(John 8:12)
Living many years in Chicago and being a huge fan
of the Bulls basketball team during their incredible string
of NBA championships, it was a special treat to watch Michael Jordan
perform his magic on the court. In the early years of his career,
Michael did many incredible feats that almost defied gravity. While he became
well known for the spectacular, most people forget that Michael had mastered
the basics...dribbling, passing, moving without the ball. The basics were
the foundation from which he was then able to do the more spectacular and
the bedrock of his game. Our walk with Christ is similar, in the sense that
it is the basics of our relationship that we must be cognizant of each day,
thus becoming the foundation of our Christian experience. Just like it
is not realistic to expect someone who never played much basketball to do a
360 slam dunk, people with little or no contact with the Lord each day have
unrealistic expectations about their Christian experience.
Let me give you one fact to start with that I want you to pay very close
attention to. THE ONLY THING THAT YOU WILL TAKE FROM THIS LIFE INTO
ETERNITY IS YOUR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIST. Think about this
for a minute. We spend so much of our life focused on education, career,
making money, family, friends, hobbies....we devote practically all of our
time and energy in these areas...yet in that twinkle of an eye when your life is
over and you pass into eternity, the ONLY thing that you will take with you
is your personal relationship with the Lord. I am not trying in any way to
diminish those things I listed, since it is part of the human experience
we all share. What I am saying is that we need to make sure that we take
time each day to nurture and grow our relationship with the Lord, since it is
something we will experience for eternity.
How do we do this? Stay connected. It goes back to the basics. We need
to take time each day to pray and read the Word, We need to be in a local
church where we have fellowship with other believers, are spiritually fed, and
have opportunities to serve the Lord. When people have sin in their life, the
first thing they do is quit reading the bible, quit praying, quit going to
church. Why? Because we really are no different than our father Adam.
Remember in the Garden of Eden after he sinned? He was hiding from God. That is what we do, we "hide" from God. That is the time we need God the most!!!!!
That is how satan tricks you into falling even deeper into sin, by "disconnecting" from the Lord.
I will be praying for you today, because I really do love you and care
about you. I will be praying for you to refocus on the basics, to stay
connected each day with the Lord. Your quickest way to defeat sin in your
life is to get immediately reconnected to God, confess your sins, repent, and get back into that intimate daily relationship with Him that will help you from
falling. He loves you and will never leave you nor forsake you. It is
His desire to have intimate contact each day with His children. Since that
is the only thing we will take from this life into the everlasting,
shouldn't that be our desire as well?
