My Appointment With God

Let me ask you a question. If you had an appointment with Jesus, would you keep it? If Jesus invited you to Starbucks to sip on twelve dollar sugarless double-shot, half-caf, super-skim, extra-foam lattes, and toss around a few theological issues, would you make a point of being there? Or what if you had a personal counseling appointment with Jesus? You know, the kind where you go into his office, and sit down on his couch, and he offers you some water he just turned into wine, and you get to ask his advice on some very personal issues. Would you at least make some effort to keep this counseling appointment?

My guess is that you would do anything short of setting yourself on fire to keep an appointment with Jesus. If the only slot open was 5:00 a.m., you’d wake up at 4:00 a.m. and drink an extra cup of coffee. If you had to drive five hours to meet with Jesus, you’d do it in a heartbeat. If you had to run ten miles first…you would make a valiant effort and then collapse after the first mile. But at least you would try!

Think about how excited you would be. The chance to meet with Jesus, the King of the Universe! The opportunity to get the personal counsel of God, who also happens to be the One who created all things and keeps all things together. Does it get any better? I don’t think so. If I had the chance for a one-on-one hang out session with Jesus, I would be seriously pumped.

But here’s the funny thing. Every morning I have the opportunity for a hang out session with Jesus, yet I’m not excited about it. Every day I have the counsel of the almighty God at my disposal, but I don’t diligently seek it. Every day I have the chance to spend time in the presence of my creator, but I don’t jump at the chance. It’s called my Bible, and it’s called prayer.

Listen to the astonishing promise of God from James 4:8 -

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you…

Stop. Think about those words. Do you feel the glorious weight of this promise? In these words we have a divine invitation into the presence of God. We are summoned by God himself to draw near to the throne and to meet with God. God invites us to meet with him, and ask his counsel, and confess our struggles, and receive his wisdom. He invites us to find new strength for each day, and to commune with our him.

How do we draw near to God? By spending time in his word and prayer. Sorry, nothing new, nothing groundbreaking. Only the simple, glorious truth, that we really do meet with God when we read the Bible and pray.

I want to grow in my love for scripture and for prayer. I’m not often excited at the prospect of reading my Bible, but I want to be. The thought of prayer doesn’t send a shiver of joy up my spine, but it should. I want to grow in my commitment to the Bible and to prayer, because I want to meet with God.

Let us be stirred by the example of the great missionary Hudson Taylor. In his book Desiring God, John Piper relates the following:

It was not easy for Mr. Taylor, in his changeful life, to make time for prayer and Bible study, but he knew that it was vital. Well do the writers remember traveling with him month after month in northern China, by cart and wheelbarrow with the poorest of inns at night. Often with only one large room for coolies and travelers alike, they would screen off a corner for their father and another for themselves, with curtains of some sort; and then, after sleep at last had brought a measure of quiet, they would hear a match struck and see the flicker of candlelight which told that Mr. Taylor, however weary, was poring over the little Bible in two volumes always at hand. From two to four A.M. was the time he usually gave to prayer, the time he could be most sure of being undisturbed to wait upon God.