Communion with Christ. What an amazing privilege that we can spend time in an intimate relationship with the Creator of the universe as often as we like! While serving Christ and participating in ministry is important I really like what Erwin W. Lutzer shared when he said: “The activities we do for God are secondary. God is looking for people who long for communication with Him.”1
Communion is simply God communicating with us and we with Him, with the result that Jesus is glorified, and we delight with joy. God loves us so much that He created us with a desire to commune with us. There can be nothing so wonderful in life than to spend quality time in the presence of God just talking with Him through prayer, reading His word, and just being still before Him.
But you may ask how can an infinitely holy God commune with utterly sinful mankind? Well praise God that at Calvary Christ died in our place and bore our sins and the curse that we deserved and imputed His righteousness to us. And since God gave Christ as our substitute, we through faith in Him, can be reconciled to God and enjoy the sweet communion that we were created to enjoy.
Developing a great relationship with Jesus, however, doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to cultivate this relationship and the more we spend time in His presence, through prayer and reading His word, the deeper, I believe, our love and devotion to Christ will become.
One way to stay close to Jesus is to make sure you develop a daily devotional time with Him. This is what I call structured devotion. It should be a quiet time just between you and the Lord. Find a time that works best for you and make a commitment to meet Jesus every day at that time for prayer, Bible reading and meditation, spending time in praise and adoration, and just talking to God. Try to eliminate all distractions and just consider this your most important and joyous appointment of the day.
But our devotion time with Jesus should go far beyond this structured quiet time. I believe, the more we fall in love with our Savior, the more we will want to expand our devotion time to every part of our day. Why not worship Jesus on your commute to work, while doing the dishes, right before bedtime, and of course at church. This expansion of our devotional time is what I call lifestyle communion and when this becomes your daily pattern of communion with Jesus I guarantee you that a special delight and joy will flood your soul.
My friends the reason our world has so little joy is because they have forgotten why they were created in the first place by God. For non-Christians they will never know this delight and joy of communion with God because they are still bound in sin. For what fellowship can darkness have with light? And for many Christians they miss out on this sweet intimacy with Christ because they are too busy in Christian activities and find little quality time to spend alone with the Lord.
There just is nothing so important and fulfilling as quiet time with Jesus. I pray that if Jesus is your Lord and Savior you will make time to be alone with Him – you won’t regret it!
1 TOP 25 QUOTES BY ERWIN W. LUTZER (of 73) | A-Z Quotes (azquotes.com)
SO true Curt!
Elaine