How Do You Draw Near to God?

My husband recently received a book from our pastor titled Sacred Pathways: Discover Your Soul's Path to God, by Gary Thomas. I haven't read this book past the table of contents, but it has already piqued my interest. Basically, Thomas asserts that there are nine "pathways" that Christians can choose to draw near to God. These pathways include:

Naturalist- through nature
Sensate- through the senses
Traditionalist- through traditions
Ascetics- through solitude/simplicity
Activists- through fighting for social change
Caregiver- through caring for/serving others
Enthusiast- through celebration/mystery
Contemplative- through personal adoration/heartfelt devotion
Intellectual- through mind/academic/scholarly pursuit

I took an online quiz that determined my most effective "pathways" are Contemplative and Intellectual. While these quizzes are fun and interesting, I wanted to explore these "pathways" further in the next few posts. I'll explore each path from a Biblical and personal point of view. I know that I've felt God's presence in each of these categories.

As I said, I have not read the book, I was just interested in exploring these pathways for myself before reading the book in its entirety and being influenced by the book's perception of these ideas (I will give full credit to Gary Thomas at the end of each post, as these "pathways" are  his innovation). It is interesting to me to consider the fact that people feel God's presence in different ways. Often people will feel frustrated and exasperated when they don't seem to fit the Christian "mold"... when they just don't "feel" God in the way others do. What happens if someone doesn't feel great when singing worship songs? Does that make them a "bad" Christian? No, of course not! It just means that song and community worship may not be the way they best experience God's presence.

Over the next few weeks I'll be exploring each of these pathways for myself and reflecting on them here on TDS. I hope you'll experiment with these pathways yourself to see what your best "fit" is. Who knows? Maybe we've been Stumbling all this time because we hadn't discovered our best way to commune with our Heavenly Father!




*You can buy the book here