277 - Simple Ways to Feel Closer to God
Affiliate links have been used in this post! I do receive a commission when you choose to purchase through these links, and that helps me keep this podcast up and running—I truly appreciate when you choose to use them!
Resources from this episode:
Show Notes:
Today’s episode is all about simple ways to feel closer to God.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.
My heart behind today's episode is just providing a place for me to share some very simple things that I do in my life to help me feel closer to God. I first want to just say there have been times in my walk with the Lord where I have felt very distant from Him. Sometimes, we just have to walk through those seasons where we just feel distant and I feel like I remember a very real time that happened for me was in college. I was struggling with a lot of doubt and a lot of questioning and I did not feel God's presence like I was used to feeling it. It was a new season and it was just really hard. It felt very dark, but I do feel like the Lord took me through that time as this refining period in my life to test my faith and to try me and see how serious I was about following Him.
So if you're there, know that there's no condemnation here. I have been there too. I hope that maybe one thing that I share with you today might help you feel more connected with the Lord. Maybe they won't and that's okay. Just keep going. Like just keep going one foot in front of the other and know that He is for you. Because there's the feeling of being close to God, which is what we long for. We want to feel his presence. We love to feel close to him. But then there's the truth that God is close to us no matter what we feel. So my prayer for you today is that no matter where you are, if you're in a season where you're feeling really close to Him and walking with Him, or if you were in a season of like, I don't feel his presence, I'm doubting, I don't know where I'm at. Keep going and keep asking Him.
Number one, I would just encourage you to ask Him to reveal himself to you and ask Him for more of his presence. I think a key thing to start out with too as you're talking with the Lord and wanting to be close to Him is repentance because scripture is very clear that sin separates us from God. If there is any sin in your life that you're holding on to, maybe it's even a sin that you don't know that it's in your heart or you're acting on it daily or occasionally and maybe that is causing some distance between you and the Lord. Just ask the Lord to reveal it to you and come to Him with this heart of repentance. Scripture tells us that repentance leads to times of refreshing. So start there. Start with repentance and acknowledging sin and then inviting the Lord's presence in to cleanse you and to help you feel close to Him again.
I love this prayer. I actually have my journal like in my hands because I wrote this in my journal this morning. I read this prayer from the book 40 days of Decrease, which has been an amazing devotion that I walked through during Lent, but I didn't finish it. So I'm still finishing the last week of devotionals. But this this prayer this morning stopped me in my tracks. I just want to invite you to pray it with me now, wherever you are, as you humble your heart to a place of repentance.
“Am I caressing anything that you were crucified for? If so, I repent. Forgive me, heal me, send help to me and strengthen my love for you. When I am tempted, may I see your cross, remember your cost and let love find my wandering heart to you."
Again, that's from the book, 40 Days of Decrease. So start with repentance. Once you get your heart kind of in that posture and you're asking the Lord to reveal Himself to you, I would encourage you to try some simple things. Okay, these are things that I do. They are not fancy. They are not glamorous. They are very, very simple. I feel like you could take them and try them in your own life and see how it helps your walk with the Lord.
The first thing I'll share and this very simple is my stop sign walks. I love to just walk to the stop sign and back. It is not far. There's a stop sign that's literally just right in front of my house. So I walk down my driveway, I walk to the stop sign, I walk back, and I think the entire walk takes me about three minutes. It is not long at all. Very, very short. I force myself to leave my phone at home. I don't take anything with me and a lot of times I will just pray out loud on these walks and invite the Lord into my day and say, “God help me today. Help me to focus on you. Show me what I should be doing today. Help me to align the things on my to-do list under your kingdom agenda.” I just give myself to Him and I give my day to Him. I also take this time to pray for my husband in his day and my kids and just ask the Lord for wisdom. There is something about moving your body, being in nature and speaking out loud to God. I feel like that brings that hyper focus and that connectedness, at least for myself and my walk with the Lord, that makes me feel really close to Him. I just lay it all out and it takes me three minutes. It's wonderful.
Another way to feel close to God, which is vital, is immersing myself in scripture. I need the Word of God. We have to align our minds and our hearts with God's Word. And I have a Bible that I love, that I've used. has, you know, placed in the margins to write in and I highlight it. I write in it. I really own my Bible. Not just like own it, but you know what I mean. I'm not afraid to write in it and make it my own. Then I also use the Dwell Bible app, which you guys hear me talk about all the time, because as a nursing mom, as a mom of five, it is so wonderful, such a privilege, such a blessing to be able to put in my headphones and listen to scripture anytime I want. So I use a combination of my Bible and Dwell to get scripture in my mind and heart as often as I can. When I hear about God and His character and who He is, it's the reminders that I need to help me feel close to Him.
Another thing in my life that has been so life-giving to me the past four years, I think. Yeah, about three or four years is my Bible study ladies. I love these ladies with all my heart. They are just such a gift to me. We created just this small group of women from my church. It was hard for us and our little kids to find a more organized church group at our church that we could attend just because of the nature of childcare. It just was hard and I just reached out to them and was like, “Would you guys be interested in starting a very short-term Bible study, like six weeks long, one night a week? We can bring our babies if we're nursing, but we just want to get together, pray for each other and study God's word.” That has turned into a sisterhood that I am just profoundly thankful for.
So my encouragement to you is if you don't have that, if you're listening to this and you're like, I want that, I don't have that. Go first. Be the one to send the text and ask God to help it form in your life and materialize in your life. Ask God for those friends who will build you up. But I just encourage you to reach out to five or six ladies in your church that share the same life stage as you. Maybe it'll start out as like, hey, we're just gathering together, you know, once a month and we're going to get dinner or maybe we can just read the book of James together and then talk about it one night. Or it can be more like a systematic Bible study that you go through. It can look a lot of different ways, but having scripture as the center of it. Man, I feel like we bonded so deeply, so quickly because of that. I'm just so thankful for them and how they truly helped me walk closer with the Lord.
Another thing that I would encourage you to do if you've never done this is journal and not just journal, but write out your prayers in your journal. That's something that I have done probably for over a decade now. It makes me feel so close to God because I feel like there's something about taking pen to paper and writing out a prayer where you feel like you can really get everything off your heart that you need to share with Him and that you feel honest and you feel like He's listening because you're taking that intentional time.
Another encouragement I would have for you is instead of just praying or praying on the go, get on your actual knees and pray. When you get out of bed in the morning, just try this one or two or three days in a row and tell me how it makes you feel. I really mean that. I would love to hear from you. Like if you get out of your bed and you hit your knees and you pray over your day, I think it makes such a difference. It just puts our body in that posture to come before the Lord and say, “God, help me today. I come before you. I give you everything in my life. Take control. Lead me, guide me, and bless our family in Jesus name.” It doesn't have to be long, but just connecting with Him first in that very tangible way, I think is so encouraging.
Last thing I'm going to share is practicing a Sabbath as a family. I've done several podcast episodes about this. If you've missed them, you literally can Google Work and Play with Nancy Ray Sabbath and see what comes up. Will and I did a two part episode on Sabbath and then I did another episode on what our Sabbath looks like, how we do that, like how we practice it. This is something that's actually fairly new for us. I'd say we've been doing it for about two years now, but it has totally changed our family and it's our favorite day of the week. Will and I look forward to it. It's our kids' favorite day of the week. We rest. We play. We feel so filled up by going on hikes in nature, watching movies, napping. Like, we don't do any dishes. We eat off paper plates. We order pizza. It feels so fulfilling and truly that has been something that has connected me with the Lord in a new way. I feel like I have a long time to have quiet time and listen to his voice on Saturday mornings that I have missed for a long time in motherhood. But because everybody knows it's just like our chill morning, the kids are watching cartoons and Will and I are on the porch drinking coffee and just spending time together, listening to the Lord. It has just been so refreshing. I have felt much closer to Him when practicing Sabbath.
Last last thing I'll say is… this actually isn't my notes, but I feel like the Holy Spirit is just reminding me that an important part of walking with the Lord is obedience. Obedience draws us closer to Him and so things that fall under that category of obedience is tithing. If you are not tithing and giving 10% of your increase to your church then I would encourage you start doing that and see if your relationship with the Lord changes. Because when we obey Him, blessing comes and we know the greatest blessing is His presence. That's like the best thing that we could ask for and have.
So practicing the Sabbath and tithing are two things that I feel like God just automatically abundantly blesses His kids when we decide to follow Him in obedience in those things. So I think that's it. I mean, I opened this episode saying like, these are simple things. Maybe they don't feel simple to you. Maybe some of them do. A stop sign walk feels very simple and hittable. It takes three minutes, right? Maybe doing a Sabbath does not feel simple for you and I get that. It took us years to get to that place. But go back and listen to some of the old episodes on Sabbath.
If you want to hear me talk more about Sabbath, I'd love to do that. I would love for you to email me your questions about it. I also, guys, I'm trying something fun and fancy with my podcast and I would love to hear from you, whether it's about Sabbath, walking closely with God, or if it's just an idea for an episode or something you want to share with me. I would love for you to click on the link in the show notes where you can leave me an audio message. I've just set this up. It's brand new. Don't be scared. It's just me on the other end, but you can literally just click on a button and record and send like 30 seconds to a minute of your thoughts. Like Nancy, I'd love to hear you talk about this. Nancy, how do you do this? I'm struggling with this, you know, just for an example. We can't implement a Sabbath because our kids have sports on that day or like, what would you do in this situation? I would just love to hear what you're struggling with when it comes to your relationship with God or your work or your play or any random idea you have for the podcast, I am here to hear your audio messages. I text my friends mostly via that format and it's so fun.
So anyway, I hope this episode has encouraged you that this summer is a great time for you to just get quiet and pursue the Lord and ask for more of His presence because He's so generous with it. It's so good. He loves to reveal Himself to His kids. So be bold. Ask for more of His presence. I hope that maybe one of these things will help you feel closer to God.
Thanks so much for listening to Work and Play with Nancy Ray, episode 277. Everything I've mentioned today can be found in the show notes at nancyray.com/podcast/277 and you can find me at nancyray.com or follow me at @nancyray on Instagram.
I think I'm going to bring back the Cornerstore. Guys, it's been a long time, but I thought, you know what? It's really fun for me to share some things that I'm loving and I have an Amazon storefront. I don't talk about it nearly as much as I probably should. It's got all my favorite things in there, but at the end of an episode when I share about my Cornerstore, I'm just going to share a book that I would recommend and something I'm loving in my life and you can click on nancyray.com/cornerstore to see my recommendations. It will take you directly to my Amazon affiliate page. You will pay the exact same thing that you would pay for it in any other link, but I would get a small commission and that helps keep this podcast going.
So today I'm going to be adding the book, The Practice of the Presence of God. If you are feeling far from God, I highly recommend this book. It's tiny. It is so small. You can read it in a day. But it's one of my favorite books about walking with the Lord.
And I'm going to add my favorite highlighters. They're called mildliners. That's kind of a tongue twister. I love using them in my planner during the week. I love using them in my Bible. They have the most beautiful colors and they're so easy to use.
Okay, lots of fun things in this episode. New way to leave me an audio message if you want. You can do it any time. The Cornerstore is back and I hope it was just encouraging to you.
I'm going close with words from Brother Lawrence who said,
“Let us occupy ourselves entirely in knowing God. The more we know Him, the more we will desire to know Him. As love increases with knowledge, the more we know God, the more we will truly love Him. We will learn to love Him equally in times of distress or in times of great joy.”
That's from the book, The Practice of the Presence of God.
Thanks so much for listening and I'll catch you next time.
