For better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health I'm married to the notion that a personal relationship with God as essential to my life. I can't be alone in this. There must be others with this 'still small voice' running through there heads demanding relationship with God. So, in an effort to find them, provoke them to seek greater depth in their own spirituality and to break through the notion that you have to be a saint to communicate with the Almighty, I decided to share this experience using a character out of scripture as a 'straw man' for my thoughts; Jonah the Prophet to Nineveh. I've spent the last eleven years arguing, cajoling, praising and bargaining with God as Jonah. "You don't really talk with God, do you?", you might ask with an eye toward my sanity. "Oh, I talk with God." I'd answer. "In fact, I sometimes yell at him and sometimes I cry when His touch becomes too real; but I'm certainly no saint." That's the point. You don't have to be a saint to experience this personal relationship with God through Christ and the Holy Spirit. In persecution or success, in feast or famine, in good times or bad, in spiritual growth or decadent deterioration, in Jonahs time or ours, this one-on-one relationship is our constant. And praise is always our worship. For those who have this, there is no wavering or fear. I must warn you that sometimes my Jonah is belligerent, ungrateful and unwilling- much like me. But through it all, God loved Jonah. Good to know. For God loves you uniquely. He sent His son to save you, personally. And the Holy Spirit nudges you as a precious child of God.