Launching question (3 min)
• Why do we need to develop our relationship with God?
• How do we develop our relationship with God?
• What hindrances do you encounter in developing your relationship with God?
Discussion
• What are the benefits of developing our relationship with God? List as many as you can.
- We will know God better and accomplished great things (Daniel 11:32)
- We will develop trust in God.
- We will know God’s will for our lives, the devil also has a 'will' for our lives, it is important to keep ourselves on track with God firstly by knowing His will for us.
- Experience spiritual growth (2 Tim 3:16-17).
- We become like God, the more we spend time with a person, the more we become like him.
- Peace assurance of God in control (PS 119:165) .
• What are the things that you need to let go in order to develop your relationship with God?
The 3Ds of developing our relationship with God
• Desire
After discussing and knowing so many benefits we will have in spending and developing our relationship with God. More so, these benefits cannot be reaped elsewhere, hopefully, it would stir our hearts to greatly desire to spend time with God. The Psalmist David said it is better to spend one day in the house of the Lord than a thousand days elsewhere. It is great to be in the Lord’s presence!
• Discern what is important
I was kind of impressed by an ex-colleague who could religiously set aside time to spend time reading the Quran. Then I came to know that it is one of the five pillars of faith he has to follow as they believe meeting those five pillars will earn them a place in heaven. In order to fulfill this duty or five pillars of faith, they would wake up as early as 5am to pray. As Christians, we know a Savior who died for us and whom we cannot earn His love for He paid for our sins on the cross. Jesus said that we are saved by faith through grace and not by the works of man so that we should boast. Shouldn’t we as Christians knowing we do not spend time with God to fulfill a duty, discipline ourselves to set aside time with God every day? Perhaps, sometimes as Christians we have taken for granted the gift of God’s grace. Generally, anything that falls on our laps, humans tend to take it for granted easily, so let us go to God because he is worthy of our adoration and worship and not out of a sense of duty.
The tyranny of the urgent
Jesus declared on the cross “It is finished”, not only had he went to the cross but he has accomplished the will of God in his 3 years of ministry on earth. The key of his accomplishment is that Jesus did what is important to God. There are so many things in our day that is labeled ‘urgent’, if we are to keep doing things that are ‘urgent’, we will definitely miss what’s important. Separate the important and urgent from the urgent but not important. In saying that, you have to decide what is important/important & urgent.
• Decision
Developing our relationship with God is ultimately a choice you make. We make choices daily. Someone once said that the most important decision you make is the next decision. You make a choice whether to take up a particular job offer, you make a choice to what to eat for lunch, and you make a choice to receive the Lord as your personal Lord and Savior. Therefore, you also make the important choice of making an effort to spend time with your Lord and Savior.
Today’s sharing is not shared so that you we might feel guilty and do something but to awaken us again to something too familiar and put things into perspective again.
22Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. Let us not be the man who after looking at his face in the mirror, walks away and forget about it but let us….ponder about what the Lord has spoken to us and do what he says.
