Diana Romero, CEO, Integrated Purpose Management LLC, shares her advice for setting aside daily time in your busy life to meet with God, grow a deeper, more fulfilling relationship with Him, and become a woman after God’s own heart.

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Have you ever laid down at night to go to sleep and just as your mind is settling you think or say to yourself, “I didn’t talk with my family today? I really need to do that.” Hopefully, if you have family in your house this isn’t a thought you have before sleep. Have you, though, gone to bed and as your settling in to sleep and think or say to yourself, “I didn’t talk to God today.”? I have done this. It seems a little silly to think of not talking to people living in our house, but God is in our house. In fact, God, is with us everywhere we go. So, what keeps us from communing with Him? I believe sometimes it is because we think our surroundings have to be just so or what we say to Him has to be just right. God just wants to have relationship with us. He loves us more than any person on the earth can love us. He wants us to share our intimate thoughts and feelings with Him. He wants our heart.

In the Bible there was only one king to whom all the kings after him were compared. One king that God made a covenant with where God promised his descendent would always and forever rule over God’s people. This was David. In I Samuel 13:13-14 (NLT), the prophet Samuel is talking to King Saul, who had just sinned against God by offering a burnt offering which was the duty of a priest. “How foolish!” Samuel exclaimed. “You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you. Had you kept it, the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, but now your kingdom must end, for the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart. The Lord has already appointed him to be the leader of his people because you have not kept the Lord’s command.” 

The man after God’s own heart was David. At this time David was simply a young shepherd keeping his father Jesse’s sheep. David at a young age had already caught God’s eye and heart. We know that David wrote many of the psalms in the Bible. As he would watch over the sheep, he would offer prayer and praise to God. God honored and loved this devotion He experienced from David.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be a woman after God’s own heart. A woman that on a regular basis offers prayer and praise to my heavenly Father. A woman that gets God’s attention and has a true deep relationship with Him. 

So how can we do this?

Setting patterns helps us be consistent in fellowship with God.

Setting patterns simply means to intentionally do something on a regular basis so that it becomes a pattern in our lives. A pattern I have, is each morning I get up and while eating breakfast I have quiet time with God. I break bread with Him each morning. It is very important for me to do this, so I do my best to work my schedule around this pattern. I have the time blocked in my calendar. I will have to purposefully change my calendar to interrupt this time. For me it has become a pattern. Examine your current daily routine and look for a time when you can set a pattern for fellowship with God. Maybe it is during your commute to work. A few years ago, when I commuted to work, I used to say my car was my sanctuary. This was the only real time I had alone all day, so I used that time to commune with God. You can listen to podcasts or you can listen to praise music or you can just have quite and talk to your Lord. Whatever works right for you.

With regular fellowship with God, we begin to establish relationship. We can begin to hear and see when there is something special God is wanting to tell us or show us. 

God often speaks or acts in multiples. As I have studied the Bible, I have noticed this in His Word and then began to see it happening in my life. As I ask Him for revelation, He begins to unveil what the multiple means.

An example of a multiple in the Bible is the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life shows up in the beginning of Genesis and in the last chapter of Revelation. And then in other books like Proverbs. If something is mentioned more than once, it should get our attention. Proverbs 3:18 (NLT), says, “Wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her; happy are those who hold her tightly.” There are some great truths we can learn by studying the Tree of Life. 

So how does this relate to our own lives. First you have to start paying attention to multiples. I have a lot of examples of how God has used this in my life. One recent story is with a word; “shrewd”. I love the word shrewd. I am a mentor for 4word and during the introduction meeting with my new mentee, she mentioned she wanted to better understand being shrewd. I was amazed at this request because you don’t hear that word that often and it really is a favorite word of mine. It is a word I believe often gets misunderstood when related to Christians. I was so excited that she wanted to talk about it. Then during our 10-week mentoring session, on three occasions the word came up during my morning Bible reading. (I’m reading the Bible through as part of a reading plan, so I’m not deciding the passages I’m reading.) Each time I would share the passage with my mentee. It became a fun adventure for us. It helped me show her one way I hear from God, but it also gave us this special connection that only God can do. Another really cool thing is just today, the day I’m writing this blog, she sent me a text telling me in her morning devotional she is reading about the story of Esther and it says that “Esther responds to the King with a shrewd plan…” How cool is that? God is showing us how much He desires communing with us. Communion leads to relationship.

Fellowship is more about quality than quantity.

When you have your communion time with God, try to make it special. It can be just 15 minutes, if that is all you have right now, but truly devote that time to Him. I’ve coached some single mom’s before with young children and finding time in their day is truly a struggle. I know this can be a struggle for women for many reasons. One piece of advice I gave to a single mom was to buy some Christian children’s books, and as she sits down to read a book to her child (maybe right before bed each night – a pattern) to ask the Holy Spirit to speak to her through this book. As mom’s we know we may be reading the same book over and over if it is one of our child’s favorites, but the Holy Spirit can still reveal special messages and meaning from this child’s book if we dedicate the time to God. 

It is better to have a short, focused quality time, than to set aside an hour and for most of that time our mind is wandering off and we are thinking about the list of things we need to get done. With God it is not about performance, it is simply about heart-to-heart time with Him.

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you…

James 4:8 (NKJV)

As we set a pattern of communion, and our relationship with the Lord deepens, we will no longer realize at the end of a day that we didn’t talk to God; instead we will be able to rest knowing our heart drew close to God.

Diana is founder and Chief Executive Officer of Integrated Purpose Management (IPM) LLC, a family owned and operated company. IPM enables you to realize your integrated purpose by providing business management expertise to grow your business, professional coaching to elevate you to your full potential and understanding in communication intelligences to cultivate your professional and personal relationships.

Diana hosts a podcast called The Integrated Life where she encourages her listeners to have a life where they integrate their faith, family and work so they can become whole again. She has a bachelor of science degree in Biology with minor in Chemistry from the University of North Texas and an Executive MBA from Texas A&M, Mays Business School. Diana has over thirty years of experience in the medical device industry with 30 of those years spent at Abbott. She has served in the areas of project/program management, research and development, global quality assurance, regulatory affairs/compliance and executive management.

Diana is a certified Communication IQ^TM consultant for Life Languages International^TM. Diana is a member of the 4word Women Advisory Board and is a servant leader at Elevate Life Church. She is married and has one daughter.

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