A Closer Walk With Thee

I am trying to feel closer to God.  I am reading a great book called The Loving Search for God.  He says that when we feel this urge it is actually God that wants to feel closer to us.  He calls us first and we then feel the urge because we are being called.  I can't help wonder if this is what happened to Joseph Smith. 

He felt a call towards God quite strongly but perhaps his call was really God calling him.  God knew he was going to restore the church.  So that burning in his breast that he felt towards the passage in the bible that got him to pray, was the Spirit calling him into prayer so then he could begin his mission in life. 

I have been feeling this desire to feel close to God.  But reading that it is God that wants me first, made me feel kind of excited.  I have been practising, (or trying to) Centering Prayer again.  Its basically Christian meditation. 

You sit eyes closed and you have one word you choose that makes you feel close to God.  My word is Divine.  Then you simply "love God and bask in the love God has for us"  Its not praying for anything, just being in loving union.  I am just starting this, I had done it a bit a few years ago.  I didn't really get that this is what Centering prayer is until I began reading this book.  I thought it was just sitting still and meditating where you are quieting your mind and using the prayer word to create quietness. 

But according to this man who is an expert on Centering prayer (I think he is monk) he says its not just sitting quietly but being in loving union.  I like this.  It feels like being, not doing.  Similar to just being with a loved one, basking in each others love.  Yes it seems very important if we are going to have a relationship with anyone we need to just sometimes 'be' with them and just enjoy the love and feel the union of this love. 

Well obviously doing this with God is even more essential.  He truly is our Father and so I can see him wanting to love us, and wanting us to feel and truly just be in his love and for us to love him back. 

I have so many things on my plate right now, I can at times feel so overwhelmed.  Yet I know again its an opportunity to be quiet, center, be still and just love God and let him love me.  Seek first the Kingdom and all things shall be added.  Yep this is where I am at, and kind of being led.  I tend to be a very racing person.  I think fast, very fast, talk fast, have millions of thoughts crashing through my brain. 

So I think my soul needs to sit, be still and just be in this loving union.  It does quiet down my mind, and truly when we have so many challenges at once, this is when we need love the most.  I realized this recently.  I was trying to cope with and do so many thing on my own. 

Then it was at a child's baptism, where I was asked to speak, I realized as I was preparing my talk how much I was not asking for the comfort of the Spirit, which I needed, and how much I was not putting my burdens on Christ.  But just trying to do it alone and I felt like a little tug boat being bashed about the waves. 

Here is something amazing, as I am writing this I just realized that Ella Fitzgerald is singing A Closer Walk With Thee.  Yes I guess that is what my blog is about, and what I am learning about too.  I think I will change the title of this blog to that song name.  A Closer Walk With Thee. 

I suppose that is the upside of having problems, we then do come closer to God and actually from that we can then feel more guided, more love, stronger in our relationshp to him.  Well I am going to keep practising the Centering Prayer, wish me luck!