Lent 2010 - Week 4

Image by jenny downing via Flickr

This week, more on rich relationships...

Jesus knew a thing or two about time management. Admittedly, he didn't live in our post 80's, free market, time is money, survival of the fittest culture...

But all the same.

There have always been pressures on time, there has always been the temptation to find other things more attractive than decent time with our heavenly father, and Jesus modeled a better way.

He only had three years to bring in the kingdom of God in word and action, before his time had come.

And he needed to prepare for that too - nothing less than the sacrifice of his own life - traded for ours and all people's. Which is why you read, at each strategic moment in his life, that Jesus went away and spend time with his dad:

"Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed." Luke 5:15-16

And if he needed it, how much more do we need it. We find ourselves in places where we wonder how on earth we got there, or why life is like it is. We feel like we are going under, or that we have lost direction. Perhaps we even blame God for it.

But life always was a matter of perspective - its that age old thing of is the glass half empty or half full? Perhaps the reason Jesus was able to say "not my will but yours" in the agony of Gethsemane, was because he had spent so much of his life listening to what that will was.

So how to find the water of the Spirit with which to fill our glass half full?

Its at this point I would normally waffle on about reading the bible and praying, which is of course, what Jesus did. But I would like to suggest something else too. Lets look for people who have a rich relationship with God and hang out with them. Copy them, let their way of life - rub off on ours.

We have a good precedent, the apostle Paul says:

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you." Philippians 4:8-10

So lets do it, whether its some one we know or someone famous, lets find people who model a rich relationship with God - and put it into practice.