A trivial pursuit

Anything worth having requires an effort, nothing comes for free and somebody has to do to get. When  you enter into a relationship you tend to make an effort, you court, say nice things, see each other regularly. Then for some reason over time we get lazy, i know i do and its not great, i can be a real heel at times and I'm working on it. But how do we have a fulfilling relationship with God, how do we get to that place where we know it's "spot on" can it ever be spot on? i will posit that yes it can, but its going to take work and effort.

There are certain principles laid down in the scriptures about how our relationship with God develops, how it grows, what God does in it and what we do in it. God for his part says " I will never leave you or forsake you. Come to me and i will give you rest. Ask and it will be given to you, Seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened". Now you can see in these that God does his part, we need to do our part, so why don't we? For some of us its down to laziness, we just can be bothered with the doing, we wait and wait and wait and wait and when God does not do, we get a hissy fit on, throw our toys from the pram and sit in the corner sulking. There are spiritual principles at work in our lives, principles laid down by God to help us, to enable us, so why are we playing at trivial pursuit?

Is it a sad fact that in our post modern world we expect much for little? we expect something for nothing, we are in danger of growing a generation of stunted and ineffective Christians, because they are fed week in week out, they are blessed and then many do very little with it. They are taught great Biblical principles and they then forget, in many cases even before the last hymn has finished. To be an effective follower/disciple of Jesus takes an effort it takes a work on our part. We just can't sit and wait, we have to do something or else we are in danger of nothing happening.

So with the idea of doing something i'm going to put 3 things out there for consideration.

1. Pray not because you want but because you can, instead of always take take take, just sit and commune with God for the sake of friendship, the sake of relationship.

2. Make an effort to put our faith into practise, mow someones lawn, help out a neighbour, do something for someone else, and I'm aware that many many Christians do many good things, this his not to down play that in anyway. But from experience for every 1 believer who does there are usually 4-6 who don't.

3. Make an effort to bless someone on a daily basis, not for reward or gain, but because you can. You see giving is a great way to grow especially in a spiritual sense, we give because it helps, we give because we can.

For many of us our faith and the pursuit of God is a trivial thing, we trivialise it by our attitudes to one another, by our actions, by our words and by our lack of effort. Nothing comes for free, we need to pursue God if we are to see God move its that simple. It does not need to be complicated by a mass of complicated theology, it does not need a mass debate about its rights and wrongs, it requires us to do and do we must.