The Spiritual Starter Kit – # 8

Hi Mel,

Having a relationship with God can be a wonderful experience. Or extremely frustrating.

There are land mines.

I remember the first year or so after asking Jesus into my life. I loved getting to know God. I’d spend hours in the Gospels, captivated by Jesus’ life and how he interacted with people. The more I read, the more I appreciated him. (I used to slip away to the Gents to read my little pocket Bible at the place where I was working back in 1968)

But I also found myself reading things in the Bible that took me off-guard. Certain actions were identified as *sins* that I had never viewed that way!

I also found commands like: “be patient, tenderhearted, forgiving,”

which were far easier to read than to do.

In frustration, I thought, “It was much easier befor I met Jesus.”

Then, over the next several months, I started feeling like I owed God payback for all the great things he was doing in my life.

I thought, “Now that I know God is there, I should be talking to him more. I should be reading the Bible more. I should be talking to my friends who don’t know him. I should be, I should be….”

Ok. Let me tell you — that is NOT how God wants us to live out our relationship with him.

He has not asked us to open our arms, brace our footing, and catch some enormous, cosmic to-do list. He also is not asking us to prove that we are worthy to know him — we’re not! And he’s perfectly ok with that.

God has an entirely different perspective on our relationship with him.

I’d love for you to grab this now. (I wish I had realized this much sooner.) This is important. I put together for you a short, 5-part series I’ve simply called, “Skip the Stress.”