My daughter complained the other day about some difficulties with a person she had always considered a close friend.  I said to her, “You need to remember that relationships require effort and sometimes they’re simply hard work.”  Most of us are aware of that truth.  Some of us learnt that the hard way – we gave up on a relationship because it became too difficult.  Starve the lizards... how on earth can you expect a relationship to flourish if you don’t make the effort?  Okay... granted... some relationships are easier to maintain than others.  But the truth is that relationships shrivel and die unless they are nurtured – and then from both sides.  The tragedy is that we live in communities littered with broken relationships – often because someone assumed that relationships just happen and don’t need effort.

If relationships require effort then it makes sense that this is true too for our relationship with God.  That doesn’t just happen either – it too requires effort.  Of course the lack of effort is not from God’s side.  God has gone to a lot of trouble to have a relationship with us.  Three things particularly come to mind.  First, He sent His Son Jesus to take the penalty for our failures and sins so that we might be restored to a right relationship with God.  Second, He gave us the Bible to tell us that good news and to show us how to live in relationship with Him.  Third, He gave us the gift of prayer to communicate with Him in the certainty that when we pray in Jesus’ name he hears and answers us.

No... the problem so often is that we, for our part, don’t make the effort... and then we wonder why God seems a million kilometres away.  Let’s come back to those three things I just mentioned.

First there’s the good news that Jesus, God’s Son came into our world to restore our broken relationship with God.  But what are we doing about that?  Many Aussies are basically saying to God, “No thanks, I’m good!  I don’t need Jesus.”  Sadly, the day will come when they will realise with a shock that they are not good and that they did need Jesus.  Relationships require effort and a relationship with God needs to begin with making the effort to know Jesus and believe in His saving work.

Second, there is God’s gift of the Bible.  Ok, you’ve got one?  Good!  Yes, but where is it?  In some forgotten corner of a cupboard gathering dust?  Of course busyness is a common excuse for not reading the Bible.  I understand that.  Numerous pressures and demands keep us ever-so busy.  Years ago we were told that modern technology would give us more leisure time than ever before.  But many of us find our work just as demanding as we did twenty or thirty years ago.  Even when we do find more leisure time we often fill it with other commitments that leave us busier than ever.  In our hectic life in western society it requires real effort to spend quality time listening to God speak to us in the Bible.  The question is: can a relationship survive when one person never listens to the other?

And then there’s that wonderful gift of prayer – the opportunity to work at our relationship with God by talking to Him.  And yet...?  How often haven’t we got up in the morning, rushed through breakfast and hurried off to work only to realise that we didn’t even given the Lord a passing nod.  Determined to make up for the oversight we decide on some moments of quiet prayer before we go to bed that night.  But good intentions, we soon find, are not enough.  Business phone calls and social media keep us busy and we finally roll into bed with a measure of frustration about the day that is past.  Only as we doze off do we remember that apart from perhaps saying grace at the dinner table (if we still do that) our attempts to work at our relationship with God were none existent that day.

If this all sounds rather negative let me end on a positive note.  Occasionally it happens that we fail to work at a certain relationship but... that other person hangs in there for us, in spite of our own lukewarm efforts.  Well, that’s something that our Lord God is particularly good at.  We may let Him go... but He never lets us go.

John Westendorp