Find­ing God in Every­day Life 

There are 4 key ele­ments in find­ing God in our every­day lives.

  • The real­iza­tion, the con­vic­tion, that God is there.  After that, it is all very easy.
  • A belief in the Good News - that Jesus won a vic­to­ry over sin and death by his dying and ris­ing for us.
  • Dying to Self.
  • Care­ful practice.

God is there
Once I real­ly real­ize God is there, and become con­vinced of it, my heart hungers to find God there.  Once my appetite is whet, I desire to find God in a much dif­fer­ent way than I look for my car keys.  What I’m real­ly desir­ing is inti­ma­cy with God.  I want to know I’m not alone in my life.  I want to be con­nect­ed with God.
How is God there?  Or, “who am I con­nect­ing with?”  God made this whole world and gave life to each and every one of us who lives in it.  God made us with pur­pose - that we be hap­py with God for­ev­er.  So, we are not look­ing for or con­nect­ing with a God who is dis­tant or indif­fer­ent.  Our God is pas­sion­ate­ly engaged in draw­ing us to the ful­ness of life we were cre­at­ed for.  We are seek­ing to find a God who loves us and is always seek­ing inti­ma­cy with us.  It is sim­ple.  A sense of absence van­ish­es when I am open to a sense of presence.

Liv­ing in the Good News
I can hard­ly go through a sin­gle day with­out encoun­ter­ing the real­i­ty of sin and death - in me and in the world around me.  One way to cope is to join in our cul­ture’s denial of the real­i­ty of sin and death.  Our faith gives us anoth­er way.  We have come to believe that Jesus is Lord, most espe­cial­ly where sin and death seem to pre­vail. We have come to believe that we can open our eyes and act fear­less­ly in the face of death.  We have come to believe we have noth­ing to fear.  We have come to believe that it is pre­cise­ly in the places where we encounter the great­est dark­ness or bro­ken­ness or con­fu­sion that we will find God.  There we dis­cov­er our Sav­ior.  There we expe­ri­ence the Good News.  It is in those every­day places - where we taste frailty, unre­li­a­bil­i­ty, empti­ness - that we find God’s love is most pow­er­ful­ly present.  Atten­tive faith finds the gift being offered in every human sit­u­a­tion: a love and a peace the world can­not give.

Less Self-absorbed
When I don’t fear death as much, I am less afraid of dying to myself.  It sounds so obvi­ous.  When I’m absorbed with myself - my needs, how much atten­tion I’m get­ting, doing things my way, every­thing in ref­er­ence to me - it is pret­ty dif­fi­cult to find God.  The “space” inside of me is pre-occu­pied.  How­ev­er, as my open­ness to and hunger for a lov­ing pres­ence grows, I am de-self­­ished and freer.  Often my self-pity or self-focus comes out of a fear that I won’t have “enough.”  I fear any “empti­ness” so I “fill” it quick­ly.  How­ev­er, when I ask to be emp­tied, I dis­cov­er an empow­er­ing ful­ness.  When I become more and more focused on how very much is being offered me in the lov­ing pres­ence of Jesus, dis­cov­ered in every part of my day, I dis­cov­er the pow­er of Augustine’s prayer:  “O Lord, Our God, you have cre­at­ed us for your­self and our hearts are rest­less until they rest in you.”

Prac­tice, Prac­tice, Prac­tice
Prac­tice makes the dif­fer­ence.  What did we ever “get good at” that did­n’t involve lots of prac­tice?  Chang­ing my pat­terns, my habits, my rou­tines may be dif­fi­cult, but I know that I am very resilient and quite resource­ful when I real­ly want some­thing.  Choice is the key.  Mak­ing the choice to adopt some new pat­terns  allows it to hap­pen.  God is always choos­ing to be with me, in any way, in any sit­u­a­tion I will be open to.  The choice to get bet­ter at meet­ing God there is all mine.