Straight to the Source

Have you seen the T Mobile commercials where the person gets a broken message that ends up being completely wrong? This one is my favorite. Anyway, how did the message get so messed up? Because the connection was weak. And for some reason, despite the fact that the message didn’t make sense, the person did not go back and verify or check the validity of the message. They just went with it. In one of the commercials, the lady is making a first impression with her new coworkers, and it ended up being a disaster. If she had just taken a minute to verify the message that she thought she heard, things might have turned out differently. The same is true with us.

I believe that our hearts move in and out of closeness and openness to God. I am in a season of moving away from God. God brought to my attention recently that my priorities have gotten out of whack and let me know that I needed to fix them...sooner rather than later. I still pray regularly, attend church on Sunday mornings, and attend my weekly Bible study, but my heart is not chasing after God first and foremost the way that it used to right now. I have developed a willingness to let my early morning quiet time take a backseat to other things like sleep and exercise. I have let my evening time spent in His word fall away in exchange for things like Netflix and social media. 

As believers, we should be in a constant state of growth. Our understanding of and confidence in God should be constantly growing in our journey. Humans grow from being dependent on others for food to feeding themselves. In the same way, we must grow from depending on others (preachers, authors, podcasts, etc) for our understanding of God to diving into our relationship with God on our own. We must let God reveal His character to us through His word and through our prayer life. This was a very hard lesson for me to learn. God had to show me the hard way that I was relying on other people that I thought knew better than I did to tell me what was true and what I should believe about God. He let me know in no uncertain terms that it was high time for me to start feeding myself. He longed for me to spend time with Him and stop running to others, the ones I believed to be “experts” on Him. 

Don’t get me wrong, sermons, books, and podcasts are great. I love reading books about God and doing studies by certain people on scripture and the characteristics of God, but I can’t let those things determine what my beliefs about God are going to be. As I have said before, there are a handful of celebrities that I would be devastated to find out are complete jerks in real life. I don’t know them personally, but I have built a belief system about them in my head based on what other people have written about them. I don’t have a relationship with them, so there is no way for me to know for sure whether or not what I believe about them is actually true. It’s the same with God. You have to build a relationship with Him, not the preachers giving the great sermons or the authors writing the amazing books, if you really want to know what is true about Him, and the best way to build a relationship with someone is to spend time with them. 

Here is the thing about relationships, they don’t just happen spontaneously. Real relationships take time and effort. Building the relationship has to be a priority. You have to be willing to set aside time for it. It has to be important to you. You have to be willing to stop and be still for it. You have to be willing to speak and to listen. This is where I think it gets tricky for some people. Many people have a hard time believing that God will speak to them or that they are capable of hearing God. Many people see prayer as one-sided. They don’t view prayer as a conversation between two people. They believe that the only people that hear from God are the super-spiritual elites (whatever that is). In case you missed it, Jesus destroyed the temple and with it the belief that only a select few could enter into God’s presence to speak with Him and hear from Him. 

So, what about you? What do you believe? Do you believe that God speaks to people? Do you believe that God can speak through anything? Do you believe that God will use ANYTHING to speak to you? If not, here are some things that I think you should try. 

First, you need to ask yourself if you even want God to speak to you. Maybe you just don’t feel ready for that right now. That’s okay. Growth looks different for everyone, and you will get there one day. Start by asking someone that you trust to pray for you. Ask them to pray that God would move on your heart and increase your desire for closeness with Him. It’s okay to ask someone else to pray for you about something that you don’t feel ready for quite yet. It’s okay to ask someone to pray for you about something when you know that you are not ready to hear the answer that you are going to get. I have done it countless times. 

Next, you need to consider your posture. You have to actually be still and listen if you want to build a relationship with God, and your posture can make a difference. We are taught to bow our heads and close our eyes when we pray, but I believe that closes us off. Think about it. We expect people to actually look at us when we talk to them in order for us to believe that they are actually listening to us. How many times have we told our kids to look at us when we are speaking to them? What would happen if we open ourselves up as if we are looking at God when we are sitting still and listening for Him to speak? What if you tried sitting with your head up towards the sky and your hands open on your lap the next time you sit and listen for God to speak? I know...it seems weird, but just try it once. I completely agree that when we come before God with praise and are asking God for things in prayer that we need to lower ourselves before Him in reverence, but if we want to be filled with His Spirit, I believe that we need to sit in an open posture so that He can fill us and we can receive it. 

Lastly, do an obedience check. When was the last time that you actually obeyed what God has asked you to do? Don’t give me that “well God doesn’t speak to me” nonsense either. That’s a big pile of stinky BS, and you know it. You know good and well that God has asked you to love Him and love your neighbor. When was the last time that you obeyed those commands from God? You can say that you love God all day long, but when was the last time that you showed it? 

John 13:35 says, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” It doesn’t say that all people will know that you are a disciple if you say you love God. Why? Because talk is cheap, that’s why. We all know that person that says that they are going to do something but never actually follows through and does it. Most of the time when they say something we think, “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before.” And we don’t believe them. When people apologize to us for something and promise that it will never happen again, the only way that we know we can believe them is if their behavior changes. Again, you can say that you love God and have a relationship with Him all day long, but if your behavior doesn’t show it, no one believes you. 

The early Christians did not name themselves “Christians." The people in Antioch were the first ones to use the term “Christian” in Acts 11:26. They had to come up with a new name for these people because there was something different about them. They had no other category for them, so they had to come up with a new one. As believers, our behavior should defy the world's categories, and in the world that we are living in right now, having love for one another would definitely do just that. Showing love to everyone in these times is guaranteed to set you apart. 

So, why is it so important to build a relationship with God anyway? Because the world is going to tell you all kinds of things about God, what He says, what He wants, what He stands for, etc, and the only way that you will be able to discern if they are right is by having a relationship with Him. When you spend time with people, you get to know them on a deeper level. You are able to recognize slander when it comes because you have spent enough time with the person to know what they are really like, which allows you to better discern whether or not they would actually do what they are being accused of. You have a strong connection. You don’t have to worry about getting broken messages like the people in the T Mobile commercials. 

If you are ready to take your relationship with God to the next level, try those things that I suggested above. Ask yourself if you even want to hear from God and be honest in your answer. If you are not ready, ask someone to pray for you. Try changing your posture and see what happens. Take a good, hard look at your life and see when the last time was that you actually obeyed God. I am not trying to make you feel bad about yourself. God knows that I am right there with you, asking myself all of the hard questions as well. Here is the deal though, if God is not speaking to you, the problem is you, not God. God is highly relational. You can’t have a relationship without talking to each other and spending time together. You can speak to God all day long, but if you don’t give God an opportunity to speak back or believe that He can or will, you have no relationship with Him. Relationships are give and take. If you continuously give to God with your words, money, and deeds, but never give God the opportunity to give back to you so that you can take His words and put them into practice (obedience), you have no relationship with Him at all. Don’t rely on other people to tell you what God is asking you to do. Go straight to the source. 

Feel free to take all this for what it’s worth. You have no reason to listen to me about any of this. After all, I am no preacher or biblical scholar. I did not attend a Christian University and have no Bible degree. Truth be told, I didn’t even grow up in church. I just happen to be a girl who had an amazing, albeit undeserving, encounter with the Creator of the universe that changed my life forever, and then had to learn the hard way that the encounter itself was not the end of my story with Him. Don’t let the encounter be the end of your story with Him either, friend.