Hi gorgeous!
One of the things I’ve heard many times from Christians of all ages is that although they are very dedicated to God, they don’t sense His love for them. Does that sound familiar to you?
What I often learn when discussing this with them is that they don’t know how to spend quality time with God as a friend. They go to Bible studies, they’re regulars at church and small group, they’ve got an iPhone full of sermon podcasts, but they almost look at me like I’m crazy when I ask when they last ‘hung out’ with God.
Honestly, once you are adept at chatting with the Lord, you can hang out with Him while you’re doing housework, grocery shopping, commuting to work – pretty much any time, anywhere! But when you’re just starting to get to know Him very personally, it can really help to spend some serious time with Him without distraction or multi-tasking.
As you’ll find out in this video, I’m not talking about regular quiet times, but less frequent, more extended and less structured periods of time. In my experience, really rich times with God can thrive on lack of structure. It’s kind of like heading into a first date with no plan but just spending time getting to know the person naturally, rather than with an agenda and a script!
This week’s video finds us on Margaret Island, in the stunning city of Budapest – the ‘Paris of the East’ – between the two banks of the Danube river. This is clearly one of the favorite spots for locals in the city, and it was full of joggers, bikers, families, and picnics, even on a Monday evening!
Places like these are perfect for getting some alone time with God. Go ahead and check out the video below, and then let me know in the comments or on Facebook how you spend time with the Lord, and what you do to make it feel like hanging out with a friend and not just a discipline to check off the list. I’d love to hear your thoughts! 🙂
Love and Freedom to you beautiful,
Jackie
Hi beauties, I’m Jackie Dixon, and you’re watching VLX TV.
I’m in an absolutely beautiful park in the middle of the city of Budapest in Hungary. This park is an island in the middle of the river and it reminds me a lot of Central Park – just this huge expanse of green that I would bet a lot of people use as a respite after work or during lunch or on the weekends and we’ve seen a ton of families and people riding bikes and walking and sitting in the grass. This is exactly the kind of place that’s perfect to learn to receive God’s love.
When it comes to receiving love from God, one of the most important things that I’ve found that really works and helps me feel a lot closer to Him is to at least about once a month, take an evening, an afternoon or a morning and really get away from everything else, preferably in a beautiful natural place and just spend some time with Him.
Now this is a little different from your daily quiet time with the Lord or time in the Word. This is a longer period, maybe two or three hours or a whole four or five – you can even dedicate an entire day if you want to take a mini retreat on a weekend or something, where you really just bask in His presence, slow down from the paces of life, don’t check your technology – just go out in a place and be with Him.
Now there’s a couple tips and tricks for doing this well. First of all, you want to come prepared, right? So I always take my purse, a water bottle, and the Bible, which is how I start, as I’ll explain in a minute, doing this.
The other thing of course is that you want to make sure you’re safe, so don’t wander off late in the evening into a deserted place! I like to head toward parks where I know there are going to be a lot of people, in the middle of the day, a lot of families around; usually I like to stay – you can hear a baby crying behind me – I like to stay somewhere where I can run to find help if I need it. I don’t want to be in a deserted place as a woman alone. So please take that seriously – I don’t want you to get hurt as you’re trying to pursue the Lord. Somebody over there is having some real distress – I think he needs a little quiet time!
So how do you get started? I bring my Bible with me – this is actually my husband’s Bible, I left mine in the hotel room today, shame on me! Mine is a cute little blue – I suggest you pick kind of a small Bible that you actually think is pretty and attractive, you’ll actually want to read it more, I think! And then what I do is I just flip open to any verse. I ask the Holy Spirit to guide me to something that God wants me to hear – something that He might be trying to tell me to comfort me or encourage me – to quiet my soul as that poor little kid over there needs!
And in general, pretty much every time I’ve ever done this, something in the verse that I come to has spoken to me. And I think that’s really just the Holy Spirit, using the Word to speak to your heart and what you need to hear. So open up to whatever verse, and read however much you want – read a couple verses, or read an entire chapter, or even a couple of chapters.
And then I want you to close the Bible, and just sit with God. And talk to Him about it – if you had anything in that passage that kind of bothered you or you didn’t understand, or you feel like, ‘wow, that is exactly what I’m dealing with right now’ – I want you to just discuss that with the Lord. And He doesn’t need any fancy language, He doesn’t need you to be eloquent or prepared, or use, you know, ‘Oh Almighty Father’ – He’s just your friend! So just chat with Him!
And as you’re talking I also want you to take moments of silence, where you just sit in His presence, and maybe you’ll hear His voice, and maybe you won’t – that’s no problem, don’t worry about it! People like Billy Graham and Mother Teresa have talked about the fact that they don’t always feel this immediate vocal connection with God. So don’t worry about that. I want you to just sit in the peace of His presence.
And if you do this regularly you really will find it easier to receive the love of God. Why is that? Because, like hanging out with any friend, when you’re with them more, you get to know them better, you trust them more, they’re more of a familiar face, a familiar voice, and sure enough, soon enough, you’re comfortable enough with them that you feel really that, they do love you!
So I want you to take this seriously. Church of course is important, small groups are important, but long periods of time in stillness with the Lord, studying the Word, is really going to help you receive the love of God.
Thanks so much for watching – I’m so glad you’ve joined me here in this beautiful place today.
If you liked this video, share it with your friends and subscribe. And for now, God bless you!
