Our guest post today is by my friend, Sofia Vanegas.

I’ve always been impressed by Sofie’s walk with God. She and her husband really live out their faith and continue to grow spiritually year after year. Today, Sofie challenges us to think about what we’re doing that keeps us from having a close relationship with God and then she teaches us how she’s been able to strengthen her relationship with God.

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I have many roles in my life. I am a wife, I work as an oral surgery assistant, I am a nursery worker and I teach elementary age kids at my church and I also help my dad raise my 17-year-old sister. Often when I notice that one of my “horizontal” relationships is lacking something is most of the time because my “vertical” relationship is not being prioritized.

My relationship with God as the daughter of the king should always be my priority and most important role. Three things that I realized were keeping me from God are: friends, fear and my own flesh.

1. Friends: I was 19 when I first became a Christian and I wasn’t living at home any more. I went from a home where my dad sheltered me so much, had rules to follow and a curfew to a world where I was exposed to EVERYTHING! The peer pressure was very real: I couldn’t hide behind  “my dad wants me home,” or “my dad said no” anymore. So, pleasing my so-called friends started to become something that I just couldn’t say no to.

 I quickly and thankfully realized that this path would only lead me to destruction. I found a Christian church and started to attend every Sunday. Shortly after I began to see that my “friends” were not calling me anymore, answering my texts, or if they would answer or call me, they would call me “the holy one.” I saw how one by one these friends began to disappear from my life. It (at first) hurt, but then through Bible reading God told me: “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners” in 1^st Corinthians 15:33.

I learned to set standards for my friendships. We should find friends that have the same beliefs — friends that love God and will push us closer to Him. I can literally count with one hand the number of friends I have and let me tell you, they ALL go to the church I go to. They are all ladies that I know I can call at any time and they will pray with me and encourage me through my difficult times to seek God. They are friends that will rejoice in my joy and will share victories with me. Like Proverbs 27:17 tells us, “Iron sharpeneth iron; so, a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”

2. Flesh: Our pride, ego, laziness and sometimes even our expectations can be our biggest enemy towards our relationship with God. I hear a lot of the time “the devil made me do it,” but we blame the devil for things our own flesh makes us do and things that we allow into our lives. Romans 8:8 tells us, “So, they that are in the flesh cannot please God.” Simple as that, feeding the flesh will lead us to quench the Holy Spirit and the longer we let that in out lives the more distant we will become from God.

3. Fear: Fear comes in all shapes and forms.  Things that might cause fear and anxiety for one, might not be the same for others. Therefore, people struggle so much with this, fear can take the shape of the other “Fs.” It can take the shape of anxiety, depression, the feeling of I’m not going to be “cool” if I decide to labor or stand for Jesus. Fear can make you feel lonely or it could even be fear to something literal. Like for me, anything that has a lot of tiny little legs. It can remind you of your past and make you feel like you cannot serve because “I was _______” or “I did _________.”  My encouragement is that you will memorize this verse:

“And He saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then He arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.” Matthew 8:26. My friend, the One Who controls and calms the seas is with you! Every time I begin to doubt and begin to let fear creep in, I remain myself of this verse, Jesus understands that as humans we will fear, but He wants us to know that He is there and doesn’t want us to go through it alone.

Now thankfully God always makes a way. Here are four Fs that will help you keep your relationship with God a priority:

1. Faith: “But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him” (Hebrews 11: 6-8). Faith is just what that passages says: coming to Him simply knowing that He is who He says He is. Faith is strengthened by diligently seeking Him and not just when everything is going well. In the morning before you even check your phone, ask God to guide your day because without His guidance there is only so much you can do. Spend time in prayer and in your Bible. Throughout the day, constantly ask God to guide your thoughts and tongue. Praying for others and see how your prayer changes someone else’s life will make your faith grow so much!

2. Fire: Mark 10:45 tells us, “For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Even Jesus (God Himself) came to this world to serve! Pledge to stay on fire for God. There have been times where I have literally told myself to get up from bed and open the Bible because I just felt too lazy to do it. The best way to keep a fire for God is to win a soul — to share with others God’s sacrificial love and free gift of eternal life. Yes, it is scary; yes, I give the Holy Spirit an excuse every time He prompts me to share the gospel. But nothing makes me feel more alive, nothing makes me feel closer to God, nothing makes me not care about the stress of life like telling someone, “God loves you and He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die so that you could have eternal life.”

3. Fear: We find in Deuteronomy 13:4 the command, “Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear Him, and keep His commandments, and obey His voice, and ye shall serve Him, and cleave unto Him.” This type of fear is not like the fear that we talked about earlier: this is a respect-type fear. Understanding that we need live His way, obey His commandments, and keep His boundaries that He puts in our lives to protect us.

4. F.R.E.N.C.H  F.R.I.E.S:

1. Focus the
2. Rest of your life on being
3. Eager to labor for God
4. Not quenching the Holy Spirit but
5. Come to him with
6. Humility

1. Follow
2. Respectfully and
3. Intentionally the
4. Eternal example of the
5. Son.

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In James 4:8, we find that God tells us He will draw nearer to us if we will draw nearer to Him. Look at how you lived this week: are you walking towards God or away from Him? Are you making your relationship with your God a priority or are you letting the “three F’s” keep you from Him?