Not Finished Yet - I Am a Work In Progress - Be Patient With Me

To lie or tell the truth? To cheat or to be faithful? To steal or not steal? To gossip or to pray?  To give or to keep? To love or hate? To receive or to refuse? To encourage or discourage?  To trust or doubt? To embrace or to reject? Choices, daily choice we make every step of our lives. What determinate that in some instances we choose right and other times we messed it up? What regulates our choices? 

I been listening to people’s stories as they share their lives and as I was reading the Fallen Pastor’s entry the same question occupied my mind and of course if you know me just a little bit, you know that I asked. The truth is before he even answered I knew the answer. You know why? I look back at my own life and I can tell you that it’s not about the circumstances of my life that made me decide the choices I made in different times but it was my relationship with God.

The choices I made over my lifetime directly reflected my relationship with God. I have no doubt at all and I can tell you with total confidence that our choices reflect our relationship with God! Our choices have nothing to do with our circumstances, its all about our relationship with God. The closer and more intimate my walk is with God, the better choices I made and make. The further I am from God, the worst choices I make.

We never just suddenly fall. Falling is the result from backing off from God. It’s start with little things like: not talking to God (praying), not sharing your pain and disappointments, not reading God’s word for yourself, not asking God to point out what’s wrong with you…oh no asking God to change the other person…because it’s nothing wrong with you…it’s everything wrong with them. Little-by-little leaving God out of our business, our marriage, our family, and our personal life.

The way we talk with people, the way we treat others, the way we choose our words, actions and our instant reactions all reflect our personal relationship with God.

Going to church will not give you a personal relationship with God.

 I grew up in a church and all I saw was a bunch of people getting together to “serve and praise God”. Interestingly, these people after the sermon was finished would spend more time gossiping about others then the actual service time was. I was filled with theological and mental knowledge about how to worship God, what the rules and regulations are and what grace is. I just never saw grace in action. I never saw love in action. All I saw is a bunch of self righteous people judging others. I never saw what it meant to be a sinner and loved.

 

Reading the Bible might not give you a personal relationship with God. Praying might not get you closer to God either. For close to 30 years I would read my Bible and Pray. I had my devotional book and read the Bible verse of the day and read that little note with it and pray. I would tell God all my need and go on with my daily life. God was part of my life in the morning and maybe at night if I didn’t fall a sleep before I said my night prayer.

God was part of my life Sunday while I was in the church and song those nice songs and when I recited nice poems. Of course this was part of the religious life I lived. I was a Christian. Oh yeah a Baptist one, you know, the good one, because the Catholics weren’t considered real Christians. I thought I had it all.  I worked hard within the church to earn God’s love and attention and so on.  Do you recognize this maybe in your present or past life?

Until…one day I realized that my whole religion means nothing. I would stop reading the Bible for weeks and months and years. I would still show up in the church and pray and look so religious but I was empty.  I could never see the God of the Bible as my Father. When sometimes I would read that God talked with someone, or heard the sentence “God told me” I was wondering what’s wrong with me.

Do you guess the choices I made in those days directly reflected my relationship – or better put it – not relationship with God?  Yes, you’re right.

Then one day then I told God – this is it. I don’t want any of this. I am sick and tired of church, and fake people and theology and this whole religious thing…God you either show up to be real to me and change me…or I’m not interested in this business at all. I will not play this game…it will be real or nothing.

Guess what? God did show up and my personal relationship with God started there, in that moment. Since then God works patiently with me and in me, and on me to change me one step at the time so that he will be able to work through me and that is the biggest reward I can imagine. The God who created the universe, wants to work through me and he want to be your friend too.

This is why I started Work In Progress Online Bible Community. Where it’s not about theology and mental knowledge, but a simple way of telling God, this is your Word, your spoken Word and I want you Lord to explain it to me in a way that without seminary and all kinds of theological background I can just simply understand your word, your will for my life. I want to live a life when I can walk close to you God, to listen to you and you’ll talk to me and guide me just as you promised. Simple as that. I think religion just messes up the simple message of the gospel.

In the next while I will share my life choices and you will see that my choices had nothing to do with my circumstances, it had all to do with my relationship with God.

I hope that this will help you start or deepen your personal relationship with God in a new level. “Come near to God and he will come near to you.” ~ James 4:8

I believe that if you long to know God, if you yearn for a deep and abiding relationship with Jesus, if you want to live the Christian life faithfully and know what God requires from you, you must do more than just read the Bible, go to church and study what someone else has said about God and the Bible.

You must interact with God’s Word personally, absorbing its message and letting God engrave his truth on your heart, mind and life. This is the very heart of a personal, close and intimate relationship with God: seeing truth for yourself, discerning what it means, and applying that truth to your life.

Jesus didn’t come to give you religion, Jesus came to give you life and you’ll find that only when you will choose to put God first and have that close personal relationship. And let me tell you one thing: the God of the Bible is real, he is my Father and he DOES talk to me too and he wants to talk with you too. Are you ready to listen?

How do you see your relationship with God impacted the choices you made in your past? Would you share some with me?

Come back to see how that unfolded in my life.