Every relationship has a recipe. Every recipe has its essentials. Recipes also have subsidiary ingredients. Like you can make English tea without sugar and milk it just won't be very good. You can make a pie without filling and take great pictures of it but as soon as you try and enjoy it's taste, the pictures won't look as tasty anymore. Some people try to have a relationship with God but they miss alot of the subsidiary ingredients. Say a person believes in Jesus and is trying to obey Him but they've forgotten that obeying Jesus is supposed to be something that we want to do, not that we just have to force ourselves to do. They have the necessary ingredients, faith and works but they've missed the joy that makes a relationship with God sustainable. Other people can look from the outside like their relationship with God is vibrant, like the pie with no filling but once you bite into that person you realize how they are just an empty crust.
Anyway, so this post is about ingredients for relationship with God. Several come to mind right away, things like faith, love, hope, discipline, prayer, time, desire and others. Faith in a triune God who is just and merciful and loves His children and always keeps His word. Love for God and for the things that He loves. Hope in God's promises. Discipline of ourselves for we are stupid creatures of habit that will continue destroy ourselves by eating at places like McDonalds and watching shows like Family Guy and sleeping in past twelve oclock and knowing more about current celebrities than we know about past leaders and on and on. Prayer to communicate with God. Time spent with God and with His people and with His creation. Desire to see God glorified and honored. Obviously, no relationship with God is the same, so how much of these ingredients and in what order they are combined will look differently depending on the person.
One specific ingredient though that I read about earlier is obedience. Obedience is a simple concept but it is often terribly difficult in practice. Meaning, it's not complex when the Bible says forgive your enemy but it's often a really painful and emotional process. It's not complex when Jesus commands us to be baptized but it can be awkward and embarrassing for some people. Anyway, in Luke 17:11-19 Jesus is traveling and is met by ten lepers. They ask Him to have mercy on them. He doesn't really respond to their question. He doesn't say yes, or no, or if you do this and this and this than I'll have mercy on you. He gives them a specific command. He tells them to go and show themselves to the priest. Now the priests would be the ones who can officially declare someone a leper and therefore an outcast or if a leper had been healed they could declare them officially clean. So essentially what Jesus is doing is saying to these men go and act like your clean. I know your body is still destroying itself and your still covered in oozing sores and puss but I want you to go to the priest and tell them that you are healed.
I know several people, actually, I take that back, everybody in the world sins. Some people ask God to forgive their sins, which He does but they don't feel it. And than they sin again and they wonder why they did it. Than they get stuck and just kinda wait in their sin for God to fix them and forgive them and generally they are just sorta confused and feel bad and want in some sense to be better because they know experientially how sucky sin is. What I think Jesus is saying to the lepers and what hes saying to you and me is that He has and is and continues to have mercy on us. What we need to do is get up and start acting healed. Yes we still have the habits of our sinful ways just like the lepers still had the visible signs of their leprosy. But what does the passage say? "And as they went, they were cleansed." We don't become pure by sitting around waiting for Jesus to cleanse us. It's in our obedience to His commands that we experience the benefits of His mercy. Jesus had mercy on the lepers, probably even before they asked. They couldn't experience the healing power of His mercy until after they got up, and walked in obedience to His commands.
I think we need to take a lesson from these lepers. We need to stop sitting in the woes of our own situation and humbly obey the merciful commands of our savior. I believe that in obedience is the cure to our sin and all the negative consequences of our sin. God rarely ever just zaps somebody into holiness or purity or joy or love. He does though provide counsel and prescriptions it's up to us though everyday to decide how we going to obey. C.S. Lewis said,
The real trouble about the duty of forgiveness is that you do it with all your might on Monday and then find on Wednesday that it hasn’t stayed put and all has to be done over again."
And so we have this choice, everyday to decide will we go and show ourselves to the priest? Will we, despite feeling depressed, give praise to our King who makes the moon shine and the birds sing in the morning. When we feel guilty will we thank our savior who poured out His blood that we can walk in newness of life? When we feel discouraged and alone will we remember Jesus when all His friends left Him to face the most trying night in human existence, alone, and remember His words, "take heart, for I have overcome the world." In obedience the lepers found a cure for their illness. As we walk in obedience and experience freedom from our sin let's not forget to be like the Samaritan leper who returned and gave praise to God who is the author of our healing. For it is not the action of our obedience that gives power to heal but the person being obeyed who provides all that's required.
Go in peace in the faith that makes us well.
Anyway, so this post is about ingredients for relationship with God. Several come to mind right away, things like faith, love, hope, discipline, prayer, time, desire and others. Faith in a triune God who is just and merciful and loves His children and always keeps His word. Love for God and for the things that He loves. Hope in God's promises. Discipline of ourselves for we are stupid creatures of habit that will continue destroy ourselves by eating at places like McDonalds and watching shows like Family Guy and sleeping in past twelve oclock and knowing more about current celebrities than we know about past leaders and on and on. Prayer to communicate with God. Time spent with God and with His people and with His creation. Desire to see God glorified and honored. Obviously, no relationship with God is the same, so how much of these ingredients and in what order they are combined will look differently depending on the person.
One specific ingredient though that I read about earlier is obedience. Obedience is a simple concept but it is often terribly difficult in practice. Meaning, it's not complex when the Bible says forgive your enemy but it's often a really painful and emotional process. It's not complex when Jesus commands us to be baptized but it can be awkward and embarrassing for some people. Anyway, in Luke 17:11-19 Jesus is traveling and is met by ten lepers. They ask Him to have mercy on them. He doesn't really respond to their question. He doesn't say yes, or no, or if you do this and this and this than I'll have mercy on you. He gives them a specific command. He tells them to go and show themselves to the priest. Now the priests would be the ones who can officially declare someone a leper and therefore an outcast or if a leper had been healed they could declare them officially clean. So essentially what Jesus is doing is saying to these men go and act like your clean. I know your body is still destroying itself and your still covered in oozing sores and puss but I want you to go to the priest and tell them that you are healed.
I know several people, actually, I take that back, everybody in the world sins. Some people ask God to forgive their sins, which He does but they don't feel it. And than they sin again and they wonder why they did it. Than they get stuck and just kinda wait in their sin for God to fix them and forgive them and generally they are just sorta confused and feel bad and want in some sense to be better because they know experientially how sucky sin is. What I think Jesus is saying to the lepers and what hes saying to you and me is that He has and is and continues to have mercy on us. What we need to do is get up and start acting healed. Yes we still have the habits of our sinful ways just like the lepers still had the visible signs of their leprosy. But what does the passage say? "And as they went, they were cleansed." We don't become pure by sitting around waiting for Jesus to cleanse us. It's in our obedience to His commands that we experience the benefits of His mercy. Jesus had mercy on the lepers, probably even before they asked. They couldn't experience the healing power of His mercy until after they got up, and walked in obedience to His commands.
I think we need to take a lesson from these lepers. We need to stop sitting in the woes of our own situation and humbly obey the merciful commands of our savior. I believe that in obedience is the cure to our sin and all the negative consequences of our sin. God rarely ever just zaps somebody into holiness or purity or joy or love. He does though provide counsel and prescriptions it's up to us though everyday to decide how we going to obey. C.S. Lewis said,
The real trouble about the duty of forgiveness is that you do it with all your might on Monday and then find on Wednesday that it hasn’t stayed put and all has to be done over again."
And so we have this choice, everyday to decide will we go and show ourselves to the priest? Will we, despite feeling depressed, give praise to our King who makes the moon shine and the birds sing in the morning. When we feel guilty will we thank our savior who poured out His blood that we can walk in newness of life? When we feel discouraged and alone will we remember Jesus when all His friends left Him to face the most trying night in human existence, alone, and remember His words, "take heart, for I have overcome the world." In obedience the lepers found a cure for their illness. As we walk in obedience and experience freedom from our sin let's not forget to be like the Samaritan leper who returned and gave praise to God who is the author of our healing. For it is not the action of our obedience that gives power to heal but the person being obeyed who provides all that's required.
Go in peace in the faith that makes us well.
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