Expert: Griff Ruby - 7/10/2011

Question
Hello, I just had a few things in mind. First of all, I want to say that I am seeking God of all, I want to say that I am seeking God because I need Him so much. So I wanted to know more about the kind of relationship we are suppose to have with God. Are we suppose to talk to God, like we would talk to any other friend? And is it ok to make a conversation,such as "God I love this song" or whatever... or whatever...

Does He like me to tell Him the smallest things?  Finally, I been trying to learn what Gods emotions are, but I am really unsure because sometimes I laugh about something funny that happened during the day and I am telling God about it, however I dont know if He is laughing with me or is actually mad, sad about some sin I did... This is how I feel about Gods emotions, but I am not 100% sure. When I am happy, I feel He is Happy. When I am sad, I feel He is Sad. When I laugh, I feel He laughs When I smile, I feel He smiles. When I sin, I feel He either might sad or mad. either might sad or mad.

Answer
God loves us to talk to Him as much as possible, about anything and everything.  Not that we can use that as an excuse to fail to do other things we are obliged to do, but in all things (that we do) we should ever take notice of Him and include Him in all that we do, for He knows and sees it all anyway.
Now I do know that there may be some discussion regarding informal prayers and more "high" prayers like those found in prayer books.  Many make the mistake of looking down on rote prayers as though the person reciting them is merely repeating sounds like a machine.  In fact the standard prayers express the truest and noblest aspirations possible.  Why should our Lord teach a specific prayer when asked how to pray, unless He intended that it should be used, obviously not as our only prayer of course, but as our primary one.  So many of these glorious prayers are ultimately meant to be like "training wheels" to show us what to aim for in prayer, the sorts of things to pray for and how to pray for them which is most pleasing to God.
There is of course also room for our prayers from the heart, and that is what our other prayers should be about.  There is, after all, both a right kind of familiarity as well as a wrong kind of familiarity with God, the right kind exhibited by the saints in worship (and glimpsed in the "high" prayers I was just talking about above) versus a kind of casual horizontal sort of familiarity that has more the characteristic of how we might speak with ordinary friends and family like ourselves, or worst of all, like that kind of obviously faked familiarity like some salesman with something to sell to us.
When we share our hearts with God we should do so as a child with a loving parent that can be told anything and everything, with respect, but also with detail and honesty.  The eventual goal is that in time our own spontaneous prayers from the heart will bear the character (the love, respect, and adoration, not necessarily the "King's English" sound) of the "high" prayers, as if everything prayed from our own hearts would be fit for such prayer books.  But of course our prayers are meant for God and not for any such books, and it is God who will hear and answer such prayers, not man that need ever know of them.
You ask if God is happy when you are happy and sad when you are sad and so forth, and of course, in His absolute love for you He does share all your happiness and all your grief.  When you sin, He may either be sad if you are too weak to do what is right, or mad if you arrogantly claim your sin to be right and good, or to teach others to sin.  And God, being utterly outside time, can be, as it would seem from our human standpoint, both happy with one who rejoices with Him, and sad with another one who grieves, and angry with another who sins deliberately, all at the same time (as we see it), as if all of Him is rejoicing or sad or mad.
We must remember too that God's love wants first that we should be of the sort of character he would make us to be, with His grace, and only after that the joy that being such will bring us, and only behind that, whatever good fruits this may bring us.  We want our children to be happy, but even more (if we love them), we want them to be good.  So it is with God.
Hope this helps, God bless!