there are many ways in which the world will try to lead us away from communion with God the world will offer us all kinds of pleasures and distractions and the world will even try to convince us that we can find peace joy in our hearts without God but once we've we recognize how false these claims are and these offers truly are how empty all of these offers are if we want to enter more deeply into relationship with God we must then look further at how our attitudes and our Behavior prevent us from entering this communion
prevent us from knowing god more deeply for most of us the issue is not how sinful we are we can all look back on our lives and see so much sin but in itself it isn't this sin that is preventing us from entering more deeply into relationship with God it is whether we are willing to move Beyond a superficial faith move beyond the surface of what it is God calls us to and what God is offering us one of the modern pitfalls that human beings have fallen into is to treat prayer as just one more
source of fulfillment our lives are so full of experiences and activities nowadays and people in the west are encouraged to seek fulfillment in these all these different aspects of their lives and prayer if we aren't careful can be treated as one more source of fulfillment amongst many and the the real danger of treating prayer in this way is that at the root of this attitude is the way we are approaching even our desire for God's presence we can if we're not careful desire God's presence in our lives as just one of many an additional source
of meaning and purpose that we add to our lives we are called to cultivate a sense that there can be no life without God there can be no life without God we must recognize him as the core as the the central part of our lives and this is the only way that we can know him if a married couple treat each other as a means to an end then their relationship will never truly grow and flower as as God intends if if a husband or wife treats their spouse just as a means of filling their
their bored hours or help helping them with financial issues or fulfilling their sexual desires and so on treating our spouse as a means to an end will mean they will never enter the true depth of a a marriage and the the same is true of our relationship with God we must avoid treating God as a means to an end try to use God to fulfill our own ends if we have a faith that reduces him just to a means of of comforting ourselves when we're depressed or giving us a bit of strength when life is
difficult then we will have no relationship with God now of course God does bring comfort and support to those who seek Him in faith when times are difficult in terms of sickness and and worldly difficulties family difficulties and all of these things just as a married couple when they truly love each other when when their spouse is struggling and suffering a good husband or wife will support them and this is part of what makes a marriage strong part of what makes a marriage strong but neither a marriage nor our relationship with God should only be
based on this one thing this one aspect and of course a marriage a marriage won't grow unless the husband and wife are willing to sacrifice themselves for the other to offer their whole self and be willing to sacrifice themselves for the other our Lord tells us that a man in marriage must be as Christ to his church be willing to lay down his life for his wife and it is the same in our prayer and in our relationship with God our repentance our struggle everything that we do to be obedient to Christ is our sacrifice
an offering to God there are marriages that even after decades together when the husband or wife hears their spouse's name mentioned by other people their heart will move there will be a certain joy and they will experience something of the love they have even at the very mention of their husband or wife's name and this is what we must seek in terms of our relationship with God that when we hear Christ's name mentioned let our hearts warm when we we sing our prayers when we repeat the words of the Jesus prayer let our hearts truly
yearn for the one that we love now we can only do this of course if our whole lives are directed towards God as our Lord taught us the greatest Commandment that we must love God with all our soul with all our heart and all our strength the things of this world must always remain second everything must be secondary to our love of God our yearning for God and the entire purpose our whole purpose of life must become to seek God to be closer to God the things that we read the things we talk about the
things we think about and Ponder the way we experience reality around us our words our actions let them all be part of our longing and seeking God and to enter into a more deep relationship with God and of course in this way when God becomes the the core the focus of our lives our sin will become repugnant to us because everything that threatens to separate us from God everything that acts as a barrier between us and God will then become bitter to us and conversely of course everything that that we do in our longing for
God as we seek God when we repent when we pray When we struggle when we sacrifice ourselves all these things will become sweet to us and bring us joy it is amazing to think of the the early Christians as they went to martyrdom in the Coliseum there are people of the time who wrote that the crowds were amazed that Christ laid down their lives with joy even with smiles on their faces at times such was the realization that they were doing something that would bring them closer to God even the sacrifice of their very lives
our soul our soul is a mystery to us it is known truly only by God the depths of the Soul our soul is created by God with a longing and this longing is for the communion with God every one of us every human being has within us this Longing To Be With God it is the way we're created and too often we smother this longing with the pleasures and Pursuits of the world we smother it and this creates conflict within us while our mind operates on a very shallow level when our Consciousness is filled with
the things of the world and our own intellect and all of these kinds of things then it will be in conflict with the depths of who we are the depths of the soul and there can be no peace true peace within us so long as this conflict is taking place and while this conflict exists within us we can't be truly human we can't be truly as God created us to be and only when we are truly whole when we are whole beings and our mind is no longer at at war with the longing of our
soul only then as complete human beings will be be able to draw closer and enter more deeply into relationship with God
