Are You A Good Lover?
Is the Bible Dead?
Is there anything of relevance to be found in it? Over the years I have studied the Bible and the more I do so the more this living Word of God comes alive in my hands.
There was a time when it was a dead and dry and dusty book. There was a time when the Bible was for me just a small black book with musty pages and antiquated language.
Is it that way for you?
When I learned to take this precious book into my hands and realised that is was a living thing - my life was on its way to being fundamentally changed. When Christ truly lives within us then this Book comes alive. As we read it - the Lord speaks to us. As we savour a verse it becomes real joy in our hearts. As we turn to another it challenges us to grow or perhaps even to change our ways.
Prayer is a wonderful thing.
To talk to God all day long and listen to His replies is a marvellous experience.
Is that the way it is with you?
To have the LORD with you at every point of your life providing advice and support and counsel and guidance and comfort - is a joy too deep for words.
Do these words above describe your experience of the Christian life? Do you wake up each morning with God in your heart or on your lips? As you stir into wakefulness are your first words directed to the Lord?
Is it good to be a Christian?
Do you walk down the street and feel sad because there are so many who don't experience your daily walk with the Lord?
If not why not? Is there a reason?
All I have described above could have been written about my relationship with the woman I love (and lest anyone start any rumours - I mean my wife!).
To know her has been a life changing experience for me, to walk and talk with her and to listen to her is real joy.I wake with her in my thoughts and her presence with me and I go to sleep in the same way. When I walk down the street I am proud to be with her and glad to be seen to belong at her side.
And that's the KEY to a right relationship with GOD.
It is LOVE.
It was understanding this that changed my relationship with GOD and my prayer life and my reading of the BIBLE. To be a Christian is to be IN LOVE with God.
"All night long on my bed I looked for the one my heart loves; I looked for him but did not find him. I will get up now and go about the city, through its streets and squares; I will search for the one my heart loves. So I looked for him but did not find him. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. "Have you seen the one my heart loves?" Scarcely had I passed them when I found the one my heart loves. I held him and would not let him go till I had brought him to my mother's house, to the room of the one who conceived me."
"How handsome you are my lover! Oh, how charming! And our bed is so verdant."
These are the words of the Song of Songs. The first quotation is from chapter 3v1-5 and the second Chapter 1 verse 16. This is a love poem describing the relationship of Israel to God and The Church to Jesus and the individual to His Redeemer. These are OUR words to our Lord.
When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment of all was he replied in the words of Deuteronomy 6
"Love the Lord your God with all you heart and with all your soul and with all your strength".
Now that's the secret of success, in your life, in the life of our church.
When people ask me why a certain church grows way beyond expectation or why one church is full and another empty the answer usually lies here. If it is a true church (and not just a social club with a chaplain) then it is blessed because the folk there are in LOVE with the LORD.
It's the most wonderful thing that can ever happen to you - to fall In LOVE With GOD Himself.