Just a few days ago, I sat down with one of the ladies in my Becoming the One group to chat about her new relationship. Karina started coming to the group last year. In her late thirties, she had long ago lost hope about getting married, but God had other plans. Over the last two years, she’s gone through a time of preparation, during which she truly found the love of God and started looking into personal growth and how to take her relationship with Jesus to a deeper level. At the group her story began to change. Her life was already in a process of transformation in that she learned to pray fervently and to wait and trust. In the group she found people she could talk to, who would pray for her about the broken place she found herself in. She also invited many other ladies to the group and revealed to us a passion and revival that were refreshingly new for her. Slowly she started having hope that God could have an amazing man for her as she became the one for him, finding spiritual health and wholeness.

As we sat together, she told me how my story impacted her and helped her ask God for His will in her love life. She’d met a nice gentleman through a good friend of hers but never felt anything romantic for him, so they remained just friends. But he didn’t give up and pursued her until last month, when he decided he’d done enough and had to let go. During this time Karina realized she had to put this man in God’s hands, so she prayed a simple, and very sincere prayer that came from the deepest place in her heart. It was a prayer very similar to what I prayed when I was just starting to date my husband...

Read More

Looking for a deeper level of intimacy in a mate is a normal part of healthy relationship building, but there is an even deeper connection that the human spirit cries out for: We need God’s love. For us to experience a close relationship with our partners, we first need to experience the unconditional love of our heavenly Father.

Practically speaking, how do we build intimacy with God? How do we feel loved by God in a way that draws us to love Him back, understanding that an intimate relationship with Him will help us have true intimacy in marriage? In my pursuit of a more intimate relationship with God, I have learned to be intentional. To get to know someone well, I have to spend time with them and find out more about them. The more I care about them, the more I want to know and the more I want them to know I am interested in their heart and desires. All healthy relationships start, grow, and continue in a similar way, including our relationship with God. The more we get to know Him, the deeper and more intimate our relationship with Him will be. The more questions we ask, the more we seek Him, the more we are interested in Him, the more intimate we become with Him. His heart for us is that we would delight in Him, and to delight in Him, we need to get to know Him. Many people don’t have a good view of God; they believe He is angry, absent, punishing, boring, legalistic, etc. But these negative beliefs will change as we get to know Him for who He truly is. He really is good. I love how Pastor Bill Johnson says, “God is always in a good mood.” That is certainly a healthy way of seeing Him. He is all loving, all merciful, all understanding. He is full of grace and compassion and forgiveness. He is fun and funny...

Read More