Thought long and hard about walking with the Spirit; about being one with Chist.

^{5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will[ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. 8 By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.}

From my birth as a Christian, the Holy Spirit has stayed with me.  But across my life there are times I am close to the Lord and there are times when He feels very far away.

The times when He felt far away, the Spirit had gone no where, but I typically had.  Those were the times when my prayer life grew less and less.  I stopped reading the bible.  I did not do any of this dileberately.  I just slid away.

At other times there would be something I wanted that I knew was wrong.  I convinced my self that God would understand.  Sure he wrote in the bible it was a sin, but it would make me happy and didn’t God want me happy.  I would ease into a life style I knew violated God’s will.  Justifying everything.

It’s not hard to find the times when I walked with the Spirit.  They almost always follow a time of straying.  My world starts falling apart.  Those God would want me happy activities start blowing up in my face and I am broken.  I don’t normally run back to Jesus as fast as I should, but I always run back.  A broken person, I fall on my knees and beg God to heal me spiritually.  I want back next to Him more than anything.

Those times when I can say I have walked with God.  Those days when I have heard the Spirit and know I am walking with Christ are the best periods of my life.  What they have in common are time of bible study, times of listening to sermons on the radio, but mostly, I spend time through the day asking God what I should do on the little things.  I listen for His voice.  I am in tune to His desire for my life and I try to follow his guidance.

These times of joy and closeness have actually occurred in times of quite in my life and in times of great stress.  The closeness comes from my putting Christ first.   My talking to Him through the day about all the issues, about all the problems and about all my choices.

If I am to love with Agape love, then I must be walking with the Spirit so that the Spirit can love through me.  I must not just have a quite time that I spend with Jesus (which I need big time), but I must be talking with God about everything through the day.  I must discuss the people who come into my life and ask for His guidance.  Or when my temper wants to flare, to ask him to calm me and direct me.