All tagged relationship
This morning we continue to contemplate God's desire for us to commit our love, and lives, to Him. We revisit His desire for us to live and worship Him with zeal. Pastor E.M. Bounds describes the way we should pray in this way: "True prayer must be aflame." And he writes that "The Christian life and character need to be on fire." Today we return once again to Revelation 3 as being the principal scripture that describes God’s expectation of our devotion to Him.
A couple of days ago I wrote about those who are young in Christ, and how they energetically worked in the church and elsewhere but confused this with devotion. Today I would like for us to study a thought that E.M. Bounds wrote, and which takes this a step further as he speaks directly to the clergy, and to church workers. He is concerned about the enthusiasm for the physical activities becoming our focus at the expense of our prayer life and faith in general.
Have we prayed in solitude during our own daily lives? Have we dedicated a comfortable chair in a quiet place, where we go to pray, study the Word of God, and be with Him? This is the kind of place where believers build a deep trust in God, and it is a quiet and intimate place of prayer where their relationship with Him takes root and grows.
Let’s begin our time of devotion this morning by listening as a lawyer asks Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus turns the question around on him, and asks the man what was written in the law.
Are we approaching our faith through study and hard work to further perfect ourselves each day? Every evening during our nightly prayers do we kneel before God and tell Him of our academic progress? If this is so, and it is all we do, He will speak words similar to these back to us...”Yes, but when I walked in the garden where were you?” or, “As I love you, do you love me?” God wants our journey towards perfection to be more than memorizing scripture, or blind obedience. He wants the true manifestation of our studies to be a loving relationship with Him. Our academic perfection is not His ultimate goal for us.
Do you have routine habits of faith? Are you made proficient in your faith by setting aside certain times each day to regularly read, pray, or just contemplate God, and Jesus? If not, and you are just depending on random thoughts, or going to church once or twice a week, then you are missing out on a wonderful growing relationship.
Do we walk with God, or are we still yearning to walk with Him? How close is our relationship, or in its absence, how desperately do we seek His presence? In our desire for salvation and eternal life do we place these goals above simply loving God? If so, do we realize that without that love there will never be a quiet stroll through the garden, or a conversation spent speaking without having to utter a word?
We all need to have a personal relationship with God, not to just be casually aquatinted with Him, but to know Him intimately. Is your faith the product of listening to others speak of God, or do you have a deep personal experience with Him?
Are you holding back from opening up to God until you have perfected yourself? Are you waiting for the time when you have become perfectly pure in thought before you seek to have a relationship with Jesus? If so you will never know them. They understand what and who you are, and yet they love you despite of it, let God begin the process of reshaping you.
Have we placed Jesus first and foremost as our teacher? What is the danger in this? Why is it more important that we put Jesus the redeemer before Jesus the teacher?
It is true that God never forsakes us, but this morning we will contemplate the fear that we can have of being abandoned by Him. Let’s look back in our lives to identify a particular time of doubt we have encountered, and look into how such times are often associated with the quiet times in our faith, and the routine nature of our Christian lives.
We can be students of theology, and study the bible as if it were literature but still not find our way to Jesus through the scriptures, yet when we are called to Him the scripture brings Him alive in us. Have you found yourself stuck in studying the scripture to the point that you have never truly known the living Christ? Something amazing happens once you have met Him, He brings the Word of God to life in you, and will set you free to enter into a deep and binding relationship with Him.
If we want our relationship with the Lord to become more than just a casual one in which we make an appointment with him once each morning, or evening, then we must pray without ceasing. If we want to feel His presence at all times then we need to be in constant conversation with Him. If we want to call Him Father, then we should recognize Jesus as our Savior, and Brother, but we should also engage them both in unending, and sometimes casual, chatter as every good family does. How openly, and lovingly, do we approach our Heavenly Father?
As Christians we are called to follow Jesus, but is our gaze fixed upon the rewards we have been promised, and do we seek these rewards as if they were our ultimate goal? We speak openly about following Christ, but do we actually know what He is asking of us? Has He become a means to an end for us? It is easy to become so enamored with the good gifts we are offered for having believed, and obeyed, that we lose sight of the fact that Jesus is leading us into a relationship with God, and not simply to the gifts of His Spirit, and eternal life.
Are our prayers private conversations with God, or are they like public meetings, and announcements, performed as if we were politicians who must hold every discussion in a public place? Praying in secret is more than just keeping our faith hidden from the world, it is maintaining it as a private relationship with God that is not lived in public so that we would receive accolades from others; no, we are meant to please God alone. If those about us say “look at this man who shows little faith!”, and they say this because they are not privy to our quiet prayers and personal relationship with God, then count this as a blessing.