Loving God, loving each other.

I love people. Unless I get an automatic bad vibe from you, I expect good things from you. I'm able to disagree with you and still love you. I hope you have good things, good experiences, and only as many bad experiences as absolutely necessary to make you who you're suppose to be. I believe more things are possible for you than you know. And if I can help you achieve those things, I'll do my absolute best.

The problem is, my love for most people is still superficial. Even if I do all those things, it's still superficial. A lot of the people I love, I don't really know. I know one collects roosters, and I just happen to know a few of the others snore, and I know one of them use to paint (art, not houses). But that's not much. It's an ok relationship, built with trust and love. But not a lot of depth.

And that's when I started thinking about my relationship with God. And I realized that a lot of my relationship with God is superficial as well. It's been 5 years, growing in Him, and I would have thought that by now I'd know His nature better. That I'd be able to know what He'd say, before He said it. Maybe not all the time, but more often than I do now.

I'm a personal person, so I wish I knew things like, of all the colors He made, which one He liked best. Or if maybe, we think the forbidden fruit was an apple just because God likes apples best of all the fruit He made. You don't read much about art in the bible, but you read a lot about music, does that means He likes music better than paintings? But, when you read the descriptions of Heaven, it's pretty obvious that He likes visible beauty. In the eternity that He's been around, what's His best memory? Is He especially proud of the time He called fire down for Elijah's water soaked wood, or is He still listening to the eternal echo of Martin Luther King saying "I have a dream"?

I may never know, and when I get to Heaven I may be too busy to ask. But here on earth, I don't want to just serve a God that knows me. I want to know Him too. In some ways I do, but in some ways it seems as though I know hardly anything.

If you spend enough time with someone, you get to know their quirks, their mannerisms, their sense of humor. You know the very things you can say that will make them smile, and the very things that will frustrate them. You also, and this is more important to me in a relationship with God, but you also know what gifts will especially please them. And which gifts only the thought will be appreciated. When I offer God a gift, I want it to be something He particularly wants specifically from me. Not just something I offered.

But the only way I'll do that, ever, is to spend more time with Him. Not just church time, because, and it goes the same for my church family, church time is more of a public time than an intimate time where I can get to know them. If I want to know God, I need to invite Him into my home. I need to spend time just talking with Him, and listening to Him talk.

I cornered my pastor and his wife in his hospital room earlier this week, and spent some of that quiet time that I'm talking about. The fact that they were a captive audience, literally unable to leave, helped tremendously. I spent an hour and a half there, and could have easily stayed hours more. And I look at my own private time with God and don't see that same thing. If I spend an hour and a half with God, it's just not as real as it is with "real" people. And I need it to not be that way.

I need more.
I think by now God's probably getting tired of this constant cadence from my side of the conversation, but... I need more. I just need more. I don't want a shallow or superficial friendship with God. I'm not even satisfied with a somewhat deep relationship. I want what Moses had, doubled. And I'm just not going to be satisfied until I get it.