Going One-on-One with the Lord

The other essential component of the Christian life is a growing one-on-one relationship with the Lord. Developing an intimate relationship with God doesn’t involve science. Just as in a marriage, you don’t assemble it with a do-it-yourself kit.

A common ingredient in the lives of mature Christians is a private, daily encounter with God, often called a quiet time (or devotional time). Quiet time consists of anywhere from a few minutes to an hour of Bible reading and prayer. These two activities help you develop your relationship with the Lord:

Reading the Bible: As I discuss in Chapter 6, there’s no better way to get to know God and his will than by diving into the Bible. With a solid grounding in what the Bible says, you can use its teaching as foundation in your life that you can turn to in times of temptation and trouble.

In addition to the Bible, many Christians read devotional books, which have daily readings that Christians often use as a supplement to their Bible reading, enabling them to meditate and reflect on some aspect of God’s truth and apply it to their own lives. One popular devotional is My Utmost for His Highest. (See the corresponding sidebar in this chapter.) You can find it and others in a Christian bookstore or online at www.gospelcom.net/rbc/utmost.

Praying: Praying is simply communicating with God, talking with him one-on-one, just like you do with a spouse or best friend. Through prayer, you worship God, surrender to him, and ask for his help and provision for your life and for others’ lives.

Paul calls Christians to 24/7 prayer, or “praying without ceasing,” as he talks about in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. This doesn’t mean that you lock up your house and pray in your closet around the clock. But what it does mean is that you have dedicated prayer time at some point of the day (for many, morning works best, because it sets the tone for the day) and then pray little sound bites throughout the day, keeping the lines of communication constantly open with God. In this way, prayer is similar to a healthy marital relationship, which has a good balance between in-depth heart-felt discussion as well as chitchat on the practical matters of the day.

If you want to explore more about what prayer is, how you do it, and how it transforms your Christian walk, I recommend checking out another book I’ve written, called Christian Prayer For Dummies (Wiley).

How do I pray?

If you don’t know how to pray, just do it in your own way – go somewhere quiet and begin talking to God, out loud or inside your head. Jesus never laid out specific techniques or rules for praying; he left that up to you. As he talked about in the Lord’s Prayer (see Chapter 19), the most important idea is that your prayer is from the heart.

However, prayer is more than just reading off a wish list to Santa Claus. Prayer should involve worshiping and thanking him, confessing your sins, and asking for God’s help to meet your needs and others’ needs. Sometimes, all those parts are hard to remember, so one of the popular techniques that helps you organize your prayers is the ACTS method. ACTS stands for adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication (a term that simply means praying for your needs and for others around you). The basic gist of this method is to do the following in order:

Adoration: Start off by adoring God and worshiping him.

Confession: Prepare your heart by confessing your sins.

Thanksgiving: Thank the Lord for all that he’s done in your life.

Supplication: Ask God for his help in meeting the needs and concerns of those in your family, church, friends, leaders, any others you may think of, and yourself.

Keep in mind, however, that prayer is more than just a one-way conversation with God in which you do all the talking and he does all the listening. Prayer also involves simply being still and listening to God – not that he’s going to speak to you audibly, but through prayerful stillness and silence, the Holy Spirit does “speak” to a Christian’s spirit in unmistakable ways.

A must-read: My Utmost for His Highest

Written by Scottish pastor and missionary Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (Barbour and Co., 2003) is a timeless Christian devotional first published in 1935 and remains a continual Christian bestseller with millions of copies in print. Hundreds of devotionals are available, but what separates Chamber’s work from the pack, though, is its uncanny ability to mix deep, thought-provoking teaching with a practical message – all in a single page devotion. It’s direct and to-the-point, but it’s always challenging.

Incidentally, if you ever want to learn more about the man behind My Utmost for His Highest, check out David McCasland’s Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God (Barbour and Co., 1999). This biography illustrates how Chambers truly practiced what he preached. In my opinion, Chambers is one of the best models of the Christian life that I’ve ever seen.