Recently my wife and I were sitting in the living room. We weren’t watching television or anything like that. She had her cell phone out and I was doing a few things on my tablet, but we were not so focused on them that we weren’t aware of our surroundings. We had two cats and a dog sitting in the living room with us, quietly.

I realized that we had been sitting there for quite some time. We occasionally said something to each other, a comment on something being read, or a joke that just occurred to one of us, but mostly, it was silence.

After a few years of marriage, yes it’s a miracle she still puts up with me. We don’t feel the need to fill up the silence between us with endless chatter and banter. Silence is not uncomfortable. We can go on long car rides and be comfortable not talking.

On the other hand, after a long day of work when we have been separated for a time, we do feel the need to catch up. We talk about our day and mention all of the things we thought of during the day, but weren’t in each other’s company to say them. When I go off for a couple of days for a conference or something similar, my wife and I always have a lot to say when I return.

That is how God wants our relationship to be with Him. The more time we spend with Him the more we get comfortable with Him. And the more we get comfortable with Him, the less time we need to spend in what I call “busy prayer.”

If you do don’t know what busy prayer is, that is when we go to God in prayer and we talk and talk and make requests and talk even more for five or ten or more minutes straight, and then we say amen and move on, not thinking about God anymore for a while.

When we spend time abiding in God, being aware of His presence with us as we go about our day, we build that relationship with Him and make it stronger. And then when we do spend time apart from Him, we come back to Him and have a lot to say.

Abiding in God means listening to God in our prayer time, as well as talking to Him. It is also opening ourselves up to Him so that He can connect with our hearts and minds. That is what God truly wants from us, to simply be in a relationship with Him.