On many Fridays we'll include a Blog Post from someone outside of HVPC speaking to our subject of deepening ones relationship with God:Today we have a word from Erin Collier who is the Children’s Minister at Central Baptist in Midlothian, VA.
It's a catchphrase in many churches: “a personal relationship with
Jesus Christ.” What does that even mean? I'll be honest, part of me
cringes when I hear those words, often because they're just said and
then left alone.
When something is said so often, it begins to lose its
meaning and becomes a cliché phrase, one that cheapens the intent behind
it. Yet, because there is still something to it, an actual meaning, I
can't allow myself to let go of that particular language. So what does
it mean? Here's my attempt at a definition... For me, a relationship
with God goes beyond praying, reading the Bible, and worshiping – it is
in how we live our lives, and cannot be separated from relationships
with others. We were created for community, to be the hands and feet of
Christ in the world around us. It's in the faces and words and actions
of others that I am able to see the love and light of God lived out on a
daily basis. Even the challenges and conflicts bring opportunities to
strengthen relationships with others, and therefore with God. It's often
after good conversations, times of fellowship, or working side by side
with others in ministry that I feel my relationship with God begin to
change (for the better).
On February 10, 2012, my friend Melissa died,
ending a four-month battle with esophageal cancer. Melissa was an
amazing person who loved deeply and sought to have authentic
relationships with everyone she met. She was full of life, and to her,
being a minister was not a job, but who she was and how she lived. The
fruit of that labor was made evident by the 500 people who attended her
funeral, and I am confident that each one had some story of how she had
deeply impacted them through their relationship with her. As one pastor
said, “She did more in three decades than most would do in five
lifetimes.”
When I think of my relationship with God and how to deepen
it, I now think of Melissa and the life she lived, investing herself in
the people around her. She lived life abundantly in relationship with
others, overflowing with the love of God and embracing everyone she met
without judgment or hesitation. This is what it means to be in
relationship – a deep, authentic relationship - with God. My prayer is
that I may follow her example and try to do the same.
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