DO YOU WANT A DEEPER LOVING RELATIONSHIP WITH OUR LORD? – PART 2
Author: Sakkie Parsons
Translated from Afrikaans
Translator: Robin Barker
Someone wrote to me and asked the question: “Can I ask you something; I am converted and I want to spend more quiet time with our Lord. Do you maybe have any advice on how to spend more time with God?“
So, reading between the lines of the writing to me I understand that this person does have a relationship with Jesus, but wants to have much more of a relationship and also a more intense one.
In my previous writing I showed you how extremely important it is to study our Lord’s Word because the Word is precisely what we say the Word is. It is our Lord’s words to us. (In case you did not receive the previous writing, and you really would like to receive it, you can contact me so that I can send you the first part of this writing.
A conversation is not a conversation if only one person does the talking and the other person must just listen.
That is why our Lord also really wants you and I to speak to Him, because a person surely wants to hear the voice of the one they love, saying that they are in love with them and it is also lovely to hear what your loved one’s desires and needs are.
Now, do you want to have a more, much more intense relationship with our Lord?
Apart from you continually studying His Word and hear and understand more and more how our Lord feels about us and what, to say it that way, what He expects of you, strike up a conversation with our Lord through prayer and do this very, very regularly.
JESUS was a wonderful example for us. According to my opinion the Person of whom we have the most examples in the Word that He prayed, is our Lord Jesus Himself and I give some examples thereof:
MATT 14:23 After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. Later that night, he was there alone,
LUKE 5:16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.
LUKE 6:12 One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.
I do not mean that every time you truly want to talk to our Lord, that you must fall down on your knees, or that you must raise your hands in the air, or something like that. Our Lord is, as I believe, more interested in what He hears from our heart than the position of your body.
There may be some Christian’s that speak once a day to our Lord and then they wonder why they do not have a truly, loving relationship with our Lord.
My great hero Paul gives us the following advice and I am certain he meant it the way I have just explained to you here above:
EPH 6:18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.
An example – according to my opinion – of one kind of useless prayer, is the group of recitations which are sometimes said at, say no more, the dining room table. How long do you think a man’s wife will feel loved if they hear every day: “Goodbye my sweetness, you still remains my sweetheart.”
Then, bang, closes the front door and there he goes and does what he needs to do and does what is important to him.
Tonight he comes home again: “Good evening my sweetheart, you still remain my sweetheart.”
Then, Bang, he drops down in front of the TV, waits for his food etc. and looks at the programs which are important to him.
Again I ask, how long will a man or woman put up with this sort of behaviour, and still feel cherished?
Many people as an example will recite the ‘Our Father’ in MATTHEW 6:9-14 as a sort of poem. While the ’Our Father’ was actually given by Jesus to us as an example of how our Lord, in which order, really wants to hear from us.
There are people who want to divide the ‘Our Father’ into more sections but I share with you how I see it, understand and try to live it. Firstly I will begin with worship:
MATT 6:9 “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,”
After I have lovingly worshiped our Lord, then I will talk with our Lord about all the things around me that I see that I trust Him to provide. Firstly about that which is in His kingdom about which I feel I want to talk to Him and then the things around me, like as an example the government, poverty etc., with which in actual fact I can only trust Him with:
MATT 6:10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven
Then I will talk to our Lord about all my needs and requests which are important to me at that particular time, because they have appeared in my heart at that particular time:
MATT 6:11 “Give us today our daily bread.”
Then I will confess my sins and then I will talk with our Lord about the wrong in my life which I am still struggling with:
MATT 6:12 “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
Then I will talk with our Lord about His protection against satan and all the other evils which are still to come on the road ahead,
MATT 6:13 “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
I generally close with a great, hearty feeling by just telling my Father how wonderful He is to me, although I know the last section of the ‘Our Father’, which we read in the Word, does not appear in the oldest scriptures but was included at a later time: (The following is from the NKJV as this does not appear in the NIV, NLT, NLV. Please note in the Afrikaans version this appears in verse 14, where as in the English it appears in verse 13)
MATT 6:13 “… For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
This is basically what my prayer incorporates at least once a day. If you want to cloister yourself, try to do this in a place where you can be alone with our Lord and just talk out loud with our Lord. It helps me personally to remain focused, because remember, satan knows what you are busy doing.
For me is it lovely to be alone talking with our Lord – that when I am affected, I can lovingly cry and I do not have to think about someone coming in to see what is happening.
Jesus did, as you have read, cloistered (apart) Himself, away from everyone.
The rest of the day in the process of walking, typing, eating etc., I will talk to our Lord.
I would strongly encourage you, to put it that way, to take this recipe, because it works for me and helps me to grow and also to have a loving relationship with our Lord, which still, according to me, grows daily.
Although I know that you and I can never truly have, in this life time, a complete relationship with our Lord, I want to encourage you to have the same attitude in your relationship with our Lord which my great hero Paul had, and what I strive towards, although I sometimes fail miserably in my attempts:
PHIL 3:12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
How wonderful is our Lord’s love for us, because even if you, like me, stumble often and sometimes even fall:
1JOHN 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
How is it possible, that someone may ask, that a God who is so great and holy as I have proclaimed, can continually forgive people, people that continually try and continually falter and fail? Because – and how wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to know –
1JOHN 2:1-2 1 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
I loudly rejoice!
HEB 12:1-2 1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
In these two writings from the Word I have tried to show you how you and I, wonderfully through His Word and our prayers, can communicate with our lord and how our relationship with our Lord can grow.
Now I just want to remind you, because I wrote about it in my first writing about this subject. If you read the Word and if you talk to our Lord, do not lose sight of the following:
1. You are reading the words from God Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, who also maintains it within the hollow of His hand.
2. You are talking to the Person who loves you even more than anyone else, yourself included.
Greetings,
Sakkie