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Transcript:
Hello, welcome to Walking in Step with God. I am Steve McDonald. Today we explore the topic “Open Your Heart to God” as the next installment of our new series “God’s Invitation to You”. In this series, we are exploring the ways that God invites us to include Him in our lives. We learn of all of the ways that God seeks to share His love with his children. In today’s message, I want to dive into tangible ways to truly accept God into your life.
What does acceptance mean? Well, today we will cover several concepts and strategies to transform how we live our lives and, in a way, move away from strategies that depend on the ways of the world. We will learn how to move away from how the world does things and learn how God does things. Let’s discover how we can truly embrace God being a fundamental part of our day-to-day living and not just as an afterthought.
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Welcome back. Let’s continue in our discussion of ways to open our hearts to our heavenly Father.
Pray
I’d like to start off with a vital part of any relationship, communication. Communication is key with all of your relationships, both personal and professional. It is no different with God. When we don’t communicate with God, we are isolating ourselves from the One who loves us the most.
Prayer is how we share our concerns, our requests, our thanks, and even our praise with God. Prayer is the act of setting our mind and heart on God and speaking to Him. We can speak to Him in our mind. We can speak to Him out loud. We can speak to Him in writing. We can rest assured that God is aware of every single word that we share with Him.
I encourage you to consider prayer as a 24/7 lifeline to God. He is ready to hear you in any situation or circumstance. When we can embrace the fact that we are always connected to God, especially through prayer, we can posture ourselves to be truly open within Him in every area of our lives at every moment in our day.
Surrender
The next method I would like to discuss today to open our hearts to God is the idea of surrender. If you are new to the idea of faith, this can be one of the more difficult steps of being closer to God, as it requires us to move away from the idea of trusting no one but ourselves.
From an early age, we have all been taught to take care of ourselves. We have been told that no-one is looking out for us except us. That we need to learn to pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps. None of these suggestions are untrue, but when we decide to have a relationship with God, there also needs to be a shift in the mentality that we cannot depend on anyone except ourselves.
God desires to be our guide, our counselor, our protector, and so much more. In order to truly realize God’s influence in our lives, we must surrender our lives to Him. When we surrender, God is not expecting us to give up our desires, goals, and dreams. It means that we seek our desires, goals, and dreams, but prioritize God’s will. When there are challenges in our life, God does not expect us to ignore the reality of the situation. Instead, God invites us to turn to Him for guidance on how to navigate through the challenge.
For most of us, this is a hard thing to do. We must consider that God has planted special gifts in each of us. Therefore, only He knows the best possible plans that will use these gifts. Only God knows every single aspect of a challenging situation. He knows every person involved, every outcome, and the best solution for all involved.
When we learn to surrender, God’s influence, guidance, and direction can have a profound effect on our circumstances. When we surrender, we can witness God’s presence in our lives in awe-inspiring ways.
Obey
So far, we have discussed the idea of prayer and surrender. Now let’s discuss what is perhaps the most difficult step. Obedience. Truly opening our heart to God means -accepting- His guidance when we ask. It means following through with the directions He offers. If we ask for His help in challenging circumstances and a path is revealed to us, it means following through on that path.
In our relationship with God, we must learn to place our -trust- in Him, even when we receive signals and signs from Him that may not be aligned with what we had in mind.
When we ask God a question, we must consider His response may be one of ‘Yes’, ‘No’, or ‘Do nothing’. We must learn to deal with the internal friction that may come when one of these answers is not aligned with what our hearts truly desire.
Why should we obey God? Because He created us! He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows infinitely more about any situation or circumstance than we ever can.
I can share from my experience, this was a very difficult concept for me at first, but as time grew on and I saw how God revealed Himself to me and my circumstances, I would eventually learn to place all areas of my life in His hands, trusting Him and expressing my desire to be obedient to His will.
Opening your heart to God means trusting that God’s will is the perfect plan for your life.
Wrap Up
In today’s message, we explored ways to open our hearts to God. We discussed the importance of prayer. Prayer is communication, and communication is essential in any relationship. Prayer allows us to have a direct line with the One who created us and knows us better than we know ourselves. We can go to God in prayer for any reason and any circumstance. We can and should bring our thoughts to Him in prayer, whether it is a concern or a question, or thanks and praise. Prayer is how we stay connected with God, regardless of the circumstances in our lives. We reviewed the importance of surrender. We have all been taught from an early age to pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps and to not depend on anyone else. The truth is that we can depend on God, because He loves us more than anyone does on earth. Yes, we are responsible for our lives and our actions, however, we can surrender our lives to God, knowing that He will walk -with- us through life, side by side and provide us with guidance and assistance as we walk. Surrender does not mean ignoring our obligations or responsibilities, it means depending on God to guide and direct us throughout our lives. Lastly, we discussed the idea of obedience. Obeying God is not always easy, but we must understand that God’s will is perfect. If we ask for God’s guidance and we receive direction and instruction that are not aligned with our desires, we should consider the source of the guidance. God is all knowing and infinitely more perceptive of every nuance of every situation we bring before Him. Therefore, let us place our trust in God, knowing that He knows best.
Opening our hearts to God can be challenging for us because it requires an element of ‘letting go’ in a way that makes us feel vulnerable. The good news is that we can trust our hearts with God because of His unfailing love for us. We can trust that God will always be there for any situation and that He knows best – always. God’s plan may not align with what we thought was best, but we can know in our hearts that His will is perfect. We can rest assured that His love is the purest form of love that our hearts will ever experience. Open your heart to God today.
Are you interested in discovering more about the guidance offered in this message? Learn more in the companion article Going Deeper with the Word: Open Your Heart to God
