If you ask any group, “How do you get close to God?” you usually get the same answer: spend time with Him.
It’s a good answer, but I don’t think it works.
At least not by itself.
Think of it this way: what if you were in a relationship, either married or dating, and you got bored with your partner?
You didn’t want to give him up—because you liked having a steady relationship—but you didn’t want a boring life either. What would you do?
Let’s say you decide to spice up your life a bit—nothing serious, just a little harmless fun.
So you go out dancing. You flirt with your co-workers. You have some good conversations.
Life is looking up.
But then one day the inevitable happens: you meet a guy you really like. He’s fun. He’s exciting, and he’s interested in you.
So you start a relationship with him.
As you become more and more enthralled with this new guy, you become less and less enamored of your husband or boyfriend.
But you’re still not ready to give him up.
So you ease your conscience. You schedule fifteen minutes a day with the boyfriend or hubby to visit. Yes, it’s a little boring. Yes, it’s a duty. But at least it keeps the relationship going.
So here’s the question: is fifteen minutes a day the answer to your lack of intimacy with your husband or boyfriend? Or is the problem deeper than that?
We can ask the same question of our relationship with God: is fifteen minutes a day the answer to our lack of intimacy with Him, or does the problem go deeper than that?
It’s easy to see in a real-life example that the girl is being unfair to her partner. It’s not so easy to see in our relationship with God because we’ve grown accustomed to the sins and idols in our lives that separate us from Him.
One of the beauties of our relationship with God, though, is that He’s willing to work with us in getting rid of those idols and sins. And here’s the interesting thing: one of the best ways to get close to God is to go to Him for help with the things that bind us.
That’s what we’ll be talking about in this blog: how to go to God for help to gain victory over those bad habits and sins that control us and keep us from being as close to Him as we want to be.
Together we’ll look at the Bible verses that talk about transformation and see how to apply those to real-life situations. We’ll start on Monday.