This is a letter in response to someone who wanted to know how to achieve intimacy with God, which is the foundation and key to finding healing, transformation, peace and fulfillment in life.

Dear friend,

Thank you for your call. I am glad that you enjoy our radio program. Let me see if I can bring together some good advice on the central issue surrounding our brokenness - a lack of intimacy with God. When intimacy with God is achieved, every other problem finds healing naturally.

I once attended a church in Anaheim where I saw people singing love songs directly to God, as if He were really in the room, listening and responding. The concept had never entered my mind. About the same time, I also read a book by Joyce Huggett entitled, The Joy of Listening to God that described very practical ways of communicating with God in one's own private room - as if He were literally there. I had been reading Tozer's The Pursuit of God and already had a stirring within to know God intimately, but now I was getting practical tools to do something with.

One thing that I knew was critically important was that this desire needed to come from a heart of love and desire for the person of God. It could not be merely a tool to get something from Him. Therefore, it needed to be a permanent life change - a commitment to entering into an eternal intimacy and knowledge of the One who created and saved me. J.I Packer's Knowing God had put that desire in me years earlier when I was in seminary. However, there had been a wooing by the Spirit through these and others means for years. It actually became the inevitable next step for my life. I had seen the things of the world as the fools gold that they were and was finally ready for something permanently real, and different - something of God Himself.

As for worship CD's that I would recommend - for starters get the Vineyard Collection (Vol 1-3), the Vineyard Psalms, 20 Years of Hope by the Maranatha Singers, Live Worship with Bob Fitts, Debbie Smith -Only You, or other Vineyard or Hosanna music series. They predominantly use songs written "to" God and (particularly the Vineyard music) attempt to focus the listener on the presence of God rather than the presence of great musicians or arrangements.

Listening prayer also is important. Leanne Payne's book, Listening Prayer is a terrific one for learning this. Sit alone in your room, just to be with God. Go there without the usual laundry list of requests. Go there just to be with Him. Sit there with your Bible at your side ready to respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. On occasion, the Holy Spirit will begin prodding you to pray about certain things. Proceed as the Spirit directs you. Brother Lawrence's Practicing the Presence of God and Madame Guyon's Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ are good guidebooks for this, as is Peter Lord's Hearing God and Henry Blackaby's Experiencing God. And, of course, the Bible (particularly Psalms).

How you pray can be important. Drop the formal, religious stuff and just talk to God as if He were a person right there in the room with you. Tell Him what has been on your mind, how you feel about certain things, what things bring questions and problems to your mind, etc. Let Him be your personal confidant - the one you turn to for counsel and advice, at any moment during your day. The fact that you often don't hear immediate responses from Him should not dissuade you from continuing to communicate your heart to Him. You'll find that He is more likely to answer your question when you least expect it several days or weeks after you have first asked.

Worship also involves taking some time to praise God for who He is, what He is like, what He has done, etc. I usually start out doing this. It is for my benefit really. It helps my faith to grow. It takes away the blame that I sometimes feel against God when things haven't been going as I had asked Him to make them go. It is also a declaration of fact, of truth, and when truth is declared into the heavenlies by our words, spiritual presence and power occurs. He literally does "inhabit the praises of His people" just as the scripture says.

When you make a lifestyle out of communing with God like this, He will begin revealing awesome things about Himself and about His love for you that deepen and enrich your relationship. What at first is a difficult chore changes into a necessary food for your life. Everyone is different. God reveals Himself to me in vision. I am very visually oriented and so God periodically gives me brief glimpses of how He feels, what He thinks, who He is, in visions (brief mental pictures that have a dimension of reality to them that normal mental pictures don't). I remember one time dancing around the room to a really lively song of praise (that's why I do it alone) and suddenly God opened up my spiritual eyes (ref Eph 1:18) and I saw Jesus in heaven dancing up a storm, with a tambourine in His hands and His heels kicked high. He had an incredible smile of great joy on His face and He was looking directly into my eyes. It lasted all of 5 seconds but it healed me of decades of lying self-judgements that I was unlovable because of my past sin. One brief glimpse of God's glory, or picture of how He loves you is literally worth a lifetime of therapy. That is why I believe that the primary focus of healing for broken people is to get them to pursue an intimate relationship with God where they can experience deep within their own souls just how much God loves them.

In summary, my intimate moments with God are spent sitting or sometimes kneeling on the floor of my room, alone and undisturbed, Bible at my side, praise songs on the player. I begin by focusing on God's presence in the room, singing love songs to Him, then sitting in silence to listen to what He may want me to pray about; confession of sins; telling Him what is on my heart; picking up the Bible and reading some of the Word (usually until He begins to speak to me through a passage); and meditation on that word. Some days these sessions are over an hour long, more typically they are 15-30 minutes. I try not to make this a religious performance and so don't make fixed rules about what, when, where and how. I try to flow with what the Spirit seems to want to do.

Your intimacy will deepen the more your focus is set simply on loving Him. Try to be alert about feeling that you have arrived at some ultimate level. There will eternally be deeper and deeper levels of knowledge to discover about our infinite God. When you find yourself losing your desire to seek Him (which seems to happen periodically with everyone), simply pursue a course of asking Him to bring that desire back into your heart. When He speaks to you, respond to what He says. When you refuse to respond, you stop the process. It is a way of saying, "I don't trust you" to God. The underlying assumption must remain - He always and without exception communicates information and revelation to me that is to my ultimate good. When you have sinned, approach Him just as fervently. His grace is there constantly for the repentant heart. The wall of separation that we feel when we sin is of our own creation. It is a wall of doubt that says that surely God's grace will not be there for me now.

I am running on and on here so I'll stop. There are so many things to say but most of them must be discovered by each person with God. Everyone's relationship with God is tailor made according to what God knows will work in each individual's heart.

The side issues - the need to see men and women rightly, the being too hard on yourself, the emotional dependency, will all be dealt with as God deepens your understanding of Himself and leads you into prayer about each need.

I hope this has been helpful to you. God bless you in seeking Him in these things.

Yours for His glory, David Kyle Foster, Director