Thirty-six years ago, the weekend before the 4th of July, I met my beautiful wife Patty. From the time I first saw her, she has occupied my thoughts completely. She has left me unable to concentrate on anything but her, and she has completely filled my life with wonder. In a word she has left me “twitterpated”.

We were married 5 months after we met, that fateful June evening. We made two beautiful daughters, and three exceptional grandchildren. I cannot imagine my life without her in it. I am tempted to tell you folks that the last 36 years have been all “wine and roses” and a walk through the park in the cool of the evening…but that would not be even close to the truth. Over the years we have struggled with money issues, parent issues, parenting issues, raising two teenagers (and both of them lived!), illness, problems at work, the issues involved in living with a stubborn spouse, issues related to being too young to be married and lately issues related to growing old together - the list could go on for pages. Yet 36 years into this relationship, all I can say is that 36 more years would not be enough. You see, as we worked through the things life throws at us together, our relationship just gets stronger. The longer we are together the stronger our bond gets. When we are not together I feel like half a person; we are truly one. I cannot imagine my life without Patty right there with me. It has been 36 years of hard work, this relationship building thing, but it is worth it!

Well what exactly is your point Randy? What does this have to do with worship? Everything, that’s what. You see the very human relationship I’ve described to you, even as imperfect and full of bumps as it is, is exactly the relationship that God wants to have with us. Just look to the scriptures, how many times is Christ described as the Bridegroom and we as His Bride? How many places does God tell us of His longing for a deep, intimate relationship with us?

If we want to reach the level of relationship that God wants, there is only one way to do it - we have to work at it. Just like we have to work at our earthly marriage so we must work on our heavenly marriage. Relationship takes effort. Constant, consistent effort. The really cool part about this is that the effort involved in relationship building with God centers on just relaxing, and not fighting Him. We need to strive to just let Him be God and to let Him do the “heavy lifting “and to try to not help Him out when we think He needs it (read about Abraham and Sarah). We need to learn to trust Him and to go to Him with our problems first rather than trying to fix them on our own. We need to spend time just being with Him, just like we spend time just being with our spouse. When we just focus on spending time with God, that is where worship happens. We need to strive to enter His rest!

Till next time,

Randy