Re-gifting Relationship
Previously:
And we need to re-gift The Gift of Relationship.
In Matthew 28:20, Jesus said that, “He is with us, even to the end of time.” That is true relationship. It’s about going through life together, in relationship, with others. We share each other ups and downs. We laugh, we cry, we encourage, we pick each other up when we fall.
Once you re-gift salvation, you should start to invest in that person, don’t just leave them there. And as you invest and re-gift discipleship, you build a relationship. And that is truly an amazing gift.
Who do you know, in your life, that at 3:00am you can call, and they would drive to your house that very minute? What relationships in your life need you to spend some time GIVING and not TAKING?
In John 15:5 Jesus says, “If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
Later in John 15:14-17, Christ continues, “You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.”
That is a REAL relationship, and no matter what you do, Jesus is there. No matter how bad you might have screwed up in the past, Jesus is there. No matter who you WERE, Jesus is always there. It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do, Jesus is there. Even if you feel that you are the ONLY person in this life, Jesus is there.
Perry Noble, one of my pastor heroes, tells this story….
One day, he is in the bathroom, and as he is standing there…going to the bathroom, and he notices his daughter standing there. It was VERY AWKWARD.
His daughter asks him, “Daddy, what are you doing?”
He smiles and says, “I’m pee-peeing, Honey, and one day, you’ll do this too!”
She smiles and says, “Pee-Pee!!!”
He then turned around to wash my hands, explaining to her that, “after we pee-pee we clean our hands”…but when he turned and looked at her she was staring at the toilet.
He was afraid she was going to stick her hands in it…so Perry told her, “don’t touch.”
BUT…that’s when she did the unthinkable…she leaned forward and kissed the toilet lid!
As you can imagine, Perry wanted to throw up! He told her, “NO!!!” And scooped her up…and THAT IS WHEN SHE WANTED TO KISS HIM!!!
HOLY COW!! What is a dad to do? On one hand he LOVES his little girl…but she kissed a freakin’ toilet seat!!! He had watched the whole thing…it was SO GROSS…
Perry was about to put her down when the Lord spoke to his heart and said, “Hey Perry…what you just saw her do…you’ve done many times. You’ve kissed the “toilet” of the world all week long, and then came into church and tried to kiss me!”
For WAY TOO LONG coming to church was about making me feel better and not exalting a HOLY and RIGHTEOUS GOD. We “kiss toilets” all week long by the way we speak about other people, the things we look at…the places we allow our minds to wander.
And then we come to church expecting God to make us feel better…BUT COMPLETELY unwilling to repent of the sin that is dominating us.
One of the things that I think we often forget as follower of Christ is that He knows…He knows our hearts…He knows our minds…and He knows the toilets we kiss all week long.
Judas kissed Him…but it was a kissed laced with betrayal and greed. God is not pleased with our church attendance…but rather our repentance.
What toilets are YOU kissing? Anything in your life that you know God doesn’t approve of…you refuse to repent…and you are going to here, at church this Sunday and pretending that everything is okay with you and with God?
These are tough questions to wrestle with…but doing so will reveal our hearts!!!
My point is this, Perry LOVES HIS LITTLE GIRL! Even watching her kiss a toilet didn’t make him stop loving her. It made him sick…but didn’t change the fact that he loves her. He doesn’t love her because of what she does…he loves her because she’s his!!!
When Jesus says that He is with us, even to the very end of the age, He sees what we do, and loves us anyway.
I am so glad that God treats us the same way…even through the time when I was kissing toilets and breaking His heart…He never stopped loving me…and it was His patience and kindness that drew me to Him (and still does) and conforms me more and more to who He has called me to be!!
It’s time to start re-gifting relationship.
