First things first...

My husband Tim has been posting to a blog for quite a while now and he has been encouraging me to start one of my own. I have resisted for a number of reasons - mostly just the time and dedication it takes to keep posting to it - but when his counter hit over 4,000 this week I decided that it was an great opportunity to share important things that God is teaching me. It was too great an opportunity to miss.

So hopefully this will be the first of many blogs to come. We're actually both sitting on our porch in the dark with our laptops posting to our individual blogs at the same time. Technology is amazing. Just the other night we sat in our den, not 6 feet from each other, and communicated by sending emails to each other! Doing so gave us both documentation of details concerning upcoming appointments, etc. It automatically posted dates to remember on both our calendars. And it gave me an opportunity to remind him of some "to do" items in a way that he can't come back later and say that he didn't know about them!!! Yep, technology is amazing!!! It has changed the way we communicate and if there is anything I love, it is "communicating"....

I love communicating with God. But it is so amazing to me that God enjoys communicating with me! I can pour out my heart to God with full assurance that He is listening and that He cares. But true communication always involves two actions. I speak, but I also listen.

The Bible describes for us the perfect picture of the connection we have with Christ and it is a perfect duplication of Christ’s connection with God. Both connections are two-way. God is in Christ and Christ is in God. We are in Christ and Christ is in us.

Now following that thinking, you have to agree that if all of God is in Christ and all of Christ is in me, then all of God must also be in me. And if I am in Christ and Christ is in God, then I am in God

Because of this connection, I can hear the very voice of God speaking directly to me through His heart to my Spirit. I hear Him in the sounds of nature. I hear Him in the words to a song or even through the chords of a beautiful melody. I hear Him in a sermon as He takes the words I’m hearing with my ears and applies them to particular areas of my life. I hear Him through reading His Word as He shows me the meaning a particular passage of Scripture has in the situations of my life. He speaks words of warning, comfort, and love just when I need to hear them. True communication with God means that you are so in tune with Him that you can hear His faintest whisper.

But the sweetness of my fellowship with God is not found in mere communication with Him. It’s found in “communion” with Him. Communion is more than just communicating. In fact, it’s actually communicating without uttering a word. It’s union. The definition of communion is “to be one with.”

“But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.”
I Corinthians 6:17 (NKJV).

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This divine union has been the desire of God’s heart for you, even before the foundation of the world. Everything that happens in a Christian’s life is for the purpose of leading them to an awareness of this communion with God. God wants you to realize that you are one with Him. This action of communing is what God calls “abiding” in John 15 and abiding is the key to abundance in the Christians’ life.

The summer that I Tim and I got married, he lived with his parents in North Alabama and I lived with my parents near Birmingham. Since those days were before cellphones and email so we had to wait till the "rates dropped" after 9:00 p.m. to talk on the phone. He would call me every night and it would only take about 10 minutes to discuss everything about our days. But we just couldn’t hang up the phone. As long as the phone line stayed open we were “together”, even though many miles separated us. We would sit for long spans of time without saying a word. But the connection was open. We weren't just communicating. We were “communing.” We were “abiding.” If at any moment, I wanted to say something I could do so, knowing that he would hear me, and the same was true for him. There was a constant awareness of his presence on the other end of the line.

Communion with God is sort of like I’m on the phone with Him. I may not be saying anything to Him and He may not be saying anything to me, but the line is open. If He speaks, I’ll hear Him and if I speak I know He’ll hear me. There is a constant awareness of His presence and a constant sense of my dependence on Him.

Now, let’s take this illustration a step further. If for some reason I don’t stay in touch with Him on a moment-by-moment basis, then it’s like I hung up the phone on my end. My end of the line may stay hung up for months, but eventually I will become miserable and realize that I am missing the intimacy I once shared with God. God will remind me that there is only one thing that will satisfy me. So I return to partake of Him again. That’s when I pick up my end of the line and when I do, I find out He’s been holding on all that time, just waiting for me to return. God never stops communing with me, even when I don’t live out of the reality of my oneness with Him.

Yes, technology is amazing. But it is so wonderful to know that no technology is required to communicate with God. My "union" with Him makes a way for me to communicate with sending an email, dialing a number, or even saying a word. I can "commune" with Him; "abide" in Him and know that He abides in me.

Now that is truly amazing.