How Do YOU Meet with God?

This post was written by Senior Pastor Dave Gadoury

I have been a growing believer in Jesus for 55 years. Over those years, the depth, consistency, and quality of my experiences of meeting with God have varied wildly. As a young Christian, I was pretty much clueless about how to have a meaningful devotional life. As my walk with God became more enlightened and authentic, I was introduced to a whole array of spiritual disciplines. I have experimented with many, been successful with some, and along the way have learned that there isn’t just “one way to do it.”

My times of reading the scriptures have included absorbing the large daily portions required to read the Bible in a year, reading paragraphs a day through Bible books, memorizing short passages, writing outlines of chapters, and composing prayer responses to verses I have read.

More challenging for me and my temperament has been the matter of intercessory prayer. My “restless soul” struggles to stay focused and engaged in prayer. But I stay at it. To help me, I have, at various times, used prayer lists, a box of cards with names, or a daily diary booklet customized with lists for each day of the month. I have often combined intercessory prayer with outdoor walks and sometimes with time on the treadmill.

My attempts to make worship the main focus of communion with God have included praying the Psalms allowed, using a hymnal to sing songs of praise to God, writing words of praise in response to Scriptural insights, and meditating on the attributes of God.

Recently, I had an opportunity to investigate a newly developed tool for creating an ideal pathway for spiritual growth called Monvee (www.monvee.com) As the Monvee people put it, “Monvee exists in order to help people discover what is getting in the way of their spiritual growth and then craft a plan to address it.” It is a pretty sophisticated instrument that assesses your unique personality, your best ways of connecting with God, and some of the obstacles that might hinder real connections with God. With that information, it suggests some ways that might help you take your walk to the next level.

I had some misgivings about marrying spiritual growth with a software app, but I was curious enough to give it a try. (The free trial helped to persuade me!) Among other things, my Monvee “roadmap” suggested some ways I might try to connect with God more consistently. The result has been an interesting and refreshing way to dedicate my computer as an instrument of worship and spiritual growth. Let me tell you about some of the thing I was led to start doing as a result. They won’t work for everybody, and they might not work for me over the long haul. But for now, they are giving me some new and fresh ways to enjoy my times with God at the start of the day.

I have combined what is called the “Scripture Prayer-Worship Pathway” with journaling, using a really cool, free tool called Penzu (www.penzu.com). Penzu lets you create and save private daily journal entries and even sends you an optional daily reminder to do the writing. The Pathway involves responding to scriptures by writing and then reading aloud prayers to God based on the portion read. So my first order of the day is opening my Bible (right now I am reading through Matthew), opening my Penzu journal entry, and then writing prayers in response to God’s word.

Another insight from the Monvee experience was to point out how music helps me to direct my attention and affections toward God. So, using my collection of downloaded files, I select an appropriate song to use, and also locate the lyrics (using a nifty search tool called Apostle and display those on the screen. So rather than just “listening to Christian music,” I paste the lyrics into my journal entry, and then sing praise to God along with the CD, and pause from time to time to meditate on the words and add personal words of praise to the musical worship. (I guess it is sort of like planning a worship service for a congregation of one and then making that my offering to the Lord.)

Wanting to include intercession for others in my devotional time, I was able to find a creative way to use an Excel spreadsheet as an aid to prayer. As a pastor, I believe I have both the responsibility and privilege of praying regularly for the members of our congregation. I know that doing that every day for over 450 people is not a realistic goal for me. But what I can do is pray for some of them each day.

Using Excel, I was able to create a 30-page document that has 16 cells on each page. These are lists of members, relatives, colleagues, and missionaries. I can display one page each day, and curser down through the cells to highlight the person I am praying for.

Those are some of the steps I am taking on my current pathway into His presence. What road are YOU taking?