thequest family,
This past Sunday in the INSTITUTE we were talking about being dependent on God. The practical piece for application that was suggested to foster dependence was to pray. Sounds pretty basic huh. Here’s the quote that zinged the point home:
“We may assent to the fact that we are dependent on Christ, but if our prayer life is meager or perfunctory, we thereby deny it. We are in effect saying we can handle most of our spiritual life with our own self-discipline and perceived innate goodness.” (pg 86 of Growing Your Faith)
The next step in our discussion was to plan some times this week to spend in prayer. If you are like me good intentions typically only get me to …”well, I should do that”… and then I don’t. So we made a little time to make a plan–to have an appointment with Jesus.
On Monday, I got the following email:
“I wanted to say thanks for that idea you presented yesterday morning about making an appointment to meet with Jesus as if we would make an appointment with anyone else for work or with friends.I had made mine for 9 am this morning as I don’t start work on Mondays now until 11 am. I was running late as I was preparing a little for a meeting I had at work at 11 and was going to skip my time and make it up later but then the idea of keeping the appointment with Jesus popped in my head and I thought of whether I would just put someone at work or a friend off that way and the answer was no, so I made myself stop and keep the appointment with Jesus for a time of Bible reading and prayer. It calmed down the rushing I was doing and the meeting went fine.
But the main thing was that I did not blow it off. It made me start thinking, “why I would blow off an appointment with Jesus,” which I often do. At the same time, I had never thought of it as an appointment before, but I would never think of doing that with say someone like you unless there was some emergency.
So I think this concept is something I will continue to follow even after this week-just writing it into my work calendar for everyday.I like these practical kinds of ways to make Christianity real to me. So thanks.”
Would you like to set up an appointment or two with Jesus for the next few days? He would love it if you would. He’s just waiting for you to make the time. Enjoy some sweet time together.
Press on,
Mike