Making a Plan

As we’ve said along the way, there is nothing distinctive about the ideas that have been shared here. These ideas, in and of themselves, cannot produce intimacy with God. They can, however, provide a pathway that helps you relate to God and leads you into intimacy. The focus is not on the actual activities themselves, but on relating to God and enjoying your relationship with Him!

These ideas can set a pattern and new course for your life. It will take time for some of these ideas and practices to become a habit. Different researchers give different lengths of time it takes to form new habits – some say as little as three weeks, some say up to eight months. Regardless of the actual time, you must work to establish new habits however long it takes.

It will also take effort to remove obstacles, retrain your mind and responses, and regularly enter into intimacy with God. But the rewards are well worth the effort! God is ready to draw near to you as you draw near to Him (James 4:8). He is ready to give to you freely of Himself. He is ready to enable you live as He intended, in intimacy with Him!

Changing the way you relate to God and learning to enter into intimacy with Him will not happen quickly – certainly not at the end of this short course. You must establish new patterns and habits, and that will take time. The goal, though, is to follow Jesus’ model and regularly find ways to pursue intimacy and fellowship with God. Jesus withdrew regularly as was His custom. What a great day it will be when it can be said that you too enter into intimacy with God as is your custom!

Challenge

This final challenge is designed to help you pull together all the ideas of this course and create your own 30-day personalized plan to pursue intimacy with God. You will find a link below to some worksheets to help you do this. These worksheets include:

1. Reflection questions designed to help you identify key components of your plan.

2. Sample activities to give you an idea of what a plan could look like.

Prayerfully complete each of these aspects of this 30-Day plan. You might not finish it all at once. You might need time to pray and listen for God’s direction.

Once you have completed the reflection and planning aspect, add the activities to your calendar or planner.

You might find that you need 60 days instead of 30 days to implement new habits. You might find that it is helpful to schedule certain activities into your planner indefinitely in order to ensure they take priority.

Use this 30-day challenge to get you moving towards intimacy with God and then keep pursuing it in whatever way is best for you!

Download the Worksheets (or find them on pages 72-74 of the workbook)