Why Your Best Sex And Time With God Are The Exact Same Thing

Have you ever had really great sex with your spouse? I mean really great sex. It’s like the world stops. That the two of you are all alone and that nothing, not even the second coming could interrupt the two of you, getting busy.

Then it’s done, it’s gone, but what is left is the memory of the moment.

Usually great sex is not planned. It happens in a moment of spontaneity. Before kids it was from being stuck in a rain storm, or in the middle of the afternoon.

After kids it doesn’t happen that often, but when it does it’s even more special. It usually happens when all of the sudden the house is empty because the kids are all away on a sleep over, you and the spouse get an overnight in a hotel or one afternoon the house is empty.

If you are in the hotel, ou don’t want to leave, just hanging out with each other talking about nothing or watching some old movie from your high school days.

Planned sex is never as good. Why? Because it’s planned. It’s wedged in between making dinner, putting the kids to bed and going to sleep. You put it into your schedule like an appointment with your dentist. It’s cold, not as wonderful and usually mechanical. Just like going to the dentist.

Now don’t get me wrong, there have been times when my wife and I have planned an evening out. Away from the kids and one thing leads to another. Yippee.

Those are few and far between. Our most wonderful moments of intimacy (sexual and non sexual) are when we just enjoy each others company. When we walk hand in hand. Enjoying a moment or the blue sky or just a cup of coffee on a busy street.

If our most wonderful moments of intimacy with the one we love are unplanned, then why do we plan our time with God?

You might want to let that question sink in before you continue.

Church on Sunday, Bible study groups, life groups, men’s groups, women’s groups, worship time, getting up early to “Get into the word”. All these are planned activities that get in the way of true deep intimacy. All of this is like planned sex. It’s akin to the Dunkin Donuts guy saying “Time to go make the donuts.”

So how does one cultivate or develop deep intimate times with the Lord?

First off, stop scheduling it. Anyone who tells you that you gotta get up early to make time for God should be stoned, tarred and feathered. My wife, my kids, my dog and even God doesn’t want to talk with me first thing in the morning.

I haven’t brushed my teeth, had no coffee and lets face it, I’m grumpy.

Next, while Bible study groups are nice, it’s another form of forced fellowship. What if you just had lunch with some buddies and talked about life. Leave the Bible in the car. It scares people and makes you look like Flanders from the Simpsons.

Am I telling you to stop you Bible study group? No. But in my conversations with many believers who have been through the wilderness, they all share a similar story. Their bible study group became dry, boring and wasn’t relevant to their issues. They all found that cutting out planned activities led to a deeper, personal intimacy with the Lord.

Take a walk, leave the Ipod at home and just enjoy his presence. Grab a glass of wine and read Romans. Feel the presence of the Lord while watching golf, football, baseball or when you do the dishes.

God is everywhere. Why not just enjoy Him no matter where you are?

I’ll end with this thought. Christians need to learn to relax. When we accepted Christ, we entered into freedom. Not some form of Jesus plus, where we can only be close to Christ is we serve in a soup kitchen or go on a mission trip to Haiti.

Why not go on a mission trip to Wal-Mart? Why not walk the aisles and love the Wal-Mart mom spanking her kids. Ask Jesus to show you how to love her, even if you never speak to that person?

Folks, our relationship with God is not something to be planned, executed and structured. Discover again to practice spontenaity in your relationship with the Lord and with you spouse.

Beside, in the case of your spouse, you might just discover that sex can be great again.

Let the fireworks begin.

Matt Gillogly

PS. If you think I’m off my rocker and need to be prayed over, I suggest you go buy and read a great book. Practice The Presence Of God. Written by a French Monk in the 13th or 15th  century.

The Overbelief Of Spiritual Warfare

I’ll never forget getting an email from a friend of mine Adam. I have known he and his wife, along with their two kids for a number of years. He a budding entrepreneur, she a hard core intercessor who just loves prayer.

The email went something like this…

“Please pray for us, we are experiencing another round of significant demonic attacks. My business is struggling, wife and kids are sick, etc. etc. “

I think you can fill in the rest. We’ve probably all received emails like this one.

I picked up the phone and started talking to Adam. He started talking about all the things going wrong and how the enemy is attacking him, his family and kids. I interrupted him in mid sentence and said to him.

STOP IT. JUST STOP IT. DON’T GIVE THE ENEMY THAT MUCH CREDIT!

He paused for second (I thought he was going to cuss me out in a kingdom sort of way) then said. “Wow you are right.”

We then began to talk about how the enemy is under God’s control. He can not do anything to us unless God gives approval. (See JOB) You only see two times in the Bible where the enemy shows up post fall. In Job and tempting Jesus in the wilderness and I guess we can only really relate to Job, since none of us are the Son of God.

David didn’t talk about demonic attacks, nor did Paul, Peter, (although Jesus did say, “I’ve given Satan the right to sort and sift you like wheat.”) John… you get the drift?

Paul did tell us that everything comes from God and that we are to have joy in all things. To which  I’ve started taking that seriously as I walk through my days. I figure if Paul lived that way, then it’s probably good advice.

Which leads me to my second point, Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner.

I was out walking with my dog two nights ago, talking with God about spiritual warfare. I’ve pretty much come to the conclution that most of what we think is spiritual warfare is nothing more than life happening through God’s grace.

While walking God gave me a picture of Wiley Coyote and the Road Runner. In that picture the Lord showed me that we Christians are the Roadrunner and the enemy and his demons are Wiley Coyote. For those of you who don’t know, the coyote (Wiley) spends his entire life trying to snag the road runner. He tries to blow him up, crush him with the rock, run him off a cliff, basically anything that ACME makes, he buys in his effort to kill and eat the road runner.

Except he never gets him. The road runner is always too smart, too lucky, too fast for Wiley to get him. Well, why don’t you just watch this….

We need to realize that the enemy can’t do a darn thing to us UNLESS GOD APPROVES. Therefore, if God approves of it, well then it’s for our own good. Yeah it’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s an important one.

Paul did say, “JOY IN ALL THINGS”. He didn’t say ‘Joy in the found money’ or ‘Joy when you and spouse get the perfect house’. He said ‘Joy in all things’. That includes the young child with cancer. The unmet payroll, the failed business, the bankruptcy. He meant it all.

I’ll end with this. Smith Wigglesworth, the famous revivalist and minister tells the story of waking up at night. He felt a dark cold presence in the room. He sat up in bed, look at the base of the bed and saw Satan standing at the base of his bed. He looked at him said: ‘Oh it’s just you’ and went back to bed.

That my friends is how we should handle the enemy.

When Your 7 Figure Business Becomes A 5 Figure Business

Throughout 2009 I witnessed a business phenomenon. It wasn’t hyper growth, it wasn’t technological breakthroughs in Twitter and Facebook. Nor did it have anything to do with new slick offers that work online and offline.

No, the phenomenon had to do with once largely successful companies going from 7 figures a year to doing 1/10^th of that one year later.

It would be easy to point a finger and say it was the economy, the Wall Street issues or that the consumer ran out of credit.

The simple fact is this, business changes and when it changes it changes quickly. If you don’t change quickly then you will become road kill.

I can speak to this in my own business.

Last year at this time our typical customer was a start up that had generated maybe $100,000 in sales, offered up coaching or membership site. Or they had a new idea they wanted to test out.  These customers paid us anywhere between 1,000 to 2,000 a month for lead generation.

Today, our typical customer is someone who is already doing 7 figures (or was doing 7 figures consistently) who has a proven program, offering or service.  They have some online presence but have not really perfected a system of getting leads online and converting them into long term customers.

This customer takes a long term view and understands that investing in the growth a business takes time and money. And they are willing to invest in both.

They are willing to test many different new ways to get in customers and realize that when something doesn’t work, it’s not a failure/end of the world, it’s just part of the process.  They don’t just need leads, they need perfected conversion systems that convert the leads into buyers. Plus someone to set up and manage the statistics of how a program works, whether it’s successful and what is the return on investment.

The great thing is this customer is willing pay $8,000 to $15,000 a month for our services and willing to sign a long term contract (one year or more) to accomplish this goal.

As you can see our typical client changed and they changed quickly. If you would have told me a year ago that our business/customer focus would change so much, I’d laugh at you.

The reality is, in our current economy, it is easier to sell a high end product/service vs. selling one that inexpensive. We can service our clients better, get more involved in their business and give them results based on statistics vs. theory.

It was a huge mind shift for our team. There have been and continue to be long lonely nights of wondering if we made the right move, but we are seeing proof.

We have to learn to deal with more ‘Nos’ vs. the ‘Yes’. Our sales processes have had to change. (More on that later) Most importantly our service offering has had to become quick, streamlined and more service oriented.

It takes us longer to convert a lead into a customer but it is much more gratifying in the end.

You might be asking yourself how this applies to your business. Well if you business is down, you might be in a niche or industry that is dead, dying or rotting.  It is in those places that we find the hidden rich veins of new businesses.

Ask yourself what has changed, where is the business going and most importantly what does the customer need now more than ever.