Relationship with God and Others

Today's class started out with a recap from several weeks ago on Advantages and Things to Guard Against for Quiet Times/Private Worship and Corporate Worship.

Praying Without Ceasing
Advantages:

• Our focus stays on God.
• Integrates walk w/ God with mundane world. (Life is not mundane anymore because we are constantly in communication with God.)
• Changes our outlook - see things with God's eyes.
• Improves decision-making. As a Christian, our choice boils down to two options - obey or disobey.
• Can take our sanctuary with us wherever we are.
• Relieves stress.
• Fruitfulness - John 15:1-5
• Answered Prayer is promised if we abide in Jesus. (Abide usually implies a remaining or constant dwelling. This means that first we have to be with Jesus and then we are constantly dwelling with Him.)
• Potential for powerful encounters - you+God+others.

Disadvantages or Things to Guard Against

• Have to discipline yourself to do it. This doesn't come naturally to everyone. Some good starter ideas would be Frank Laubach's "Game With Minutes" tract or similar exercises to train our minds towards constantly being in communication with God.
• Have to be prepared - know God, know scriptures. If we do not know who God is, we could very well be praying to a god of our own making rather than the God who has revealed Himself through His word.
• Easy to leave out the Bible - similar to above. We can pray without taking the Bible into account.
• Opportunity for talking to self (and listening to self) rather than God.

Sabbath
Advantages

• God's gift to us, not a mandate that we have to follow.
• Rest, Recharge - sabbath means "rest".
• Receive from God, not give. As church-going Christians it is very easy to be caught up in working for God. This is our chance to rest and receive a blessing from God while preparing to minister.
• Refocus and reprioritize life. We can't help but put everything in perspective when we take time to rest.
• Concentrated time - have more time in what is available. This seems similar to the idea that we don't constantly wear out the tools/gifts/skills we have been given. If we start using an axe to chop wood, eventually that axe will get dull. If we do not rest from chopping wood to sharpen the axe, we will work harder to chop wood.
• Sanctuary - can retreat into God's presence and shelter.
• Incorporates other disciplines. We talked about this for some time. The sabbath does not automatically imply a "going to meeting" day. It is a day of resting in God's presence. We may very well incorporate other spiritual disciplines during our time of rest, but they may not all come into play.
• Strengthens relationship with God. If we are taking a day to really rest in God's presence, we can't help but strengthen our relationship with God.
• Can involve others or be done alone - this was a big point. A lot of us have family members who are around all of the time. The sabbath is not supposed to be a time when we get away from everyone just to be alone with God. We can have corporate times of rest (aka retreats), individual times of rest, or even family times of rest. I was reminded of a radio episode I'd heard called "Sunday Morning Scramble" that hit really close to home on how a lot of Christians spend their days when they have church-meetings.
• Scrambling from one activity to another, rarely resting, doing all of this "for God". However, if we were to take an extra hour and rest in His presence we would probably have a much better sabbath-day.

Disadvantages or Things to Guard Against

• Takes time - hard to schedule. This is one of those activities where we need to discipline ourselves to set a time aside and rest. We don't have to be legalistic about the time, but we should schedule it.
• Distractions - because this is not always a discipline, we can be distracted. In the age of always-on Internet connections, working from home, and a feeling that we are crunched for time, it is very easy to succumb to checking e-mail, doing one last task for work, or just being busy rather than resting.
• Challenge to keep extended time devoted to resting - recommend scheduling activities for that time. e.g. Pray for 30 minutes, take a walk for 25 minutes, nap for 2 hours, eat, etc. If we have a set schedule of activities to follow, we will be more likely to stick to the schedule and use our time restfully.
• Other people are involved in our lives - they factor in as well. We should take those people who are involved in our lives along with us for that time of rest. Family members and friends factor in most heavily here, but there may be others as well. Our close relations do not have to be left behind while we take a time of rest.

Sabbath - is it still a commandment? Randall answered with the idea that this is a gift more than a commandment. It is also not tied to a particular day. We had talked about this in a class a while back, but some people had missed the day we'd really discussed the Biblical Sabbath and how it is affected with the New Testament.

Priority of Relationship

[Hosea 6:3 NKJV] Let us know,
Let us pursue the knowledge of the LORD.
His going forth is established as the morning;
He will come to us like the rain,
Like the latter and former rain to the earth.

[Jeremiah 24:7 NKJV] 'Then I will give them a heart to know Me, that I am the LORD; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God, for they shall return to Me with their whole heart.

We are supposed to meet together to encourage each other to be in a good relationship with God. This is one of the main reasons to gather together.

However, our fellowships tend to be just like the world's gatherings. We meet, we have small talk, we eat, we may play some games or watch a movie, we go home. The question arises of whether we are truly relating to each other the way we should be.

• We tend to hide in church activities - easy to be overloaded. It is hard to say no. When our activities are born out of relationship, they are more likely to be helpful to the Body of believers. The idea seems to be that our ministries should be tied to the relationship we have with other people - meeting their real needs in addition to (or sometimes instead of) meeting the needs we think or they feel they have. Our activities shouldn't just be some program that we do.

• We also tend to hide in "good citizenship" - our worldview vs. others. Politics will not save us as a nation. God doesn't support the Republican, Democrat, or any other party. Heart change is essential to save our nation. The idea of what we stand for rather than our relationship with God is all too easy to get caught up in. A Christian world-view is important, but we can't legislate that on others. Randall mentioned how we tried that with the Prohibition. Because there was no heart change, people broke the law often and the laws were not enforced regularly.

Jesus would brush aside political questions - focused on the important question behind the political question. When He was asked about taxes, He responded in a manner that answered the real problem rather than the political problem.

The Zealots were Jews who were extremely active against Rome. They would assassinate Romans and hide in the crowd, joining in with the general wailing. Eventually they starved Jerusalem to try to gain members; this backfired and destroyed the city. They were looking for a different sort of Messiah - one who would drive out the Romans. When Jesus appeared, they rejected Him because He didn't come as a warrior against the Roman occupiers.

[2Ch 15:2 NKJV] And he went out to meet Asa, and said to him: "Hear me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin. The LORD is with you while you are with Him. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will forsake you.