Those who know me well are familiar with my aversion to what contemporary Christianity has done with the concept of “obedience” – all “doing” and no “being,” as if God is just interested in getting everyone to behave. I prefer instead to talk about how to line up with God’s heart. He wants friends and lovers, not robotic servants. Several of my books take up this theme, the most emphatic being Feeling Like God. If a person’s heart syncs with his – its loves, passions, dreams and desires – actions take care of themselves. No one needs to tell you how to live if your heart is beating with God’s.

Synchronizing with God is essentially this: We see what he is like, fall in love with him, and, like a kid dressing like his favorite athlete or performer, grow into that love. We take on his nature, his thoughts, his desires. That doesn’t require a to-do list. It requires only a picture of what we’re becoming.

Lately I’ve been further exploring what it means to sync with God. Here are some ideas I’ve come up with. I’ve posted/tweeted a few already, but the list is growing. You can probably think of quite a few others to add too. There’s nothing wrong with this being a lifelong process. In fact, it needs to be.

To sync with God . . .

• Ask for his heartbeat and expect him to give it to you.
• Ask him for his thoughts and expect him to give them to you.
• Fear absolutely nothing.
• Have enormous dreams, visions, and goals.
• Be relentlessly positive. Always see hope.
• Give yourself to repairing and restoring his world.
• Refuse to be discouraged.
• Don’t let your environment change you to its expectations. Change your environment instead.
• Be relentlessly merciful.
• Let yourself feel things deeply.
• Seek and expect miracles.
• Overflow with goodness.
• Speak life-giving words.
• Dance, laugh, rejoice, live, love.
• Fall in love with people. Even the unlovely ones.
• Don’t wait to enter his kingdom one day. Bring his kingdom to earth now.
• Be passionate about all that’s good, true, and beautiful.
• Hate everything that violates his goodness.
• Be exceedingly generous.
• Offer your strength, love, joy, and glory to others.
• Speak good news—and be good news—to those around you.
• Be wildly creative.
• Never, ever give up.
• Relentlessly oppose the kingdom of darkness.
• Heal and comfort the brokenhearted – i.e., nearly everyone.
• Laugh at the futility of his enemies (and yours).

The list could go on and on, pretty much forever. Like I said, you'll want to come up with many more of your own. There’s no shortage of ways we can connect with him.