I've had this thought in my heart throughout this last season and I wanted to share it with you. It's in regards to this comparison between falling in love with Jesus and spending time with Him, and the other side that feels like I gotta spend time with Him or discipline myself to spend time with Him.
I can hear sometimes when I'm with people or coaching people. This idea of, "Hey, can you keep me accountable to spend time with Jesus?" And I just have to tell you, that for me that is something I really don't want in my life in my walk with Jesus.
It makes me think about my own relationship with my husband. Or my relationships with my friends and when I get a call from them that says, "Hey, do you want to hang out this week?" Usually what we'll do is we'll meet for coffee and sit and chat. Or when Aaron and I are going to go on a date, we go to movies, go out to dinner, go shopping together, or we might work in the yard together, or play a game. Sometimes we'll just sit and have a really great conversation. There are a lot of different things that we do to keep our relationship fun.
And that's the thing...when it's fun and it's enjoyable, it becomes very life-giving to me. It becomes this thing that I want. If Aaron and I just sat around and just talked all the time, that might sound like a dream to me at this moment to just literally have deep heartfelt conversations. But if we did only that, our relationship would be kind of boring. We need times to laugh. We need times to talk. We need times where we're not talking, and we're just together.
I really think the same thing has to be true in our walk with Jesus. Jesus wants to be everything to us. He wants to be our first love. He wants to be that ever-present help in our life and sometimes we can treat it so differently than every other relationship. We think, "Oh, I gotta do this. I need to spend time with Jesus." or "Oh, I didn't spend time with Jesus today. It's been a long time since I spent time with Him." And there's just this crazy amount of guilt and pressure.
I don't know where we get that or who places that on us. I don't know if that's our culture or how the enemy may be trying to sabotage that relationship. But for me, the question is, how do I make my walk with Jesus fun and exciting? What can I do to make this time between Jesus and me more amazing than any other relationship?
Sometimes, for me, it's getting up when no one else is around. It's dark and the two of us are together. Sometimes I'm reading my Bible or taking notes. Sometimes I'm drawing. I'm not an artist, but I might Google "How do you draw..." Sometimes I need to sit in a different place, go outside, or go for a walk. Sometimes I just need to listen to music to need to get out of my head, so worship becomes a really important way to do that, concentrating on Jesus and connecting with Him.
What's more amazing is that Jesus is actually there are those moments where He is drawing you. The Bible says that nobody comes to the Father except those that He is drawing. So if if you are feeling like something would be really fun to do, that's not you. That's Him, drawing you to Himself, wanting to have a vibrant, beautiful, amazing, incredible relationship with you because you are always always always on His heart.
Jesus is always wanting to come alongside you, wanting to give you wisdom, wanting to let you know how much you are loved by Him.
So that's my encouragement to you. Find some new ways to find Him allow Him to woo you. Allow Him to draw you into His presence. And don't allow thinking "That's not what it's supposed to look like."
Do the things that God puts on your heart, and watch and see how your life will become richer and more amazing when you are connected to the Vine.
