As a church, we have been wrestling with the question "What does a person who has a growing and maturing relationship with Jesus look like"? One of the ways that we can measure the depth of our love for God and the level of spiritual maturity is by evaluating how much time we spend contemplating or thinking about God, because we spend our time contemplating, or thinking about what we love and are devoted to, don’t we? A common thread that we see in the lives of people who have a growing and maturing relationship with God is that they invest time contemplating, thinking, and interacting with God. Now a natural question that arises is how do we invest time contemplating, thinking, and interacting with God, who is invisible and inaudible? As followers of Jesus, we invest time contemplating, thinking, and interacting with God through what are called spiritual disciplines. While the term spiritual disciplines sounds, well disciplined and intense, spiritual disciplines are simply ways that we carve out space in our lives to contemplate, think, and interact with Jesus so that we can encounter Him and be changed by Him. And in the Bible, Jesus reveals for us the reality that charting a course to spiritual maturity requires investing time thinking about God. In a famous sermon He preached, we also see Jesus reveal that we can misunderstand and misuse our time that we spend contemplating and thinking about God:
"Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven." Matthew 6:1
Jesus makes the crowd listening to Him aware of a potential danger that can occur while we are living out our relationship with God. Jesus warns the crowd, and to us today, that we need to be on alert when we are investing our time with God while in the presence of others. Jesus then reveals that what we need to be on the alert for the desire to be noticed by men. In essence, Jesus is warning us to be alert to the danger of investing our time with God through the practice of what we call spiritual disciplines in a way that is focused on impressing others. Jesus explains that investing our time with God in a way that is focused on impressing others causes us to lose our reward from our Father in Heaven. When Jesus speaks of the concept of rewards in Heaven, He is speaking about the amount of recognition one will receive from God for the quality their relationship with Him. The principle that Jesus is revealing here is that those who invest their time contemplating or thinking about God with a focus on impressing others will not develop a growing and maturing relationship with Him.
This week, we will look at how we can misuse and misunderstand a common spiritual practice, prayer. We will also look at how a person who has a growing and maturing relationship with Jesus prays.
Do you find yourself struggling with trying to impress others with how you pray or worship? What do you struggle with when it comes to investing time thinking about God?
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