Growing Closer to God Through Intentional Relationships: Part 3 — A ‘Time With God’ Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning.

All this week, at this time each morning, we’re talking about the topic of growing closer to God through intentional relationships, that is, building relationships intentionally that will help you grow closer to God.

We saw yesterday how important it is to build accountability into those relationships, to have a set time where you meet with just one or two other people and talk through your past week, and confess things, pray for one another.

The act of speaking openly about your struggles in life, even your spiritual failures, is one of the biggest motivations to walk with God during your week.

We saw on Monday how important it is to have peers, good friends in your life who also are wanting to really grow in their relationship with God and spending time together. You all grow together.

Here’s the lesson for today: Purposely choose other Christians that you want to have a spiritual impact on.

So here we’re not just talking about peers who are all wanting to grow together, but rather people who maybe are younger Christians or earlier in the Christian journey, and you want to help them grow stronger in the Lord or have a more significant impact in this world.

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You know, when Jesus began his ministry, he identified people who really wanted to grow closer to God. And he said to them, follow me.

Not long after that we read in John chapter 3 verse 22. After this, Jesus and His disciples went to the Judean countryside where he spent time with them and baptised. Well, what do you need to do if you intentionally want to have a spiritual impact on someone?

Spend time with them. Spend intentional time with them. That is, set up an agreement with them. You’re going to meet together with them at a specific time, and you’re going to help them grow. People who have done that with me, just flood into my mind when I talk about this. My dad and the time he spent with me just talking about life and the things of God with me.

Johnny Miller, one of my lecturers in Bible College who invested time with me, later invited me to intern at his church and has been such an impact in my life even since I stopped spending time with him after moving away.

Howard Hendrix, the great Bible teacher and professor at seminary, he spent time with me, he got up to spend time with me and a group of my friends at, I think it was 5:30 or 6am in the morning at a cafe each week because he had no other room in his schedule. And the impact on my life through that testimony.

Dan De Haan in the days of my youth and the time he spent with me upon moving back to Australia.

Lee Brown for many years invested in me, had strategic conversations with me about my life and ministry. I think then of the people that I have done this with.

Ken and Scott Temple, two brothers who came to Christ in high school days, and I began meeting with them and having Bible study with them and discipling them.

Later, they started a Bible study in their garage apartment with a bunch of other guys in uni, and I started leading and discipling that group of guys, and when we lived in Epping here in Sydney, we had a Bible study group that met in our home, my wife and I, and we really focused intentionally on helping that group grow in the Lord. We became so close with them.

I think of the ministry of Power to Change and the long history I’ve had of investing into their leaders, their students, through speaking at conferences and spending time individually with different leaders. I just, I’ve been so enriched in my life through having chosen other Christians that I want to have a spiritual impact on and then watching how God works in their lives.

You will too.

I’m John North.

To go deeper in your faith, visit AFCI.com.au.

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