A New Book by Gary Chiles

Did you realize that there is more to your relationship with God than just being his servant or child? Gary Chiles knew that he wanted something more because he was dying of boredom. This created a hunger that fueled a search for meaning, and he came face to face with a side of God that he never knew existed.

In this book, you will discover how to:

• Avoid spiritual boredom
• Change your perception of how God wants to relate to you
• Experience joy, peace and rest through a romance with Christ

Speaking Engagements

Having an intimate walk with Christ is real, life-changing, practical, obtainable — and it’s what we were created for! Gary has a passion to teach on how to make this journey a reality.

Gary is available to speak at your church services, conferences, or retreats. For any questions or further information, please email him at garychiles@gmail.com.

Chapter One: The Heartbeat of God

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, romance is the heartbeat of God. From the beginning of time, we were created by God to be the object of His love and affection. Amazingly, He also created us to have the freedom to love Him back. Without this freedom, it couldn’t be called love. The world was designed to contain this two-way relationship between the Creator and His creation. This joint relationship is a love story – the first of its kind.

Built into the fabric of every love story is the DNA of God. The very spark of creation is in every romantic thought and idea. This is why we can be impacted in such a deep way by these expressions. Here is a life-changing concept: we were not designed for a generic, common, everyday love. Instead we were fashioned for the deepest and most personal love one can experience – that of a marriage.

Have you ever heard a love song that was so amazing and beautiful that it felt, in a strange way, spiritual? Or what about a romantic movie that you didn’t want to end because you were captured by the love between two people that seemed to be perfect. I have, but it felt kind of awkward. I could never put my finger on these uneasy feelings. Especially in my younger years, romance wasn’t a comfortable topic to begin with. Then add God to the mix, and it really seemed confusing. Growing up in church, it was scandalous for secular music and movies to cross paths with God. I had no grid for anything in the “secular world” to be able to reach me spiritually. I felt guilty being moved in my heart by something that wasn’t “Christian”. Nevertheless, I’ve been intrigued for years by the emotional impact love stories have had on my life. Whether it is in movies, books, or songs on the radio, the dream to live “happily ever after” with someone has always captured my heart and attention.

I love “love stories,” especially when the guy gets the girl at the end of the movie and they live “happily ever after.” It feels so right to see this happen. This seems to be the way life is supposed to be: perfect couple = happy life. Even though most people never see it happen around them, they still chase the dream, or at least like to read about it. It took me years to figure out why these perfect movie endings sell so well to the audience. We all know that these “happily ever after” stories are usually too good to be true, but we still want them to happen, somehow, to us.

There is a cry in the human spirit for the perfect ending. We want to love and be loved by someone special; someone with whom we can be ourselves, and someone who fills us up on the inside. We long for the dance of romance. We sometimes find a taste of it in the natural world; but it still seems a little empty and temporary, leaving us longing for something more. Believe it or not, this is a God-designed longing. But it’s not just a longing. It’s a pathway to something better, something truer. The “perfect love” that we see portrayed in the movies is but a picture of God’s perfect love that He wants us to experience with Christ. Jesus is inviting us to live “happily ever after” with Him!

Understanding this design for our lives answered a lot of questions for me and changed my life. This reality changes everything. At times, I have struggled with the meaning of life, trying to figure out why I was created. The pat answers I often heard (for example, to do good works for God) didn’t inspire me much and left a hollow feeling inside. And when I tried to do good works for God, nothing really changed on the inside of me. This fueled a search for meaning. I felt that there had to be more to life. When I started to discover the “romantic” side of God, I began to understand that the reason we were created was to have a deep and intimate relationship and friendship with our Creator. I know that this may sound overdramatic to some, or too simplistic to others, but this is a life-changing truth. He wants to know ME! He wants to be with ME! Go figure. At first this scared me a little. Then it intrigued me. Then it drew me into a journey that has changed me forever.

God did not create the world so that He could watch people struggle on earth, going nowhere but around and around, like a squirrel caught in a cage. What a waste of His beautiful creation that would be! Instead, He created this world for a higher purpose. And it all started in the Garden of Eden.

God’s relational courtship with man began when He created Adam and Eve. God was madly in love with His creation (and still is!). He loved to spend time with Adam and Eve, walking with them “in the cool of the day,” developing a deep and lively friendship with them. This desire in God’s heart has not changed. It is as strong as ever. God did not create robots to serve Him, but humans who have a free choice whether to have a two-way love affair with Him or not. And through the study of the Word, I discovered that He designed the physical marriage to be a picture of the type of intimacy and friendship that He wants to have with us on a daily basis. The whisper of romance that we see and hear in music, books and movies, is an invitation for us to experience something more in life – a romance with Christ.