Have you ever considered when you began to woo the heart of God? What do you think that looks like?

In an interview with YWAMer Tori we explored this question in her own life.

When she was twelve or thirteen, she remembered her youth pastor saying, “To start having relationship with Jesus you need to have conversation with Him because that is how relationships start and grow. Tell him anything and everything about your day.”

Not long after, she watched a movie about a little boy who wrote letters and mailed them to God.

These two events helped her realize a way she could speak to God.

“Dear God,” she began her own letters to God in her journal. Her journal was filled with telling God all about her day.

Over time it shifted from “dear God” to “dear Daddy.” Then she started praying scripture, specifically psalms, over herself. She prayed for God to break her heart for what breaks His, and reveal how to love even a stranger.

“When I was around 14 or 15 I wanted back and forth communication with God. I would say things like, ‘How are you doing?’, ‘Good night’, ‘Good morning’, and ‘I will always love you forever and eternally.’ Then I would wait for a couple seconds and fill in the blanks for Him, contemplating whether He could be good with all the things that were happening in the world. I was not disappointed when I did not hear Him. I knew God could communicate with me.”

He did speak to her. “The first time I heard His voice,” she explained, “He said. ‘I love you. Your mom loves you and I will be with you in college.’” This was a very specific word that she needed in a hard season of life.

She really began to cherish the word of God after a time when she was not feeling the presence of God. When she was in high school, she attended a church event around New Year’s. She was crying and a pastor came over and asked what was wrong. She told him that God’s presence had left her. He replied, “you have to believe the Word of God over your feelings.” He asked her what God’s Word says; she remembered Deuteronomy 31:6, “I will never leave you. I will never desert you.“ It began to change the way she prayed even more because it went from her merely knowing the Truth, to claiming the Truth and really believing it.

As I listened to Tori’s story, I couldn’t help but ask how God had begun to woo her heart.  She responded: “He simply answered my prayers.”

“God answered two of my prayers. I had asked for a minivan with a tv in it to watch movies. Now, I didn’t get one until I was in college, but He gave me one. And I was asking God for siblings. I said I didn’t care whether it was a sister or brother, and He gave me one of each.”

I asked what her prayer life now looks like compared to when she was a child, because I recognized her prayers were how she wooed God’s heart. She explained, “One thing that the Lord has brought me back to recently is praying scripture. There is a beauty in getting the Word in you and memorizing it. And I missed the part of telling Him about my day.”  She would pray this verse over herself:

Psalms 86:11
Teach me Your way, O Lord, I will walk and live in Your truth; Direct my heart to fear Your name.

Recently she started praying this one:

John 17:21
…that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

 

Not only does praying scripture get the Word in you, you begin to want to live out the scripture. She began to want the kind of intimacy with God she was praying through these passages.

Wooing the Father’s heart begins to align your desires with His desires. It could all start with a simple conversation.  Tori realized that even if relationship with God starts with you blowing up in anger at Him, there is some aspect of God that is grateful you are talking to Him. He can meet you there.

I personally have heard stories of God doing that very thing. If you keep pushing Him away, then you aren’t really willing to listen to Him; once you have nowhere else to run, even if it is in anger, God can and is so willing to walk with you through that.

She continued to share the difference in her prayer life: “I invite God into my praying now –hat is huge for me — meaning I ask him what is on His heart to pray.”  She continued:

“Gratitude. I thank Him for what He has done and who He is.”

“Learning Repentance and what sin looks like in my life.”

“I am more verbal, not only writing things down.”

“I ask God for a scripture or story to pray.”

 

God continues to woo her even now.  “He still answers my prayers, and even thoughts I did not pray.” She shared how she once thought it would be really nice to have an orange, then later that day someone gave her an orange.  There was more than one example like that; they were so simple, but it was such a blessing. Her love languages are Gifts and Acts of Service; “How He woos my heart is He walks in my love language.”

John 17:3
Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

 

This was another very specific verse that God gave her, and I think this sums up everything quite well. From even the very beginning in Eden, that was all He wanted; a deep, intimately vulnerable, undefiled with sin, genuinely selfless, loving relationship with His creation, which He loves and is proud of.

How have you wooed the heart of God? How has He wooed yours? Share with us in the comments when you started to have relationship with God. How did he respond to you?