How To Hear God, part four

Hebrews 6:10-12

God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, in order to make your hope sure. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience
inherit what has been promised.

Someone once asked, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" The answer has always been, “Practice, practice, practice.” I’ve also heard that anything worth having is worth working for. Since the effort we put into getting better at something raises the value of what we’re doing, shouldn’t we put a lot of effort into any relationship we value?

If a couple of people don’t put much effort into getting to know each other, they’re really just acquaintances. There are a lot of church people who are merely acquaintances of God. But that relationship can grow with a little effort. God is willing to spend more time with us if we’re willing.

And then there’s the issue of maintaining a relationship. Some women are called “high-maintenance girlfriends” because it takes a lot of effort to maintain that relationship. If you see your relationship with God as “low maintenance”, it can be really easy to be neglectful. I think all humans get lazy in their relationships occasionally. The people we love the most are hurt when we forget about them, ignore them, or neglect them in other ways.

How can we ensure that our relationship with God will get stronger? Practice, practice, practice. Be diligent to maintain a friendship with God. We can practice our friendship skills in our relationship with God.

We must work daily on maintaining a love relationship with our spouse or girlfriend/boyfriend, so why not work daily on a relationship with God?

If you aren’t hearing from God and you want to, then put some effort into the relationship. Church time shouldn’t be the only time we work on maintaining a close bond with God. Church time is when we should be taking a look at what we’ve done during the week to see if we’re giving that valuable relationship enough of our time.

Step four of hearing from God is being diligent and paying attention to your relationship with God.