Friday, September 30, 2011

Walking With God: Mean Communication


Walking with God means walking in a relationship. Many followers of Jesus do not understand what that means. We talk about a personal relationship with god, but we act like we have been given a manual. And our job is to figure out how to apply the manual. The problem is our manual does not have the troubleshooting flow-chart that comes with the users’ manual of your printer or DVD player.

“Is you printer doing {A}? If yes, go to page 22. If no, go to the next flow-chart bubble?”

But that’s not how it is supposed to work. Instead, we are given Bill Gate’s cell phone number and permission to call him day or night.

“Hi Bill. Sorry to wake you. I would have waited until morning, except I’ve got this thing that due at 9:00 and my computer keeps freezing.”

Now Bill might tell you to go to page 22. Or he might describe how to solve the problem.

Relationship means bi-directional, active\passive communication. Sometimes you talk; sometimes you listen. Relationship without communication is not relationship. To have relationship, with God or anyone, must necessarily entail communication.

Yes, communicating with God is different than communicating with people. One, there are some differences between them. God is omnipresent and omniscient. So, sometimes a grunt speaks volumes. Two, we needed to learn how to communicate with people, just as we can learn how to communicate with God. We did not understand complete sentences and paragraphs when we began. But we could understand and make ourselves understood. And we progressed to full sentences and full paragraphs. And we understand idioms, similes, metaphors, aphorisms and allegories. And some people learn multiple languages.

God seeks relationship, so God seeks communication. Some people have been hurt or unsuccessful at developing meaning relationships with other people. Some conclude they will never experience a close, meaningful relationship, so they quit trying. Some conclude the same thing with God. Lack of meaningful relationships with people means a lack of emotional and psychological health, lack of growth and fulfillment as a person. As people were designed to live in relationship with God, a lack of this relationship has similar detrimental effects in a person’s life.

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