Knowing God Is An Up To The Minute Relationship

While God is a God that doesn't change, he is in the business of bringing change everywhere he is allowed to go.  You might ask, "allowed to go?"  Certainly God can go anywhere he wants to go!  Yes, he certainly can because he is almighty God.  Yet, from a relationship perspective he seldom goes where he is not welcomed and shown an ongoing loving hospitality.  It is so interesting and even a little embarrassing to men to read of the Church as the Bride of Christ.  We read of a day coming when there will be a wedding feast and a bridal chamber.  Even as I write this I pause and look off in the distance in discomfort.  Yet, I know it is true.  To me it speaks to my need to learn how to walk with Jesus and live with him much like I have learned to walk with my wife Teresa.  We are in our 50th year of marriage as I write this.  There have been turbulent years, joyful years, adjustment years and fulfilling years.  After 50 years our marriage is so wonderful...more wonderful than ever before in every way.  Yet it has always been a learning process and a dying process or we would never have gotten to this place of reward, joy and fulfillment.  There was a time when it looked like we wouldn't make it. During that time our problem was not God not helping us, it was my lack of cooperation with God's plan of change leading to today.  Having said that, that doesn't mean that we have now arrived.  I remember walking through some very hard times in our relationship.  There were times when we didn't really like each other and even love had to be examined.  Don't let me stun you but walking with Jesus as His Bride isn't a lot different.  Walking with Jesus isn't like a wedding banquet everyday.  Again, Jesus doesn't change but when you are walking with someone who is bringing change in your life it can get a bit difficult at times.  There have even been times when I might question, "do I really want to do this?"

As I look back over the last 50 years I see clearly that all that I have experienced was necessary and not simply a bunch of mistakes.  This is true in my life, marriage and my walk with the Lord.  There are times when you have to get your head and heart clear and ask yourself the question, "what is the right thing to do at this moment in time?"  Don't rush the decision and be honest with yourself.  Then, do the right thing.  Seek with all your heart to do the best thing, the righteous thing.  You next step won't be any easier necessarily but it is the right decision leading to the right next step.  One day as you look back on you life map you will see that it was not a haphazard journey but a Divine plan with a Divine destination.  Every one of those course adjustments may have been painful but yet they were necessary to get you to today.  The worst thing is to enter into a relationship of existing.  You can do that in your marriage.  I refuse to live that way!  You can do that in your relationship with Jesus.  I refuse to live that way!  Today make a fresh commitment to welcome the loving hand of God that promises even more change ahead.  Oh yeah, before I forget...quit asking why?