Cathy Garland
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Do you ever wonder how to get close to God?
How to develop a relationship with him?
Like, people tell you he’s your friend. Your dad. Your brother.
You might have a hard time picturing him in those roles.
Or you might understand him as a distant God, but certainly not as a friend.
Sometimes God seems so far away.
Cathy Colver Garland, oldest daughter of Dr. Randy Colver, has co-authored Revelationship: Transformative Intimacy With Christ, debuting at #1 New Release on Amazon in one of their categories.
She also writes Gracefull Musings, a blog providing women a moment of rest and challenge before those little fingers appear under the bathroom door.
A former Vice-President of a software company, she currently consults with institutions and companies on marketing, sales, and strategy.
She also mentors women in professional, spiritual, and personal development.
Saved and living an “absolutely surrendered” life, her passion is to teach people to hear God's voice and obey, surrender their lives absolutely, and walk in freedom.
She is married to Mickey and has two children in elementary school.
Today's culture is desperate for identity
resorting to creating new boxes to check. Christians struggle to address this - more than 1 million children of church-going parents fall from the faith each year when they go off to college ill-equipped to recognize truth and confront the lies.
So revelationship is actually a word, but we didn't know it at the time. What had happened was my dad was teaching a number of interns at the church sub class in Bible hermeneutics or something like that.
And he had asked me to come and teach them a new way I had discovered to study the Bible. So obviously, growing up at the church, I read through the Bible multiple times, but it's always the Old Testament, the begats and the bring this many to sacrifice at this time, and sprinkle here and sprinkle there.
It's very dry, dusty, bloodthirsty, you know. And I dreaded reading the Old Testament.
It was like, oh, let's just get through it. See, we get to the good part, like around Esther, you know.
But I had sat down to start over reading the Bible, and I thought to myself, there's got to be a better way. And I asked the Holy Spirit and he said, look for me in the God who.
And so I began to study in especially in Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, he makes a statement, I am the God who. And it also reveals in other ways, him.
His revelation is so thick, especially in those two chapters, that it opened my eyes. I was like, wait a second, I've been doing this all wrong. I need to be looking for the revelation of God, particularly Christ, but the revelation of God in the Old Testament, kind of like in Aslan, the story of Aslan and the lion, the Witch and the wardrobe, the kids need to look for Aslan before they do anything or it's a disaster.
So I was like, I'm going to look for Aslan.
I'm going to look for God in the Old Testament. Where are you revealing yourself? What are you doing? How are you revealing yourself in different stories?
So I was teaching that to the interns, and my dad wrote the revelation was necessary for relationship. And he accidentally kept on going and he wrote Revelationship.
And it turns out it's not a word in the Merriam Webster dictionary, but it is a word in the Urban dictionary, which is kind of interesting.
So in prayer, one of the things that happened for me was I became a mother. And I can't say I really knew how to pray in a way that would get answers.
Not that you manipulate God and that he gives you answers. Could you pray a certain way? But I was really praying more like a machine gun. And I just was kind of standing back and spraying and hoping that one of the bullets was going to hit the heart of God.
And that was the one that he was going to grant for me. You know, it was just really sort of haphazard. And I had the faith, very small faith that comes from that sort of haphazard prayer.
And so when I became a mom, my children were in great health, but it made me grateful for their health. I began to pray for mothers whose Children are not in good health, particularly.
There was a real spate of children born with heart defects at the time that I knew or knew of or had relationship with their family somehow. And. And also in Facebook, there are numbers of mothers, groups that are begging for prayer, like pray specifically for these things.
And I hadn't prayed specifically because I think I was afraid that maybe God was not listening to me. And so then I could prove that he wasn't answering my prayer.
So I learned to pray specifically.
And it was things like, for example, a mom might write, hey, pray that their A1C comes up or that the urine output is at a certain level. I am not a nurse.
I do not know these things. And so I would get on my knees and I would say, lord, what do you say about this situation?
And I would listen, and my ears began to be trained to hear his voice so specifically that he would tell me what number he wanted the A1C to come up to.
And I would pray that specifically in full confidence that was going to happen because he told me to pray it.
Cathy Garland: And it was amazing how my faith just went from nothing really to just this mountain. It was like, well, if he says to do it, he says to pray it. He's jolly well gonna do what he just wants to do.
So I would pray it. It would happen. And my faith just soared. And so learning to pray by listening first and only praying what he said to pray, that was a lesson and nothing more and nothing less changed my prayer life entirely.
To hear the rest of the story, go to HERE
John 1:12-13 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God- children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
James 4:8 come near to God and he will come near to you.
: https://cathy544.wixsite.com/gracefullgarlands/formula-for-walk-with-god
https://www.revelationship.net/contact-us
https://www.revelationship.net/get-the-book
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There are approximately 1,734 people who are abortion survivors in the U.S.
One of these is Amy Miles.
My latest book is based on her story.
Available HERE
Thank you for joining me today!
As we get ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus, know that I pray for you every day.
Isn’t our God good? He hears and he answers.
Love this! Thank you for having me on your podcast! I was a delight to talk about all the ways God is pursuing US for relationship.