Cultivating Closeness to God

Would you like to feel closer to your heavenly Father?  Becoming more conscious of God is an inexhaustible, eternally unfolding action.  But three concrete steps are illustrated for us in the life of our Master, Christ Jesus.

First, voluntary, fervent aloneness with God, divine Spirit. A keener awareness of His ever-presence has to be patiently cultivated, even as effort has to be expended to deepen a human relationship.  Only in woleheartedly reaching out to divine Mind can we hear what God is revealing about His infinitely loving and powerful nature.  From this we gain a priceless awareness of our unity with divine Principle, Love.

Once we've complied with the command in Psalms, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalms 46:10", then what?  Again, observing our Master's example and how he was always glorifying his Father, we naturally think of using our solitude to the same holy end. The Scriptures abound with admonitions to give God the glory He is due, and as we advance spiritually, we find that praising Him is something we cannot do enough.

Christian Science shows that the ability to feel God's presence in our daily lives is unseparably interwoven with sanctification of thought.  Reflecting on the way Jesus conducted his life shows that purity was a "given" for him.  We can't afford to linger in the state of thought that acknowledges God but fails to progress in the demonstration of divine power over sin and evil.  Purification is a demand for anyone who would prove man's true spiritual sonship.  As Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart:  for they shall see God."  (Matthew 5:8) Since purity is the natural spiritual state and brithright of you, me, and all God's children, it can progressively predominate in our thoughts and our daily lives.

"In divine Science, the material man is shut out from the presence of God," states Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.  "The five corporeal senses cannot take cognizance of Spirit.  They cannot come into His presence, and must dwell in dreamland, until mortals arrive at the understanding that material life, with all its sin, sickness, and death, is an illusion, against which divine Science is engaged in a warfare of extermination."  (page 543)

Allowing ourselves to be acted on by the five material senses is detrimental to our spiritual well-being.  It is a little like our putting an opaque covering in front of a window through which sunlight has been streaming.  We don't cause the sun to be any less near to us, nor do we stop it from shining.  But we do cut ourselves off temporarily from its invigorating warmth.

The influence of the carnal mind may seem to darken our thought, either through the more obvious channels of sin, sickness, anxiety, limitation, or by means of subtler suggestions such a preoccupation with past good, a surfeit of material possessions, or perhaps a too intense friendship.  Such distractions keep us from praising God, the sole source of all that makes life free, full, and worthwhile.  Nothing can really compete with God; our heavenly Father must be first in our affections.

One marvels at the fruitful relationship Jesus enjoyed with God, which resulted not only in unequaled peace and dominion for himself, but in wonderful "signs following" of physical, mental, and moral regenration for others.  As Nicodemus, "a ruler of the Jews," succinctly put it in a converation with the great Teacher:  "No man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him."  (See Mark 16: 17-20)

Communing with our loving Father, reverently praising Him, living as much as we can in Christly purity, will not only do wonders in our lives; it is the sure way to cultivate closeness to God.