Darling if you want Me to be closer to you, get closer to Me...

I think the title is an old Seals & Croft song (A cool 70's-ish band, most famous for "Summer Breeze").  And, it reminds me of the story Frank likes to tell (or joke) every now and then.  So, I will paraphrase it here for you:

 

Guy & Gal start dating and the guy has a bench front seat, pick-up truck.  Gal snuggles close to guy as they drive everywhere together.  Eventually, true love is declared and guy & gal get married, have children and move from smaller house to bigger house to accommodate growing family.  About 20 years into their marriage...guy & gal are driving along.  Gal is sitting on the passenger side of the same old bench front seat, pick-up truck.  Gal looks over at guy and says, "how come we are so far apart and you are all the way over there?"  Guy looks at gal and says, "I never moved."

 

Isn't this how it is in our relationship with God?!  We have that initial first response (first-love) to the amazing fact God saved us and we LOVE Him and want to tell everyone we know about Him!  Then, like any relationship, our love begins to wane and cool.  Why is that?  We stop working at it...things don't go our way...we get hurt and harbor anger and resentment...put in your excuse here: _____.  But that's just it! It is an excuse.  There is NO reasonable explanation for why we cool in our love relationship with the Lord (or each other).  WE get in the way.  Our focus shifts off of the Lord Jesus Christ and onto Me...me...me.  Which reminds me of another funny joke Frank likes to tell:  "Okay, that's enough talking about me.  Let's talk about you.  What do you think of me!"  Or, something like that.  He is a WAY better story/joke teller than I am.  Sheesh.

 

Again, if you haven't read the book "Crazy Love," by Francis Chan...you REALLY should.  While my mom was at Town & Country during her hospice care, I kept reading this book to pass the time.  Sometimes I would read it aloud to her and other times, read silently.  I came to chapter 5 - "Serving Leftovers to a Holy God."  This was a VERY difficult chapter for me to read, and I am thankful Pastor Chan wrote it!  Let me type a paragraph or two from it:

 

"God's definition of what matters is pretty straightforward.  He measures our lives by how we love.  In our culture, even if a pastor doesn't actually love people, he can still be considered successful as long as he is a gifted speaker, makes his congregation laugh, or prays for "all those poor, suffering people in the world" every Sunday.

 

What scares me most are the people who are lukewarm and just don't care.  I think that if I did a poll of the readers of this book, many of you would say, "Yeah, I am definitely lukewarm at times, but I'm not really at a place to give more to God."  Many of us believe we have as much of God as we want right now, a reasonable portion of God among all the other things in our lives.  Most of our thoughts are centered on the money we want to make, the school we want to attend, the body we aspire to have, the spouse we want to marry, the kind of person we want to become.... But the fact is that nothing should concern us more than our relationship with God; it's about eternity, and nothing compares with that.  God is not someone who can be tacked on to our lives.

 

When we put it plainly like this - as a direct choice between God and our stuff - most of us hope we would choose God.  But we need to realize that how we spend our time, what our money goes toward, and where we will invest our energy is equivalent to choosing God or rejecting Him.  How could we think for even a second that something on this puny little earth compares to the Creator and Sustainer and Savior of it all?

 

We disgust God when we weigh and compare Him against the things of this world.  It makes Him sick when we actually decide those things are better for us than God Himself.  We believe we don't need anything Jesus offers, but we fail to realize that slowly, almost imperceptibly, we are drifting downstream.  And in the process we are becoming blind, being stripped naked, and turning into impoverished wretches.

 

No wonder Jesus says He will spit lukewarm people out of His mouth!" 

Who or what are you closest to today?  If you aren't pursuing God and all that He provides, manifested by loving others, then what really is the point?  I remember in college we used to comfort each other by the fact we were spiritually closer to God today than we were a year ago.  How misleading that consolation was!  Comparing our own spirituality to who we were or who we used to be is pointless.  How do we compare to Christ?  That is where the rubber meets the road.  Nothing else, no one else is worth comparing ourselves to.

 

In Hebrews, Paul reminds us what all this is about - Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12:1-3)

 

"So that you will not grow weary and lose heart..."  Are you weary?  Are you discouraged?  Have you lost heart?  Who are you closer to?  Read on.

 

I love you & pray for you daily!

Mary

 

PlanetWisdom.com Devotionals

Get Closer Posted: 13 Feb 2009 04:52 PM CST "Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." (James 4:8) I can't think of any promise in the Bible that makes me feel more small and more loved by God than this one. Why would He do this? If I come near to Him, this verse promises that He will come near to me. That feels wrong and wonderful all at the same time. Take off your Valentine's glasses for a minute. This isn't flowery greeting card poetry to make us feel fuzzy and warm. This is astounding. The God of the universe — the all-powerful one, the endless one — is willing to respond to my initiation, to notice my half-step in His direction and take a step in response? He absolutely would not have to. I'm puny. I'm fragile. I'm a speck among billions. I'm here for a breath and then gone into eternity. But the love of the eternal one motivates Him to bend toward me when I reach for Him. I don't get it, but I love Him for it. The second sentence in the verse is the only logical response: He is holy. I want to be cleaner inside and out if He's going to notice me. Think: Does God's responsive love for you motivate you to want to clean up your life? Does it motivate you to love Him more? Pray: Thank God that He promises to come near to you when you come near to Him. Do: Make a quick list of two things you could do to clean up your heart and your actions as a way of moving closer to God. Visit PlanetWisdom.com for more great resources!