He leads me …

When we become born again Christians our time with the Lord is probably a structured quiet time at the same time each day. Generally we read a portion of the Bible and/or a daily devotional which we then meditate on. We then pray for our family and the people who we have a burden for, commit ourselves to the Lord for the day, and that is our duty done.

But if we want to develop it, we find that our Christian experience progresses.[1]

There are times when we pray to the Lord during the day, but it is not really a relationship. We may pray for a closer relationship with the Lord, but in time find that it is us who have to draw closer to Him, not the other way around.

We come to notice the Lord’s work in what is happening around us. We find ourselves praising Him for the way He created nature to interrelate so that there is a balance for all life forms to coexist. We may marvel at how He created our body to work even to the point of being able to heal itself.

We then realise that what some people call luck or coincidence is in fact God’s intervention in our lives. Like the time that we phoned someone and the response was, ‘Oh, I was just going to call you.’ Or, we may have taken someone special to a nice restaurant for dinner as a spontaneous idea. The receptionist said, ‘Actually, we have just one table left’ and we found ourselves at a window seat where we could see the sunset and the city lights, making the evening really special.

From this point we find that we are open to the Lord’s promptings and His still small voice. We find that the still small voice comes like a thought, but it stands out from our regular thoughts either in intensity or the way it is worded. It is either a prompt to do something or an answer to a problem. If it is an answer that we are looking for it is often slightly different to how we would think, so that we know that it is from Him and not us having a ‘light bulb’ moment where we think that it is our bright idea.

This is typically how the progression goes in developing a relationship with the Lord, It may not be exactly the same for everyone, because as we see in the Bible, the Lord does not work the same with everyone. It may happen quite quickly or take some time, but it does happen.[2]

All it takes is for us to sincerely seek Him and He will respond in a way that meets our needs and develops our relationship with Him.

[1] Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. Matthew 6:33 (NLT)

[2] So, humble yourselves under God’s strong hand, and in his own good time he will lift you up. You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern. 1 Peter 5:6-7 J.B. (PHILLIPS)