GZS 032: Jan Johnson – How You Can Have Greater Intimacy with God

Jan Johnson is an writer, author, speaker, and biblical teacher at churches, retreats, and conferences nationwide.

Paul and Jan discuss how Jan through some 20 books, countless articles, and presentations has lead us in ways to discover greater intimacy with God.

Jan’s latest book Meeting God in Scripture introduces us more powerful and satisfying methods to encounter God through scripture as we live in a world of ever growing interruptions.

Click Message to Tweet: Jan discusses How to have a Greater Intimacy with God on The God Zone Show!

Sheila’s Shofar – Today’s Call-to-Action – Tip of the Day

Whether it is selling a product, getting at job, or telling someone about Jesus

Today – Be a Rejection Specialist – check it out – my call to action tip for the day.

Conversation with Jan Johnson

Amazing Snippets from Jan:

Meditate on these Guest Snippets to see the useful wisdom that might come from God’s voice and resonate with your heart and be implemented today on your journey.

I wonder why the guy next door, who is pretty wicked, why does he have a great life and great kids and why is not my life any better? It’s not about being partners with God and walking in his kingdom. It’s like, okay I’m doing this, and okay, where’s the payoff?
People are just reading (the Bible) to get to the bottom of the page and playing games that they don’t even know they’re playing. So I do all the right things and then God is supposed to give me all this cool abundant life and I don’t even know I’m playing it until my will life falls apart.
I have this conversation with God in the morning and then we began throughout the day and then God does just the wildest things and I say, “I saw that, I saw that!”
When you grow up in a lot of chaos you just try to control the world and it hurts the people you love.
My job is to do whatever it looks like to connect with God today which may be to go on a walk and may be to just cry out to God all the things that are making me crazy.
Where we get into trouble is we try to be good and we strain and struggle and everybody around us knows we are trying to be good and they wish we would just be ourselves.
I like the phrase that God likes partners not puppets. So we are partnering with God and advancing the kingdom of God. We are partnering with God and what it is like to love people around us.
The first one is about believing that God really loves me because I find that this is the central issue behind every problem we have.

Key Points Discussed:

Hearing God’s Voice
Achieving greater Intimacy with God
Lectio Divina – Relax, Refocus, Read, Reflect, Respond, Rest
Discovering your life calling or set of nudges

Jan’s Take-Away Wisdom that leads to action today:

For the next 10 minutes imagine what would it look like to love God and connection him. Then do the same for an important person in hour life. Both a la the Great Commandment –

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” Matt 22:36-40 ESV

Resources Mentioned

The Alpha Course

The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence

Meeting God in Scripture: A Hands-On Guide to Lectio Divina by Jan Johnson