Lesson 183: “I call upon God’s Name and in my own.”

We want to have a relationship with God where it feels good to call upon God all day long.

The Course gives us the instruction about how to get truly intimate with God.

We must appreciate that God gives us moment to moment guidance about how to do every aspect of our lives.  We ideally have God as our best friend because we actively choose to connect with God more than any other person or idea in our lives.

We want our going to God for guidance to be our automatic get go. 

We want to be so in love with God that we can’t wait to start the day because we get to spend every moment with God.  We want to get so close and comfortable with God because we regularly or at best always know that we are an open book to God.

God knows everything and therefore God knows us through and through. 

The ego is a master at denying things and hiding things but God always sees through the ego’s hiding places.  It is all false.  Anything that is not of God is unreal and meaningless.     God always knows the truth about whatever we think the ego is adept at hiding.

Nothing gets passed God- nothing. 

And that turns out to be the best news ever.  

It turns out God sees all of us- all of our flaws and defects- and God still totally loves us and has not even a single negative thought about us.  God doesn’t judge or degrade us.  God has no need to create any sort of drama.

God sees these things and points them out when it is helpful for us to do something proactive with them instead of ignoring them.

But, in the process God has no other agenda about scolding us beyond simply pointing out the errors so they can be corrected. 

That means God is on our side always.  God sees all of the challenge we think is true about us and God doesn’t even flinch.

God sits, and totally wraps His energetic arms us and welcomes us home when we forget.  God Love us that much.  There is nothing to do but enjoy how great it is to feel loved by God.  This is why it makes perfect sense for us to look forward to getting together with God in our minds and on the planet all day long.  It is to come home to the most wonderful feeling ever- the perfect Love of God that is beyond description.   That means we can be happy and grateful that we get to spend our day with God.

As a kid I had reluctance to pray I think because I always thought God would not want to Love me in my human state.

I didn’t realize that praying is nothing but a party.

We get to hang out with our best friend who is always doing exactly what we want our best friend to do, love us in the most complete way possible and play our favorite games. 

There is never a moment when it isn’t such a happy treat to get to spend time with God.  Our job is to let go any past association we had with God where we interpreted God as someone who is mean or unfriendly.

It never feels good when we let God be a chore because someone said we are supposed to pray. 

We have the totally wrong way of perceiving God if we are not utterly happy to meet God.

We can use God’s name as a mantra if that works for us.  We want to get so sweet on God that we can’t help but think about God each moment.  This incredible desire to meet with God in our minds happens the more we get used to enjoying being honest with God and ourselves.  When we feel like we have nothing to hide from God, this is one way to get comfortable being honest with ourselves and others.

This honesty is the intimacy that feels good when we are comfortable being authentic in who we are. 

We want to just give this space to bloom within us.  This has the power of giving us the amazing experience of being known by God and enjoying it.  It also gives us comfort being in conversation with God all day long.