Sat Inspiration

Morning Inspiration with Pastor Merritt

I love the old story about a farmer and his wife and they were driving to town in their pickup truck. The farmer was sitting behind the steering wheel in silence. His wife was sitting on the other side of the cab all the way against the door. His wife looked over at him and said, “John, you know when we first got married we didn’t sit this far apart.” The farmer looked at his wife and said, “I ain’t the one that moved.” If you are not close to God, or if you are far from God, He is not the one that moved. He promises that if you make the effort to draw near to Him, He will draw near to you.

Think about the kinds of relationships that you have in your own life and how those relationships developed and why those relationships are the way they are. If you think about it, basically, every relationship you have will fall into one of four categories.

We all have casual relationships. There are people that we barely know. We might recognize the face and not even remember their name. We rarely, if ever, see them and when we do we may exchange a simple greeting and go our way.

Then we have what I called connected relationships. These are people that we know, because of some type of connection. Maybe they work in the same company, or work in the same office building, or maybe they play on the same team, or they are a member of the same organization, but basically the only interaction and the only tie that is there is just some kind of a formal connection.

Then we have what I called cordial relationships. These are people we would call friends. Whereas the first two categories would be more acquaintances, these would be people we would call friends. These are the kind of people that you may or may not ever do anything socially with. If you ever are together the conversation is pretty much surface. It kind of stays on a general level. You talk about family, sports, and the weather, but you stay in shallow water. You never go deep.

Then there are those relationships we call close. These are much, much, fewer and farther between than all the other relationships. These are the people that you believe in the most and the people you open up to. These are the people that will walk into your house when the whole world just walked out.

If you think about it, your relationship to God will kind of fall into one of those four areas. Some of you have a casual relationship with God. You believe in God. You believe He is out there, but if you ever get in a bind or need help you’ll call on Him, but other than that it is kind of live and let live.

Then, some of you have this connected relationship mainly through church. You consider yourself religious or even spiritual, but again it is all formal. You come to church and do your thing and leave. It is kind of like your business when closing time hits, you go home and leave your work behind until the next Sunday.

Then, some of you have a cordial relationship with God. You would call God your friend. You may pray over your meals and talk to him occasionally. You read your Bible occasionally and let Him talk to you sometimes, but it again is pretty surface and pretty general. Most of your conversation is along the lines of “Bless me, help me, give me” and maybe an occasional “thank you.”

As you can imagine, what God wants is a close relationship. Of all of the close relationships, He wants to be the absolute closest. The reason why God sent His son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross, for our sins, and then raised Him from the dead and then sent His Holy Spirit was not just so we would be connected, but so we would be intimately close. Key Take Away: Because we are dear to God we can draw near to God.