The Importance of Relationships

I love when I study and God shows me the same thing in two different places and I have that "aha" moment when the Spirit reminds me of something I should always have been doing.  This has been one of those weeks. I got to share this with my life group folks whom I love more and more each week and I wanted to jot this down before I forgot what I had been taught in my studies.

I was reading Exodus which I really had to stop and focus on items and look things up to follow along.  However, in Exodus 33, it grabbed me.

Here's the back story.  Moses comes back after being with God to find Israel worshiping a golden calf and many people died in their idolatry.  God was going to care for them, but He intended to leave them because He couldn't handle their sin anymore and He had enough. However, the book then focuses on Moses' relationship with God.  Their relationship changes everything.  It picks up in verse 11:

Exodus 33:11-18

11 Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses turned again into the camp, his assistant Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.
12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ 13 Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.”
¹⁴ And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” ¹⁵ And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. ¹⁶ For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?”17 And the Lord said to Moses, “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.” 18 Moses said, “Please show me your glory.”

What I love is that Moses doesn't care about any promise and loves God so much that he won't leave God.  God's response is favor towards Moses.  Then after God expresses His favor, Moses, overflowing with love asks God, "Please show me your glory."

Then I was hit again in Ruth.  In Ruth, Naomi sends her family away because she is a widow and is returning home.  Ruth, a Moabite, however responds alot like Moses:

Ruth 1:16-17
¹⁶ But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. ¹⁷ Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

I started to see a pattern in what God was showing me and I looked inward.  I started asking questions inspired by Moses and Ruth:

How deeply do I love people?  Do I have relationships in my life that are worth standing up for?  Do I demand God's presence?  Do I say things like, "God, I'm not leaving for my job unless you go with me!  I'm not teaching a word unless you speak through me."  Really, I don't always do that.

Then I really started thinking about shallow relationships and what they do.  The scary thing that hit me is that if I choose not to love like a Ruth or a Moses and I settle for shallow relationships, my relationships ultimately keep the focus on me and keep me the most important person in my life.  This can easily bleed over into my relationship with God.

If I treat people that way, what's to stop me from treating God that way?  My life's prayer request become mostly about me because I don't invest in people and my fear is that my prayers to Him look more like my wish lists instead of adoring Him and seeking His glory.

I think it's all connected.  When I place myself out there for others, others become my priority and my prayers become about them more than me.  As I sacrifice for others, I learn to sacrifice for God.  I want to love people intentionally.  I want close relationships that cause me to care more about people and God than I do myself.  I hope that I love family, friends, enemies and God passionately.  In that, I believe that I will settle for nothing less than being closer to God.