Prayer: Building A Relationship With God
Jeremiah 33:1-16, Psalm 51, Matthew 6:5-16
Today, is the first day of Lent. A season of somber reflection and purposeful action where we prepare once again for the events of Holy Week. Through the 40 days of Holy Week (excluding Sundays), we are challenged to make a new purposeful effort in our faith. There are so many helpful practices that can help us in our faith life, things centred around giving, worship, sharing faith, learning about Jesus, and spending time with other Christians. This Lent, we will be honing in on one of the most important practices at the centre of all other practices: prayer. Prayer is the way in which we have been called to connect personally and communally to build a relationship with God.
So, let's look at this from another angle. How do we build a relationship with anyone? Well, the biggest thing is that you spend more time with them. In fact, in many of my experiences, this is one of the only things you have to do, other than care. Some of my friendships started from doing nothing of real substance, just time - riding the bus together, listening to music, playing video games, and so on. Of course to grow deeper in those relationships they need to be more than that, but what does this tell us about building our relationship with God? I think it is really simple. He wants us to spend more time with him. It does of course matter what we are doing, but God will take any moment we can spare him. As brother Lawrence said, “God does not ask much of us, merely a thought of him from time to time, a little act of adoration, sometimes to ask for his grace, sometimes to offer him your sufferings, at other times to thank him for his graces, past and present. He has bestowed on you, in the midst of your troubles to take solace in Him as often as you can. Lift up your heart to Him during your meals and in company; the least little remembrance will always be the most pleasing to him. One need not cry out very loudly; he is nearer to us than we think”.
Think about it. If a friend of your just called because they were thinking of you, sent you random little gifts, thanked you when you thought no one noticed or cared, asked for your help in the ways you were happy to help and so on. What would that mean to you and that friendship? God may be big and might and reply with a bounty of gifts, but he knows what we can give and he wants our whole heart.
God does also want prolonged and dedicated times: like worship, personal prayer, meditation or bible study. These are like the dates with a loved one or those one-to-one conversations, those catching up over coffee times, that mean so much because they have a kind of intimacy, closeness and focus that we all need and desire. Remember the greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. This should mean that our hearts long for those long dedicated moments to our greatest love. If we aren’t there, that is okay. Again, like any romantic relationship, our hearts need to be trained to know what love is. And it is amazing how deep this love goes.
The love and friendship of God should be enough benefits in themselves. God would love for us to seek him just for him. Again, like any other relationship, the relationship has a lot more depth if it is about the person not what they give you. But the interesting thing is that God doesn’t usually mind. He seems to be happy to tell people to come to him, so that they don’t have to be afraid, or so that their burdens are carried, or so that they might know the peace that surpasses understanding and so on. I think God knows something we don’t quite believe yet, and that's that all good gifts come from and have their source in him, as a direct result from his character and identity. What I have discovered is that the more I lean into my relationship with God, the more my fears are shed, the more I can know peace, the more I see my burdens being taken care of. God wants us to seek the gifts that come from a relationship with him because he knows that, ultimately, he is the gift that all these depend on.
We get tastes of this godly gift from both sides. When we turn to God we see him surrounding us even in the worst times, even when our friendship isn’t enough. When we turn away from God, we experience the desolation that is a day without redeeming or a lifetime without love. Yet God is always gracious in that he restricts the amount of that consequence we experience. He just wants us to understand what we are doing to ourselves and is more than happy to save us at a word.
I’ve been calling this relationship with God a friendship or a romance, but I think the more apt example is that of a parent and child - we are the children. We so utterly depend on him for our life and sustenance that we can barely do anything without him. Yet, even when we are screaming at him, not understanding that the spiritual milk is only a few minutes away, God like a loving parent still gently, deliberately, and lovingly gives us what we need. God does hope that we will stand on our own two feet and be able to choose for ourselves, but sadly there is a time of learning, where if we don’t listen to him we might find ourselves in the cleaning cupboard or medicine drawer - hurting ourselves both from a willful disobedience and a lack of full knowledge. He longs for us to show that simple and profound faith of a child that is so dependent on their parent that they feel like they are one. Or that faith that cries out for a parent and nothing else will do. Or that faith that longs to just collapse into the strength of those loving arms. That is where our relationship usually needs to start.
This is why so often people will go through the hardest points in their lives before turning to God. Sometimes we are so caught up in ourselves and the things of this world that we have spent our life running away from God. Then only then when we see the world falling apart without him do we finally see who we need and why we need him. Sometimes, we need to go through a few of these moments before it really sinks in.
Today, we are remembering what our life is without a relationship with God. All the way back at creation, we were made from the dust. God formed us, breathed into us, and blessed us. Without God, our lives are nothing but dust and we can see that all too clearly if we just look around. It is important to reflect on this mortality to see our weakness, our fault, our need. If we are diligent enough about this meditation and reflection God can take us to a place where we realize our absolute need and childlikeness so that we don’t have to go through those empty and dark times. This is not morbid, it is reality. It is sad, but it is the only way to true hope. It is disheartening, but only for the moment before we realize how surrounded by grace, love and mercy.
Today, we are marked by our death; let it encourage you to desire and seek after the only source of life. Today, as we start this season of Lent, let us diligently seek out those moments for God and let us set aside the moments for prolonged conversation. God has gifted us with prayer, the opportunity at any time in any place to reach out and connect with him. Let us see the immense gift it is as we experience the immense gift that God is. AMEN
