Coffee, Cake and Relationship
How many of us get overwhelmed by the need to spend ‘more time with God’? I know I do, guilt will creep in and, in fact, I will limit my time on purpose because I am ashamed by my lack of effort. Of course, I know that a relationship with God is not about religiously spending a set time reading my Bible but sometimes it certainly feels that way! If you are like me, or any of the other Christians our there, I hope I can help you today.
Yesterday was a ‘bad’ day for me. I was grumpy, miserable and plain old irritable. It wasn’t a major thing, I didn’t yell at my family or anything but I was off base. The real reason was that I had given out spiritually over the weekend and never took the time to fill back up. It is so important to stay full with God! So as the day wore in I finally decided to watch some Christian tv. Wait for it…I am getting to my point.
The tv minister said a few things that stuck with me and today I have realised something. Spending a set ‘time’ with God is saying that He is somewhere other than with you. Making an appointment to meet a friend for coffee means you can’t fellowship with them right now, until coffee. Now coffee and cake is great to catch up over, find out what has been going on and enjoy each other’s company but soon the time will be over and you won’t be fellowshipping with your friend any longer. Think about that in our context…
God said He would never leave us or forsake us. He filled us with His very Spirit and gave us His Word, written on our hearts. He is always with us, it is our consciousness of Him that needs to change. We are usually not as aware of Him as we are aware of the people around us. That is not how it should be. Smith Wigglesworth once said something on the lines of – ‘I never pray to God more than 15 minuets at a time but I never go without praying for more than 15 minutes!’
How awesome is that!!
By me watching 10 minutes of an anointed message God was able to talk to me and continue talking to me the next day. His Word became alive in me. I am aware of Him communicating with me. He hasn’t left me, I just turned off my reception of Him and that affected how I felt and treated those around me! How different would it be if we maintained the right connection with God all the time?
Am I saying you shouldn’t spend dedicated time with God? No, of course not, but please don’t feel like you spending 10 minutes with God is what you need to sort your life out. Develop your relationship beyond that. Become ever aware of the God, creator of heaven and earth, living inside you…right now! What is He saying? How is He communicating? Let the words bubble from your inner man today and every day. If you do this your special ‘appointments’ with God will become less and less about you talking to Him and more about a relationship that is becoming ever more intimate. Think marriage. You can spend quality time with your wife all day if you want to but then you can spend ‘quality’ private time with her on a different level that goes beyond coffee and cake!
God loves you. His Spirit is in you. Fellowship with Him daily, minute by minute, hour by hour. We all can develop in this area so let’s determine to be God inside minded and conscious of His Spirit wherever we are, whatever we are doing.