for that day. So I whip out my Our Daily Bread, read the reading, look up the associated Bible reference, read the notes at the bottom of the page, and then start talking to God.

Prayer is literally that: talking to God. So I tell Him what I think about what I just read and tack on a “but correct me if I’m wrong and thank you” before I go about my other business for the day. And it works. Every time. I used to try to “hear” God’s voice but the longer I study His word and stay true to what His will is for my life, the more I realize His leading is more of an internal spiritual nudge than a whisper. And I follow it more often. And I like the results.

God never promises absence from pain or consequences. But He will always guide us through to the other side. And I for one, am eternally grateful for that. How about you?