Staying Connected to God

Progress and victories in the spiritual life are not things that fall willy-nilly out of the sky. They come through the steady pursuit of one thing: staying well-connected to our God. Jesus said that apart from Him we could do nothing. This certainly applies to grieving. We do not have the wisdom or the power to make progress happen, but it is in our power to work at staying connected to the One who can if we have the wisdom to do our part. This is a chapter taken from the book mentioned earlier, Salvation Basics: How to Get Saved and Stay Saved. It grew out of years of experience working with men with addictions and seeing first-hand the desperate need they had to cling to God and His saving help.

The Big Five Connecters

There are five things that every Christian needs to do steadily to stay well-connected to our Source: Your life depends upon it! The great thing is that a part of you already loves doing these five things since Jesus is in you and He always loves doing them. They are intended to be delights, not duties. If you keep them in good repair, they will keep you powered up and rescue you when you aren't.

Keep These Safety Nets in Play

Jesus is our entry point to both eternal life in heaven and new life on earth. He is the source of it all! It is therefore of tremendous, life-saving and life-enhancing importance that we stay connected to the One who is the Way we now live, the Truth we now live by, and the Life we want to experience.

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. John 14:6 ESV

Since Jesus says that we can "do nothing" without Him, staying connected is the name of the game. Don't believe me? You have an enemy who never doubts it for a moment. He is relentlessly seeking to get you disconnected!  To help us in this struggle, our God of All Grace has provided five grace-based ways of keeping us connected to Himself. He doesn't do them for us, but He will do them with us and then work supernaturally through them to keep the connection working.

They are not magical. They do not work automatically. You must work with them to keep you connected, or they will just become another thing on your list to do, or worse, a source of spiritual pride. They can become rituals or routine if you let them, but beware: All life and delight will seem to go out of them if that's your approach. God won't love you less if you don't do them and He won't love more if you do. You aren't doing these things to please or placate God: You do them because you want to stay vitally connected to Jesus.

Why We Need the Big Five

We do the Big Five Connecters for three excellent reasons:

1. Necessity

Our life in Christ depends upon them. This is how we get connected, stay connected, and increase the connection to our Source of peace, joy, and confidence for living. Just as a battery needs continual recharging to stay powered up, so too we need to stay plugged into our power source. Our new life streams into us from a source outside of and beyond our own understanding and abilities.

2. Delight

They are our meeting place with Jesus. Jesus did all these five things when He walked the earth. They were His lifeline to the Father and to His true purpose for being on earth. He still loves to do them. That is why they work so well as connectors. He is inside of us now by His Spirit wanting us to gain the graced pleasure of doing the Big Five with Him and through Him. These aren't duties they're delights!

3. Destiny

They lead us into our destiny. None of us is smart enough to figure out why we're here. That's one of the many reasons why we need a Savior. Jesus told us that we have two primary purposes in life and two assignments that go right along with them. Our primary purpose is always to love God whole-heartedly and our secondary purpose is to love others as well as we do ourselves. Our two most important assignments in life are, therefore, to fully accomplish each of those two purposes. The Big Five draw us into our assignments and keep us flowing in those pathways of purpose.

The Danger of Not Doing the Big Five

The important thing to keep in mind is that we are not given these connecters for God's benefit, but for our own. Don't shoot yourself in the foot by ignoring your Big Five lifeline to the Lord. Think of them as safety nets. They won't always be in tip-top repair. Sometimes you may neglect one or more of them for fair reasons or foul. When that happens, always be quick to mend them before any sizeable holes develop. You don't want to fall past these "do's" into the "don'ts"!

I have worked with men with addictions for years and have never yet seen someone fall back into the addiction who was faithfully working these five do's. The men, however, almost universally think that the problem was doing the don'ts. Yes, of course, we don't want to do the don'ts, but these do's keep us from the don'ts!

1. The Bible

Think of the Bible as Jesus in written form. He is the Word Gods eternal counsel made flesh. The Bible is much more than a mere book. It is the living Word of God. Jesus spoke the words that brought all of creation into being. If His spoken Word can do that, think what His written Word can do for you, to bring you fully to life.

2. Prayer

We are promised that all who call on His Name will be saved. Prayer is calling on God for mercy, for help or for fellowship. Through prayer, the Lord saves us from our sins, our troubles, and our aloneness. He delights in listening no request is too small. Learn to let your need drive you to Him every time. You absolutely cannot wear out the welcome mat. What's more, He has promised to always answer us. Then a true miracle occurs: Prayer takes us through communication into communion.

3. Worship

Worship is that higher form of our conversation with the Lord where we are not petitioning Him for what we need but thanking and praising Him for who He is and what He has already done. This brings us speedily into close communion with Him. We can worship with others in church, in our quiet times, and simply by doing all that we do as a love gift to Him.

4. Fellowship

Jesus, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit are always in perfect love and fellowship with One Another. They are now working through the gospel to draw us out of our self-focus into genuine fellowship with each other and with God. True spiritual fellowship is characterized by close communion with Spirit and truth. By intentionally seeking out friends in the Lord who are also seeking to grow in the right direction, we stay refreshed and strengthened.

5. Service

Serving others leads us out of ourselves into living more like Jesus does selflessly. Almost everyone has work that they need to do for their own survival which, nevertheless, benefits other people (if it is honest work). Service takes us into the realm where we learn to give ourselves, expecting nothing in return, simply because it is the right and loving thing to do. God always rewards those who follow Jesus in laying down their lives for others.

At One Place

You may have noticed that taking part in church life the whole of it, not just Sunday services supplies ways for all these connections to work for you. However, you can't take church home with you. Spiritually speaking, all of us need to dig our own wells and tend our own fires. Many of us have learned the hard way that we cannot survive our trials, much less thrive in the midst of a busy, burdened life, unless we daily work out with these connectors. How much is enough? Your peace level will tell you. The peace flows like a river into and through any heart that is well-connected to the Prince of Peace, Jesus. If you don't have His peace, do one of these do's that needs doing!

Prayer

Dear Lord, how I wish that I didn't have to work at staying connected to You. But it is not Your fault that I turn and fall away from every better-connected moment that You raise me to. At least You have given me this Spirit-graced way of holding on and re-connecting. Help me love the sweet feeling of a good connection Your marvelous peace so well that I will do the work necessary to keep our relationship in good working order. Help me love spending time with You in Your Word, in prayer with You, in worship of You, in fellowship with others who believe in You and in service to those You love. These are the very things You did when You walked the earth and they kept You well-connected to the Father. Thank God that You're in me helping me to love doing them, too!

Scripture

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5 ESV