Spiritual vitality is the quest to live in close relationship to God. Jesus said in John 15 that if we remain in Him and He remains in us we will bear much fruit and we can ask whatever we will and it will be given to us. He is emphasizing the need to be connected with Him. When we are in His presence we are fruitful, fulfilled and can know that He hears our prayers. Jesus’ sacrifice made a way for us to relate to God as God always intended for mankind too. It is not about buildings or evangelism or bible study or seeker sensitive services. It’s about relationship. It’s always about relationship.

Christianity is not about going to church or doing good works. To be a Christian a person needs to enter into a personal relationship with God through Jesus. According to Jesus in Matthew 16 the key to entering is revelation, which is a gift from God. Without the revelation that Jesus is who He said He is and our subsequent surrender to that we can’t truly call ourselves Christians. We need revelation and surrender to His goodness. This ushers us into the presence of God, no longer separated by all the barriers and hindrances that made Him seem so distant. This revelation comes to each one of us differently.

Amazingly the church tends to then lump all of its parts together as if they were all cut from the same mould. In my joy and excitement I sought out wisdom from those who were in the faith before me. How do I pursue my faith and relationship with my Father further? What must I do to know Him more? I was told: read the word daily, witness to your faith, pray, and go to church.

At church I was told to get up an hour earlier every day to pray and seek God. I wasn’t being a true believer if I prayed for anything less than an hour a day. This was bad advice for me. I am not a morning person. Getting up an hour earlier led to a constant guilt trip. I would either sleep through the alarm or wake up kneeling by my bed with my arms asleep or find myself reading the same line over and over and over again because my mind was not able to engage at that level that early. Yet in the evening I would spend hours reading and praying and soaking up the presence of God but still feeling guilty because it wasn’t the first thing I did in my day. The church commandment was: GIVE GOD THE FIRST FRUITS OF EVERYTHING.

So I wasn’t being obedient by not giving Him the first hour of my day. Thankfully I read scriptures in the evening for I found one that changed my perspective. “On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.” (Psalm 63:6) On my bed, hallelujah! Through the watches of the night! So it doesn’t have to be in the morning to be acceptable to God.

I found that as I read the bible I would be drawn into prayer. The word of God stimulated conversation and intimacy with my Lord. Then I went to a pastors’ conference where one of the keynote speakers rebuked us for our lack of prayer. He told us that we weren’t praying enough and that some of us were substituting reading the bible for time in prayer. I felt so chastised that I wasn’t praying enough and that I was the very one who read the word instead of praying. From that point on I started going to the Father in prayer without reading the word. It was so dry and fruitless. I would walk back and forth for an hour trying to pray, trying to hear the Lord, trying to fill the time. I read lists of requests to Him in an effort to feel good about interceding for the people in the church. I saw very few answers as a result of these lists of petitions. I felt like I was dying spiritually even though I was fulfilling this man’s directive on prayer. I felt guilty if I read the word and it then led into prayer. But, fortunately, after a time I realized that his sweeping generalization about prayer was wrong and I renounced his teaching on prayer. He taught from his experience, which he projected onto all the other leaders. He assumed we are all the same and that his way was the right way.

Isn’t it amazing how we, the church, serve a God of such incredible creativity and diversity in equally uncreative and mundane ways? We talk about being God centred and yet centre all our understanding out of our inner most being. I am, so I must be right. We need to expand our horizons of understanding and include diversity of expression within worship.

The Alpha course’s first lecture is entitled “Boring, Irrelevant and Untrue” wherein Nicky Gumbel explains that those words summed up his observation of Christianity before he met Christ. For someone observing Christians from an outside perspective it would be easy to come to this same conclusion. Most Christians are bored, avoid prayer like the plague and exude as much joy as a prisoner tortured on a rack. We start off with joy and then end up dead, dead, dead due to the lack of true intimate worship of God. 10 – 15% of the congregation may relate to the style of worship that is the norm for a particular church. The rest are bored stiff.

Call a prayer meeting and see how many turn up. Often a very small percentage of the congregation! Then we belittle those who didn’t come as unfaithful backsliders who only look to be entertained on Sundays. But why would you go to something that puts you to sleep? Often I only went to prayer meetings because I was the pastor, not because I really wanted too. It was something you had to do; it was good and right but not at all enjoyable. Prayer meetings were akin to drinking cod liver oil for your health. It’s good for you! Then you meet the people at the meeting who are excited and full of joy and can’t wait to pray. What happened? Oh, I know, they must be intercessors and that is their gift! It isn’t true. I have seen people who didn’t like to pray come alive in prayer once the method matched their pathway to meeting with God.

Do you know the sacred pathway that restores your soul?