My Relationship With God Is Cold

Posted on Sep 5, 2020 in Devotions, Discipleship | Tags: Baptist, Christ, Church, close to God, cold, God, Jesus, love, Orchard, pray, prayer, relationship

My Relationship With God Is Cold

“How did you get close to God again? I’m not sinning, like doing drugs or drinking or swearing, but I get mad easily and don’t feel that connection with God. I just want my relationship with God back.”

If you are a mature believer, questions like this may be familiar. Here is an answer that has worked for me.

Do what the early church did.

“⁴²They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Acts 2:42 NASB

Devote yourself to the apostles teaching — study the Bible regularly
Devote yourself to the fellowship — don’t go it alone. We need one another. We need the accountability of the body and we need to share our time and stuff with one another in sacrificial ways.
Devote yourself to the breaking of bread — again, we need to worship the King together. We need to remember the sacrifice of the cross together with other believers.
Devote yourself to “the prayers” — the text and most modern translations say “prayers” not “prayer”. The plural is important. Most scholars will say that the meaning is not just to “saying your prayers” or praying and talking to God regularly. The plural has a very specific referent. Either it means the 3x a day pattern of Jewish prayer in the first century or, and more likely, it means they devoted themselves to the prayer book of the Old Testament, the book of Psalms.

My own experience is, that when my walk with God has grown cold or lukewarm, doing these things restores my passion and appreciation for the wonders of the gospel and the beauty of my Savior.

Give it time. Doing these things is not a shot of adrenaline. They are exercises for your spirit and will “pay off” over time (just like physical exercise) as you continually make the “devote yourself” investment.

Ask yourself this question, what commands of Christ am I not doing that I know I ought to be doing? Why this question?

Look at John 14:21

“²¹He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” NASB

Jesus ties further revelation of himself, greater intimacy with himself to our obedience to the commands he has given us.

Look at Galatians 2:20

“²⁰I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and ^a]the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” NASB

Live your life by faith not by how you feel.

Train your heart to act on truth revealed not how you feel in the moment.

Finally, check out your love life?

Read Luke 7:38–50, especially verse 47.

“⁴⁷For this reason I say to you, her sins, which are many, have been forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little.” NASB

“He who is forgiven little, loves little.” Whenever I, or any of us, forget how much we have been forgiven our faith will become stale and inconsequential to our lives; but when we go back to the cross, when we spend time meditating on how much we have been forgiven, new springs of joy will begin to arise in our hearts.

For more of our blog posts, check out our website at OrchardBaptist.net

Kingdom Manhood | Tony Evans

Posted on Feb 20, 2018 in Discipleship |

One kingdom man whom you may not have heard about is found in the Old Testament book of Judges. If a poll was taken of most people in church today, probably not even a quarter would recognize his name. This man didn’t get much airtime as compared to the likes of Samson, David, or Joshua. Yet the principles found in the two verses about him hold the potential to not only transform lives, but our world. Because, as you will see, it only took one real man named Shamgar to save the entire nation of Israel.

First we read in Judges 5:6,

“In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath,
In the days of Jael, the highways were deserted,
And travelers went by roundabout ways.”Judges 5:6

The reason why a nation resorts to traveling its back roads is because it has lost control of its front ones. So to be out in public was to put your life at risk. This was a day of terrorism and chaos when marauding bands of irresponsible men created havoc in the society.

But then we read in Judges 3:31,

“After him came Shamgar the son of Anath, who struck down six hundred Philistines with an oxgoad; and he also saved Israel.”Judges 3:31

Shamgar, whom we know today as the third minor judge in the history of Israel, probably came from very humble beginnings. In fact, he very likely started out as a farmer, becoming proficient at handling an oxgoad, or cattle prod, while living in an agrarian society. But what’s critical to learn from him is that he didn’t wait until he became great in order to do something great. He didn’t put off until next week what he needed to do that day.

Shamgar saved the entire nation of Israel, and he did it as a farmer! God used Shamgar because he exemplified two of the greatest principles of being a kingdom man:

Start where you are
Use what you have

Imagine what our homes, churches, communities, and nation would be like today if our men would take a lesson from the life of kingdom men like Shamgar. When a kingdom man steps out his door each day, heaven, earth and hell ought to take notice.

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