Just the other day I walked outside to find a car starting up without a driver inside….haha…the owner had a remote! The advances in the world we live in are amazing. Once upon a time my dad had to “walk to school two miles in the snow”. I’m sure you’ve heard that somewhere before.
There was a time when I “had to get off the sofa to change the channel on the television”. Today? We have a remote. Heaven forbid someone should have to get off the sofa to find the remote…LOL. I often sit and wonder what is to come. I have a dear friend who told me the other day that there were advances in technology that, in the future, would allow small drones to deliver things to your home. No more FedEx!
Wow! The world keeps progressing whether we like it or not. When I stop and think about the advances in our world, all the advances which make life easier, in some ways, make us less mobile.
We can sit and shop online.
We can sit and watch TV and change the channel without getting out of the chair.
We ride almost everywhere and, if we could all afford a Segway, we would drive ourselves everywhere and not walk.
Our world is forever changing. One of the things I dislike the most with all this change is calling a place of business. Very rarely do you immediately get a human when you call. You call the power company or, for instance, our insulin pump company or a doctor’s office and go through a “long channel search and listening to all of the options necessary to get a human on the phone!” Just yesterday, I patiently went through all the options (7 total), waited for 15 minutes before abruptly being disconnected. Well, you can imagine I was not happy. By the time I got a human on the phone, I had to pray and ask God to take the anger and frustration away.
I am so very glad that communication with the Creator of the universe, Jesus Christ, doesn’t ever put us on hold. We have the “option” to talk to Him any time and all day long if we so choose. No one stands in our way. He is never too busy nor distracted to hear us and communicate with us. We are the ones who put Him on hold, disconnect abruptly, offer Him options and make Him wait. I don’t think any of us would put the President of the United States on hold if we received a call from him…but we all, at times, put God on hold. God is supreme yet, at times, we don’t treat Him as if He is.
Thankfully in the Back 9, I have lived enough life, endured enough pain and witnessed enough of other’s pain to have a healthy and realistic view of what life is like when I put God on hold. It only hurts me and those around me.
God wants to be God in our life. We are His, created in His image, to have constant and daily fellowship with Him. He will NEVER put us on hold or drop a call from us. John 16:31-33, “Jesus answered them, ‘Do you finally believe? In fact, you’re about to make a run for it–saving your own skins and abandoning me. But I’m not abandoned. The Father is with me. I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world.'”
Prayer is the constant…direct line to God. Jeremiah 29:12, “Then you will call upon me and pray to me and I will listen to you.”
Learning to abide in Christ is the most “fertile and profitable” decision we can make. “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you.” (John 15:7) When we learn to abide in Christ and experience His divine plan and hand in our lives, then our desires and what we think we want or need pale in comparison to God’s plan and provisions. We stop swimming upstream and experience the “unshakable and assuredness” that is mentioned in John 16.
Abide means permanent, continuing without change, enduring…Keep the constant communication with God. Don’t put Him on hold or only dial 911 when you are in need…make communication with Jesus a continual thing!