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All posts tagged with obey

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In the previous message, we learned about the importance of building a relationship with God and how to do it.  This relationship is crucial if we are to trust God.  We can’t trust God in the absence of this relationship.

 

In today’s lesson, we will touch on practical things that we need to do to effectively start building this relationship with God.  Please take note of the word, “effectively” here.  To try and explain a little on my choice and usage of the word “effectively”, I would say something is effective if it is working and achieving its desired and intended purpose. 

 

To begin with, the purpose of our building a relationship with God is primarily to know Him better, to understand Him so that we can trust Him.  When we trust Him, it makes it easier for us to obey Him, to do His will and to let Him be God in our lives.  That way we will be willing and able to surrender control of our lives to Him.  Therefore it is important to have a target or a goal that we want to reach as we start relationship building exercise.  There are so many ways of doing that, for instance we may decide we want to be thematic and study everything about the love of God, or the power of God.  We may decide that we want to look at all the promises of God, etc.  Alternatively, we may decide that we want to study Bible book after another and read the Bible through in two years, just as an example. 

 

As we go through our studies, we should determine that by the end of each Bible study we are able to answer the following questions:

—  What does this verse of scripture mean?

—  What is God telling me?

—  Exactly how does this apply to my life?

—  What changes do I need to make in my life in order to do what God is telling me to do?

—  What am I going to do differently today, this week, this month, during the next year?

By doing this, we should be able to start knowing God more and moving closer to doing His will.  We know in worldly life that the more you have commonalities with someone, the more compatible you are with that person.  When you are compatible with someone, the easier it becomes to build a relationship with such a person.  Using the same logic then it means when we have reached this stage in our lives, it becomes easier to build a relationship with God for we are now ready to listen and obey Him.

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Testimony

As my wife and I started putting some of the lessons we learned through this series into practice, we noticed something unusual.  We used to fuel the vehicle that I am using for driving around town and it would only run for a week on that fuel and then we had to refuel again.  But after going through this series of lessons and deciding to seriously put them into practice, for example increasing our giving in our offerings, we noticed something unusual.  We noticed that I drove on the same amount of fuel for almost two weeks but with increased usage even.  Therefore, we accomplished more with the same amount of fuel we used before, resulting in a saving for us.

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It is also important to emphasise here that taking action on what we learn or have learned is key in successfully and effectively building a relationship with God.  As we take action, each step we take in this process will lead to growth in this relationship that we want to build with God.  We will have to start with small steps and continue incrementally until we begin to take bigger steps.  If we fail to take steps, it does not matter how small they may be, we will not grow and we run the risk of being just hearers of the word and not doers.  When we are just hearers of the Word, then we become what the Bible in 2 Timothy 3:4 refer to as “… having a form of godliness but denying its power…”  In other words, we will just be like some of us are at the moment, Christians by name with nothing to offer.  I certainly don’t want to be like that.  What about you?

 

We will stop here for now, but have a productive and blessed day further.