Some things you have to do every day. Eating seven apples on Saturday night instead of one a day just isn't going to get the job done.
- Jim Rohn
How we start, end and go through each day with a desire to draw closer to Daddy, seeking to improve our awareness of His presence and love for us (conscious contact with Him) through prayer and meditation, and surrendering our will and lives for the day to His care (daily denying self, taking up our cross and following Jesus) is far more critical to our spiritual condition and relationship with Daddy than how great our church services or recovery meetings are. Now, don't get me wrong. I am not saying that meetings, recovery oriented or worship, aren't important and needed. They are.
Fellowship with others is an awesome way to receive from the relationships and experiences of others. God uses people to be His light, His instruments to minister. So gatherings of people who share a common solution are a great place to find the encouragement, wisdom and help we may need and to be an instrument of love, encouragement, wisdom and help to others. There is something about joining together in worship that helps us yield our hearts and spirits to the Holy Spirit and the hearing of the word causes our faith to grow and renews our mind. But as needed and important as fellowship is, it is not the most important thing.
Those of us who have been the captives that Jesus came to set free, who have found the freedom that is only ours by grace and through relationship with God, have a daily reprieve contingent upon the maintenance of our spiritual condition. It is not our normal state or reaction to life to put God first, to seek relationship and closeness to Him above all else, to surrender to His will over our own. The more we do it, the more normal and natural it feels to do it, but it is not our default.
Ask someone who right now or in a few weeks as the New Year rolls in, is struggling to get back into the eating habits they blew off for the holiday how hard it is to get back on track as compared to staying on the healthy path. Or ask someone who runs or works out daily if it's harder to get up and hit the road or gym after missing several days. Even if one didn't struggle with motivation, a marathon runner or weight lifter will tell you that you aren't going to get good results with sporadic or weekly training. Before I gave up on my knee ever holding up to such foolishness, I wanted to run a marathon, The training was all inclusive. It was diet and training and resting. It wasn't about just eating right or just running or any one thing. It all mattered, and every day mattered. Yes, once a week more was needed. There was a daily run for five days that just kept you going and maintained, a long run once a week that stretched and pushed and produced growth and then rest the next day to recover. It is good to stretch and push and be challenged and instructed spiritually by others, and rest is so important to us that God rested to set an example for us and entering into His rest for us is one of our greatest hopes. But it is that daily relationship and time spent with Him that gives us our strength and endurance and matters most.
Daniel knew this even in the Old Testament where His daily prayer time with God became so important to Him that He faced the lions rather than give it up. We are taught to pray and ask for our daily bread, the daily meeting of our needs, which makes no sense unless we are praying daily. It doesn't take long after putting our relationship with God on the back burner and going on with our lives as though we are in control before our old default kicks in and we are taking our will back, moving without waiting for the guidance and direction of the Spirit and trying to live on our will and strength. If we who have been set free live like this long enough we usually book our flight back to Egypt. What I mean by that is we return to the slavery and chains of the past that we have been set free of. I can't tell you how many people I have met who will tell you that they got comfortable and stopped doing the spiritual work, especially the surrendering and seeking to improve conscious contact parts and ended up relapsing. I'm not talking of those new to recovery. This is folks who more than five years of freedom, some more than ten or even twenty. Their lives went from being victorious displays of His power and love and grace on our behalf to do for us what we can't do for ourselves to cautionary tales. Some died before they found recovery again. It wasn't an instant of temptation. It wasn't a sneak attack of the Satan that succeeded. It wasn't even a momentary lapse in judgement.
It was that we have a daily reprieve, we have daily access to the grace we need, that is accessed by our daily turning to, surrender to, Him and giving the Spirit control of our lives. It is our daily spiritual relationship that gives us the power we need, that produces a life worth living, that makes us an effective instrument of His, that makes us different. We are transformed into the likeness of Christ, able to love God and love others and have the joy and peace that comes from the Spirit through daily relationship not sporadic teaching or fellowship.
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