This is a guest post from Brian Ng'ong'a - a guest blogger from Nairobi, Kenya who has guest posted on this blog before. After working for years at the Coptic Hope Center for Infectious Diseases, Brian now dedicates his time to the youth ministry at church of St. Mark in Nairobi.  If you too are interested in guest posting on my blog, please visit my Guest Post guidelines for more info.

One of the greatest satisfactions in human life is the ability to reason one with another. To know what one is thinking about, what their plans are and by the same token, for you to share your thoughts as well as your plans with them. It’s what defines a successful relationship.

“Our marriage is wonderful because she always tell me what she thinks would us have a healthy married life and I in turn would do the same.”

“It’s the ability to share our thoughts together as a team that has made this organization to flourish.”

“We have been able to raise our children we keep encouraging them to be open with us about the things that go on in their life.”

It’s through sharing our thoughts together that makes us have good relationships.

The same also apply in our relationship with God…or does it?

I recently did a self-evaluation where I focused on my relationship with God. The result, in my opinion, was fairly good. It went something like this:

Q:  How is your relationship with God? A:  It’s really good.

Q:  Do you often share your thoughts with Him? A:  Yes!!

Q:  Can you elaborate? A:  Well I always involve Him in everything I do. I share my plans with Him as well as the challenges I am going through.

Q:  Does God respond to you? A:  Of course He does!

Q:  How does He respond? A:  By either saying Yes, No, or Wait.

Like I said, the result was fairly good. But does that really constitute a successful relationship? Is that all there is to it?

What would be the success rate of a relationship where one person would open up and share his thoughts only for the other person to respond by saying “Yes”, “No”, or “Wait”? Chances are the success would be slim to none.

Fortunately for us, that’s not how God operates. Just like a relationship with a close friend, God also wants to share His thoughts and plans with us.  And it’s more than just what I think when I invoke Jeremiah 29:11 and say that I know God has good plans for me. He desires to share His thoughts with me.

“And the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing,  Since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?  For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.”  (Genesis 18:17-19)

What followed the above excerpt was the captivating conversation between God and Abraham. The premise of the conversation was God's plan to destroy Sodom but He decided to share it with Abraham first. What ensued was more of a negotiation where Abraham gave his thoughts while God responded in kind and in the end an agreement was reached. Through this “meeting of the minds”, Lot and his daughters were saved.

It’s unfair for me to reduce God to someone who only gives an order-like response of “yes”, “no”, and “wait”. What He wants is for us to meet Him at the table and share our thoughts together.

-  If the answer is No, then we should engage Him and find out if there is a possible door number 2.

-  If the answer is Yes, not only should we thank Him but also continue to engage Him and ask if there is a way we can ultimately improve it.

-  And if He says we wait, then we should ask Him what we should do while we are waiting. The goal is to have a successful relationship with God through constant interaction with Him.

If we say we know that God has good plans for us, then we should find out what those plans are because He longs to share them with us the same way we long to share our plans with Him.

There is an old African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together.”  God is willing to take our relationship with Him deeper if we start to interact with Him more than we are used to.

Since we as human beings derive satisfaction from reasoning one with another, imagine how great that satisfaction will be if we reasoned with the One who created human beings in His own likeness.