Hi I am Chuck and before I get started I want to give you all a little bit of an idea as to who I am. I was born in the hospital here in Farmington and I grew up in Athens Maine which I about an hour from here on the other side of Skowhegan. I first accepted Jesus into my heart somewhere around the age of 7. And I went to church all the way up until I came to college and through going to church I learned that there were certain things which we ought to do, certain things that were right and certain things that were wrong. And so I tried to do them as best I could. I failed over and over again and boy was it discouraging, to the point where just about every time they had an alter call I asked Jesus into my heart again because I like many others I am sure thought that because I was making mistakes I must not have truly asked Jesus into my heart. One of the things that I was told that a good Christian did was to read his bible, so every now and then I would start to read my bible, either starting in Genesis or in Matthew but it never lasted, I never got past like the first chapter or two. As a result of never reading my bible I didn’t have much of a relationship with God, I knew he was there and that I was disappointing him but beyond that I didn’t really know him. I prayed nightly but that was the extent of it. I would try to do what was right when at school and stuff but because I had no knowledge of the bible it looked more profitable to be a mean to certain people and to swear and talk about girls and stuff like that. But I knew it was wrong when I went to church and so I would feel horrible and ask God to save me again. For the most part though I never did anything terribly bad, I mean I never had sex, smoked pot, or drank. When I entered high school everything seemed to change slowly. In high school I decided that it was most profitable to be cool, because the cool people are the people everyone else wants to be and they get the girls. Well there were certain things which the cool kids did that I didn’t want to do for a long time, but when I had the chance during my sophomore year of high school I smoked pot for the first time. It took a while longer before I ever drank because my father used to be an alcohol and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to control myself if I were to drink. But when my senior year rolled around and I still wasn’t as popular as I wanted to be I decided to drink after prom. And though it never happened I was searching for a sexual relationship all throughout high school. Now why did all of this happen, I believed in God, I prayed to him, and I even went to church on Sunday and for quite some time I even attended a youth group, coincidentally I wasn’t attending youth group either when I started smoking pot or when I started drinking. So why what was the problem? I wasn’t reading the bible, the word of God, even though I was praying, I was talking to God, even if he heard me I wasn’t listening or looking for a response. Now when I reached college the trend continued till my sophomore year where is started attending IV and they were teaching that its not about keeping a set of rules which I had thought was the case but about falling in love with your creator. They taught that the rules were important but only because they help you to grow in your relationship with God. In fact I learned that doing the things the bible tells us to do is really an act of love towards our creator. So at about the age of 20 I finally started reading my bible and learning about Jesus and learning about the love God has for me. And I desired to do so because of the love I had for Jesus, and while doing this many things in my life which were evil and wrong slowly trickled out of my life. Things like swearing at everything in sight, thinking bad things about girls, saying bad things about girls, listening and believing the things Eminem said in his music. Its interesting that this coincides with my reading of the bible because Hebrews 4:12 says "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." And so this living and powerful thing got a hold of my life and turned me around, it wasn’t anything I did it was what Jesus did through his word. Now I would like to share with you a few really important things I learned about building a relationship with Jesus Christ.
How to build a relationship with Jesus
There are 3 things which I will deem keys to a good relationship with your creator.
1) Habitual readings of the bible in a couple different ways
a) Reading and memorizing the bible "But he answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'""(Matthew 4:4) So spiritually speaking the word of God is our food and since the bible is the word of God that is our spiritual food. So if we don’t read our bibles what will happen to our spiritual life? We starve ourselves spiritually. To emphasize this I would remind you that Jesus is here comparing food to spiritual food saying that spiritual food is more important. How often do we as Christians read the bible or think about God’s word? A "good" Christian reads his bible usually about once a day and how many times a day do we eat or think about food? Well we have 3 meals a day not including snacks. Am I saying that in order to grow as a Christian we need to read our bibles more per day than we eat? No I am not but what I am saying is that we need to regard the reading of God’s word as more important than eating breakfast lunch or supper. Imagine what would happen to you physically if you only ate on Sundays and Wednesdays, it works the same way spiritually you are weakened and are more apt to fall into sin which leads me into my next verse: "I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you."(Psalm 119:11) One of the biggest reasons for reading the bible is because it strengthens us and helps us from sinning against God. And how are we going to hide something in our hearts if we haven’t even read it or we only heard on Sunday or Wednesday. And you have to do more than just reading the bible, though it is helpful, you need also to study the bible.
b) Studying the bible: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth."(II Timothy 2:15) Now how are we to rightly handle to word of truth if we have never studied it, how are we to tell others about the gospel if we ourselves have only a child’s understanding of it. And how are we to understand it if we have never studied it. Now in Acts there was a group of Jews who heard Paul and Silas speak but didn’t immediately accept it without being sure of its truth turn with me to Acts 17:10-11: "The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so."(Acts 17:10-11) They were "examining the Scriptures daily to see if they were so." They didn’t say, well that stuff is just too difficult to understand so I am just going to take their word for it, no instead they examined the word of God and seeing that it was true received it. Now I am not going to tell you that studying the bible is easy, its not its hard, and its even harder considering the fact that it is so easy to get a hold of a commentary that explains the bible in every detail, but its what we are called to do. Not to mention that when something is hard its more rewarding, when things come easy we tend to take it for granted. ; "And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." (Deuteronomy 6:6-7) It is indicated here that we are to have a good enough understanding of these things to teach them to our children, we are also supposed to talk about them with our friends. That isn’t to say though that we are to completely understand the bible but what we do know is supposed to be on our minds all the time and we are to talk with our friends about what we think it means. We are to discus and debate these things "when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." Or in other words all the time. And this was a command that was given to all regardless of intellect. Of course God is not going to hold anything against you if you are not the most intelligent person, its about the effort that you put forth. We are to try our darndest to understand God’s word and his spirit will guide us but because God is so awesome he has provided ways to help us in that.
c) Studying and talking about the bible in small groups and listening to sermons. Because reading and understanding the bible is difficult God has given us these things. He has also given us friends who we can discover what the bible says together. He has provided us with pastor and commentaries to help us, but we are not to leave it completely on them, we are to attempt to understand it on our own as well. These small group bible studies are also important because we all come up with crazy idea’s here and there. For instance I was once under the belief that before Jesus came and died no one had a conscience because in John 16:8 the bible tells us when the Holy Spirit comes he will "convict the world of concerning sin and righteousness and judgement." And since we are human we are bound to misinterpret the bible to say things we want it to say and sometimes it is subconscious and that is why these small groups and friendships with other Christians is vitally important to our faith.
2) Habitual prayer also in a couple of different ways
a) Personal prayer
" ‘And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’ "(Matthew 6:5-6) Jesus doesn’t say if you pray, it is implied that we are to pray and we are to set aside each day to spend time talking with God about your life praying for specific things. Why is this important? Why is it important that we take time out of our day and tell God a whole bunch of stuff he already knows? Well part of the reason is that prayer is one way in which God allows us to take part in his work. When we pray God moves, that’s powerful, what an awesome gift we have been given that God has allowed us to do something that really matters. Another thing that must be mentioned is that Christianity is not a religion in the sense that it is not a set of rules to follow but instead a relationship with the God of all creation and more than a mere friendship it is intimate. In order for there to be a good relationship there needs to be communication and the fact that God knows what we are going to say doesn’t change that. Take a married couple for instance the fact that they are married kind of implies that they love each other but that does change the fact that that fact needs to be expressed through words ever now and then. Even more than that if you had a marriage in which there wasn’t any communication would it last? I think not, or if it did it wouldn’t be a relationship worth having. When you read your bible God is speaking to you because it is his word, and when you pray you are talking to him. Also this conversation helps us both to be able to understand each other better, though in relation to God he already loves us therefore all of this is for us.
b) Talking to God throughout the day praising him for the things he does for us and asking him to help us in even the minute details of our daily lives. "pray without ceasing" (I Thessalonians 5:17) Now we take this verse in contrast with Matthew 6:5-6 and realize that not only are we to pray in that solitary place which Matthew describes but we are also to pray to God our Father throughout the day, asking him for help in even the smallest area’s of our life and praising him for everything he continually does for us. And This particular form of prayer is probably the hardest of them all, its easy to set time aside each day and pray once you get a system down, but its always hard to talk with God continually throughout the day, but its also one of the most rewarding things we can do. A relationship is not strengthened by talking to someone once a day about the "big" things but talking continually about everything. Think back to the picture of the married couple, if they only talked once a day for say 10-15 maybe 30 minutes, would that really be enough. Or would they rather desire to talk whenever they had anything come to mind to talk about. With a married couple it would be impossible because there is no way you could just drop everything while you are at work and give your husband/wife boyfriend/girlfriend a call or something like that but it does work with God because you can always even during a meeting or something say a prayer in your head to God. Prayer is how we talk to him and it doesn’t need to be anything special just something like hey I need help or something like that, or thank you father for having my friend stop by and say hi. Simple stuff and yet profound because these simple little things help you to develop a close person relationship with God. And if we are Christians we ought to desire to get as close to Jesus as we can even closer than a man tries to get to a woman because marriage only lasts a lifetime at the most but a relationship with God lasts for eternity.
c) Corporate prayer: "When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying." (Acts 12:12) And this here is an example of corporate prayer, prayer in groups for specific things that we want God to do. Here they were praying that God would free Peter. Some examples of Corporate prayer would be prayers at the beginning of services, prayers like the ones Ross says almost every week before the speakers comes out, and pretty much any time where more than a couple people are meeting together and making a point to pray such as a prayer group. Now Corporate prayer is important for many reasons. One of which is the fact that it reminds us of things which we need to pray for. It is also a form of fellowship with others. It also helps others know the things that we need prayer for that they may feel like they are in the loop but also that they may pray for you and not just during the group prayer but during their private prayer time at home. In James 5:16b James tells us "…The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." If the prayer of one righteous person has great power how much more the prayers of 10 righteous persons. Quick note the righteousness here is Jesus righteousness that he cloths us with when we accept him as savior and give our lives over to him.
3) Habitual Fellowship with other believers
a) At places such as bible studies, IVCF meetings, events, and retreats; Campus Crusades meetings, events, and retreats.
"And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,
not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near."(Hebrews 10:24-25)
b) Also making sure that you have good strong Christian friends that you hang out and talk to at the least every couple of days. This is so that we can hold each other accountable and so that we do not feel alone and are encouraged by that.
"Do not be deceived: "Bad company ruins good morals.""(I Corinthians 15:33)
Above all we must remember that these things are nothing of themselves. Instead we must keep in mind that these things are only valuable when we knowingly do in an attempt to grow closer to Jesus Christ.
After saying all of this many of you may be thinking "I can’t do it" or "its hard enough just to show up to IV on Wednesdays" and your right it is hard and I commend you for it. But the Christian life isn’t about being perfect right now instead its about making stabs in the right direction. In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis says "After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again." And that is all God asks. Not that you perform perfectly everything the bible teaches us to do, but that you continually attempt to do what is right. And by doing this you will be greatly rewarded. The more you read the bible the more joy it brings you, the more you realize that you actually love God and in fact love reading the bible. The same goes for prayer the more you talk to God the more you like talking to God. The more time you spend with his people, the more you love his people and understand his heart and therefore the more you love him. Thank You!
How to build a relationship with Jesus
There are 3 things which I will deem keys to a good relationship with your creator.
1) Habitual readings of the bible in a couple different ways
a) Reading and memorizing the bible "But he answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'""(Matthew 4:4) So spiritually speaking the word of God is our food and since the bible is the word of God that is our spiritual food. So if we don’t read our bibles what will happen to our spiritual life? We starve ourselves spiritually. To emphasize this I would remind you that Jesus is here comparing food to spiritual food saying that spiritual food is more important. How often do we as Christians read the bible or think about God’s word? A "good" Christian reads his bible usually about once a day and how many times a day do we eat or think about food? Well we have 3 meals a day not including snacks. Am I saying that in order to grow as a Christian we need to read our bibles more per day than we eat? No I am not but what I am saying is that we need to regard the reading of God’s word as more important than eating breakfast lunch or supper. Imagine what would happen to you physically if you only ate on Sundays and Wednesdays, it works the same way spiritually you are weakened and are more apt to fall into sin which leads me into my next verse: "I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you."(Psalm 119:11) One of the biggest reasons for reading the bible is because it strengthens us and helps us from sinning against God. And how are we going to hide something in our hearts if we haven’t even read it or we only heard on Sunday or Wednesday. And you have to do more than just reading the bible, though it is helpful, you need also to study the bible.
b) Studying the bible: "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth."(II Timothy 2:15) Now how are we to rightly handle to word of truth if we have never studied it, how are we to tell others about the gospel if we ourselves have only a child’s understanding of it. And how are we to understand it if we have never studied it. Now in Acts there was a group of Jews who heard Paul and Silas speak but didn’t immediately accept it without being sure of its truth turn with me to Acts 17:10-11: "The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so."(Acts 17:10-11) They were "examining the Scriptures daily to see if they were so." They didn’t say, well that stuff is just too difficult to understand so I am just going to take their word for it, no instead they examined the word of God and seeing that it was true received it. Now I am not going to tell you that studying the bible is easy, its not its hard, and its even harder considering the fact that it is so easy to get a hold of a commentary that explains the bible in every detail, but its what we are called to do. Not to mention that when something is hard its more rewarding, when things come easy we tend to take it for granted. ; "And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." (Deuteronomy 6:6-7) It is indicated here that we are to have a good enough understanding of these things to teach them to our children, we are also supposed to talk about them with our friends. That isn’t to say though that we are to completely understand the bible but what we do know is supposed to be on our minds all the time and we are to talk with our friends about what we think it means. We are to discus and debate these things "when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise." Or in other words all the time. And this was a command that was given to all regardless of intellect. Of course God is not going to hold anything against you if you are not the most intelligent person, its about the effort that you put forth. We are to try our darndest to understand God’s word and his spirit will guide us but because God is so awesome he has provided ways to help us in that.
c) Studying and talking about the bible in small groups and listening to sermons. Because reading and understanding the bible is difficult God has given us these things. He has also given us friends who we can discover what the bible says together. He has provided us with pastor and commentaries to help us, but we are not to leave it completely on them, we are to attempt to understand it on our own as well. These small group bible studies are also important because we all come up with crazy idea’s here and there. For instance I was once under the belief that before Jesus came and died no one had a conscience because in John 16:8 the bible tells us when the Holy Spirit comes he will "convict the world of concerning sin and righteousness and judgement." And since we are human we are bound to misinterpret the bible to say things we want it to say and sometimes it is subconscious and that is why these small groups and friendships with other Christians is vitally important to our faith.
2) Habitual prayer also in a couple of different ways
a) Personal prayer
" ‘And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’ "(Matthew 6:5-6) Jesus doesn’t say if you pray, it is implied that we are to pray and we are to set aside each day to spend time talking with God about your life praying for specific things. Why is this important? Why is it important that we take time out of our day and tell God a whole bunch of stuff he already knows? Well part of the reason is that prayer is one way in which God allows us to take part in his work. When we pray God moves, that’s powerful, what an awesome gift we have been given that God has allowed us to do something that really matters. Another thing that must be mentioned is that Christianity is not a religion in the sense that it is not a set of rules to follow but instead a relationship with the God of all creation and more than a mere friendship it is intimate. In order for there to be a good relationship there needs to be communication and the fact that God knows what we are going to say doesn’t change that. Take a married couple for instance the fact that they are married kind of implies that they love each other but that does change the fact that that fact needs to be expressed through words ever now and then. Even more than that if you had a marriage in which there wasn’t any communication would it last? I think not, or if it did it wouldn’t be a relationship worth having. When you read your bible God is speaking to you because it is his word, and when you pray you are talking to him. Also this conversation helps us both to be able to understand each other better, though in relation to God he already loves us therefore all of this is for us.
b) Talking to God throughout the day praising him for the things he does for us and asking him to help us in even the minute details of our daily lives. "pray without ceasing" (I Thessalonians 5:17) Now we take this verse in contrast with Matthew 6:5-6 and realize that not only are we to pray in that solitary place which Matthew describes but we are also to pray to God our Father throughout the day, asking him for help in even the smallest area’s of our life and praising him for everything he continually does for us. And This particular form of prayer is probably the hardest of them all, its easy to set time aside each day and pray once you get a system down, but its always hard to talk with God continually throughout the day, but its also one of the most rewarding things we can do. A relationship is not strengthened by talking to someone once a day about the "big" things but talking continually about everything. Think back to the picture of the married couple, if they only talked once a day for say 10-15 maybe 30 minutes, would that really be enough. Or would they rather desire to talk whenever they had anything come to mind to talk about. With a married couple it would be impossible because there is no way you could just drop everything while you are at work and give your husband/wife boyfriend/girlfriend a call or something like that but it does work with God because you can always even during a meeting or something say a prayer in your head to God. Prayer is how we talk to him and it doesn’t need to be anything special just something like hey I need help or something like that, or thank you father for having my friend stop by and say hi. Simple stuff and yet profound because these simple little things help you to develop a close person relationship with God. And if we are Christians we ought to desire to get as close to Jesus as we can even closer than a man tries to get to a woman because marriage only lasts a lifetime at the most but a relationship with God lasts for eternity.
c) Corporate prayer: "When he realized this, he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John whose other name was Mark, where many were gathered together and were praying." (Acts 12:12) And this here is an example of corporate prayer, prayer in groups for specific things that we want God to do. Here they were praying that God would free Peter. Some examples of Corporate prayer would be prayers at the beginning of services, prayers like the ones Ross says almost every week before the speakers comes out, and pretty much any time where more than a couple people are meeting together and making a point to pray such as a prayer group. Now Corporate prayer is important for many reasons. One of which is the fact that it reminds us of things which we need to pray for. It is also a form of fellowship with others. It also helps others know the things that we need prayer for that they may feel like they are in the loop but also that they may pray for you and not just during the group prayer but during their private prayer time at home. In James 5:16b James tells us "…The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." If the prayer of one righteous person has great power how much more the prayers of 10 righteous persons. Quick note the righteousness here is Jesus righteousness that he cloths us with when we accept him as savior and give our lives over to him.
3) Habitual Fellowship with other believers
a) At places such as bible studies, IVCF meetings, events, and retreats; Campus Crusades meetings, events, and retreats.
"And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,
not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near."(Hebrews 10:24-25)
b) Also making sure that you have good strong Christian friends that you hang out and talk to at the least every couple of days. This is so that we can hold each other accountable and so that we do not feel alone and are encouraged by that.
"Do not be deceived: "Bad company ruins good morals.""(I Corinthians 15:33)
Above all we must remember that these things are nothing of themselves. Instead we must keep in mind that these things are only valuable when we knowingly do in an attempt to grow closer to Jesus Christ.
After saying all of this many of you may be thinking "I can’t do it" or "its hard enough just to show up to IV on Wednesdays" and your right it is hard and I commend you for it. But the Christian life isn’t about being perfect right now instead its about making stabs in the right direction. In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis says "After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again." And that is all God asks. Not that you perform perfectly everything the bible teaches us to do, but that you continually attempt to do what is right. And by doing this you will be greatly rewarded. The more you read the bible the more joy it brings you, the more you realize that you actually love God and in fact love reading the bible. The same goes for prayer the more you talk to God the more you like talking to God. The more time you spend with his people, the more you love his people and understand his heart and therefore the more you love him. Thank You!
posted by Chuckles at 10:32 AM
0 comments
