Heres a little something i wrote for the CCF insight article in december. Enjoy!
Some of the biggest challenges in relationships come from the fact that most people enter a relationship in order to get something: they're trying to find someone who's going to make them feel good. In reality, the only way a relationship will last is if you see your relationship as a place that you go to give, and not a place that you go to take."
- Anthony Robbins
I know this quote was written for other purposes, but I’m going to use this to talk about a Christ follower’s relationship with God. Now I ask you again, what comes to your mind when you think about your relationship with God after reading this quote? Are you seeking after God in order to get something from him? For example, praying day and night for God to give you a really nice car for you to drive? Or for lots of money and an amazing career? Like it says in the quote, these relationships tend not to last very long. Chances are that if you begin to seek after God and seek after these things from him, and you don’t receive it, your relationship status on Facebook with God will be changing from “in a relationship” to “single” pretty quick.
“You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” – James 4:3
So what are these right motives you ask? Well I believe that we as humans are all created to worship. Now the subject of our worship is the tricky part. And when I say worship, I’m talking about investing all your time, talents, efforts into something or someone. Maybe its money, maybe its athletics, school, maybe it’s that celebrity crush or a girlfriend or boyfriend, but maybe that subject is supposed to be God.
“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who , being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father.” Philippians 2: 5-11
So when you truly surrender your life to God (basically the choices you make in your life will be what God would want), you will slowly be transformed and your heart will be changed so much that you will desire God and your thoughts and prayers will be about God and for God.
Which leads me to the last part of the quote which says that you must see your relationship with God as a place to give. I mean God has already given to you, to everyone actually:
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:12-13
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” 1 John 3:16a
God has given you a way, a path to spend eternal life with him. Examine your own relationship with God. Have you responded to what Christ has given you? I don’t say this because you are being forced to give back to Jesus, but if you earnestly say that you are in a relationship with God then naturally your response will be to give and to follow him. So the challenge is simple, to examine your relationship with God. Are you giving God your scraps off your dinner or are you presenting him with an epic bacon covered turkey?! Haha Well what I mean is are you willing to give God more time out of your life, more effort, and a humble and willing heart to serve him? If you’re reading this and don’t see yourself with this type of relationship, I challenge you to simply find out more about God through the Bible (and not just what other people say about it) and let your prayer be to ask God to reveal more of himself to you.
“We love because he first loved us” 1 John 4:19
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