Give Your Relationships to God: Pt. 5 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning. As we get ready for the weekend, there’s still something God wants to say to us this week on this topic we’ve been looking at all week of giving our relationships to God.

God has sent you into the lives of the people around you. You don’t just happen to be there. Those people don’t just happen to be in your life. God has sent you into their lives, and He has a purpose through you in their lives.

And that purpose has to do with introducing them to him, helping them find a relationship with him that will change the rest of their lives.

And for those who already have a relationship with him, to be that person in their lives who is always encouraging them in their relationship with God, encouraging them to focus on the things that really matter, encouraging them to make the wise decisions in life, to make the choices that are going to have the good outcomes in their lives that God intends for them.

Learn to give your relationships to God. We’ve seen on Monday we have to give our relationship with our kids to God. On Tuesday we saw that we need to give our relationship with our friends to God. On Wednesday, we need to give our relationship with our workmates to God. And yesterday we saw that we need to give our relationship with those that we may lead in ministry or that we minister to God as well.

And today I just want to focus in on this. We need to give our relationships with the people around us who don’t yet know Jesus personally. We need to give those relationships to God.

Now this can be one of the hardest ones, can’t it?

Because it’s natural to give our relationship with our kids to God, we want to train them to know the Lord and walk with Him. Our relationship with our friends, they matter to us so much. They already know we’re Christians and that God is important to us, our workmates, those we lead or minister to.

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But when it comes to the people around us in life who don’t know Jesus yet, it’s not so natural, is it, to start talking about God with them and to have that spiritual influence in their lives. We don’t want to be preachy. We don’t want to be pushy. We don’t want to be the person they say, oh no, it’s not him/her again. Quick, other side of the road.

We want them to be eager to spend time with us. We want to have good friendships, and what God calls us to as His witnesses in this world is not to be the kind of person that other people avoid because of how we come across. You think about it in the Bible, in the stories of Jesus. There were religious people that everyone wanted to avoid. What were they called?

The Pharisees, right? Well, don’t be a Pharisee, don’t be a holier than thou person who’s just criticizing everyone else for their way of life or their beliefs that don’t agree with yours.

Non-Christians loved spending time with Jesus

Here was Jesus absolutely committed to living for God 100% in his life. No compromise. And yet the people who didn’t know God yet, the people who were still sinners, as it says, who were secular people, they were the people who loved to spend time with Jesus, right? Well, this is what we want to learn to be as well. Jesus is sending you into the lives of the people around you who don’t know Him yet.

And he wants you to be like him, to be the kind of person they want to spend time with, the person who laughs with them, who brings joy into their lives and encouragement, but also who has those honest conversations about how God can bring healing and wholeness, and when they’re hurting and when they’re struggling, helping them see that they can talk to God and reach out to God.

And that there’s a way to become right with God even if they feel feelings of guilt and distance from God, that God is so ready to forgive and welcome them into a relationship with Him.

Then maybe you’d say, how do I even start a conversation like that? That doesn’t seem all weird and unnatural. Here’s how, just ask a question.

That’s what Jesus did all the way through his time with people. He was always just asking them questions that led to meaningful conversations, and you can do that too. How are you going? And if someone shares they’re struggling with this or that, how do you deal with that when you face something like that?

And as they start to talk to you and you start to share with them how you deal with it and what God means in your life, not that everything’s perfect in your life, but that you’re on a journey with God, God will use you in the lives of people around you who don’t yet know Him to help them journey to Him.

I’m John North.

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