Christianity is described as a relationship with God. There’s not much point to the tenants of Christianity if your primary objective is not a close intimate relationship with the Holy Living God.
We know that relationships take work. Your marriage takes work, hard work in fact. Raising kids is not for the faint of heart. So, it stands to reason that a mutually beneficial relationship with the Holy God will take serious commitment and effort on our part. It will take time. In fact all of our time, attention and focus must be on cultivating our relationship with God. Let me explain.
In today’s society, we seem to have less and less time for important things. With all our conveniences and technologies, we spend less time on the important things of life, things that really matter. We try to delegate away personal responsibilities and we seek proxies to stand in for us in our personal commitments. We minimize and marginalize the important things of life that take time and effort. Sadly, this social-cultural attitude has permeated Christianity. Christians today for the most part, practice a lazy Christianity.
Most Christians, if asked point blank “is God important in your life” will answer with a yes. But the behavior of most Christians is out-of-step with the “yes” they speak. Many Christians have not read their Bible from cover to cover and if they have, it may have only been once or twice. Most Christians do not spend time reading God’s Word. People simply don’t take the time to listen to God. They rely on others to teach them about God whether it is through listening to sermons on television or the preacher’s sermon when they happen to show up at church... when nothing more important is going on.
God speaks directly to us through His Word. It is all consuming... absorbing... confrontational... inspirational... life challenging and life changing. Reading it can be a very dangerous experience for a self-willed person.
Prayer is a means to communicate with God. It is His primary forum for us to communicate with Him. For most Christians, prayer is infrequent, shallow and if it even exists... the limit of their relationship with Him. We can petition Him with our requests, praise Him, give thanks and ask for forgiveness. However, this is our communication with Him, not His communication with us. It is a one sided relationship... us to Him.
Reading the Bible is His way of communicating directly with us. God has revealed Himself to us through the Scriptures. If we want to know Him personally, we read His Word written exclusively to us. God’s Word to us is not a one time read. All that He wants to reveal to us about Himself is found in the Bible which is living and active and not merely a book to be read once or twice. “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12
We all choose and act upon what is important to us. It does not matter what we say, it matters what we do for what we do speaks volumes about what is important to us. Our relationship with God is not one sided, at least it shouldn’t be.
We speak to Him through prayer. He speaks to us through His Word. If we are not spending time in His Word, then its obvious that there are more important things in our lives than listening to God. Today, Christians generally do not know the Bible well enough to even site the most basic foundational principles of faith. They know what they’ve been taught. Fast-paced Christianity for a fast-paced lifestyle doesn’t cut it with God.
I agonize about the poorly formed spiritual condition of today’s Christian. How did the body of Christ so easily succumb to where it is now? There is no time for God... except for the occasional Sundays [dutiful] and infrequent prayers [self-serving]. Maybe it is because we live in a “it’s all about me” type of society... “what can God do for me” [the genie effect]...? Or maybe we’re simply too busy. It seems people just don’t want to take the time to get to know God. He’s there when we need Him but until then, a weekly sermon seems sufficient for most so-called Christians.
We cannot know anyone without spending time with them and that includes God. Our relationship with the Holy God is the most important relationship we can or will ever have.... now and forever.
If we don’t take the time to get to really know Him, He is not going to know us when it really counts. (Matthew 7:21-23 - go ahead, look it up, use your Bible!) We speak to Him in prayer and He speaks to us through His Word. It’s sad that Christians, for the most part, have chosen to settle for much less and think it’s acceptable to God.
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