The Journey, By Billy Graham

Tonight Keith and I had a Financial Peace University class at The Torch. As we were listening to Dave Ramsey talk about mutual funds and talking about the millions of illustrations and stories that he gives every week as he talks, he talked about reading and what you can learn from it. As he was talking about this my heart was quickened. Several months ago I has started reading a book called, "The Journey" by Billy Graham but had not really gotten into it to much. As he was speaking my heart became quickened to pick it up tonight and read once again.

As I did, a lot of things was poured into me, but there were two things I felt like I needed to write about. First, At the end of chapter three he talked about God being our friend and that we were made to know who God is and what he can do through us. Although the Christian life is a learning process that never ends, we become to know Christ but a lot of people don't know him as friend or have a deep relationship with him. If they don't, they are missing out.

God wants us to know him and have a every day relationship with him. In the words of Billy Gramham, he says as follows,

"This is a staggering truth. Think of it: The infinite, all powerful, holy God of the universe wants to be your friend! He wants you to know him persoanlly and to discover what it means to walk with him every day. He wants you to know he is with you and he wants to have communication with you through his word and through prayer. He wants to comfort you when you are upset or anxoius and to encourage you when you are dejected or depressed. He wants to guide you when you face difficult decisions and he even wants to correct you when you are about to do someting foolish or wrong".

This to me is such a wonderful word. He wants to be our freind even when we sin. My heart just jumps for excitement when I read that becasue of the fact that that truely shows how much he really loves us. He looks at us for who we are and not what we do. We were created for the purpose of just having a personal relationship with our creator God. Now, obviously we will never learn everything there is to know about who God is, but we can through our journey in life find out everything we can about his character and the will he has for each of our lifes.

Having a deep personal relationship with our heavenly father on a continuous basis shows where our priorities are and how much we really want his fellowship. I know I want and need it so much. He is so precoius. Even when we fail to do so he is still right there waiting on us to invite him to commune with us. He is there to help us with our every need, and how great is his love for us.

Second, when we come to Christ, we find a new life in him. Our distiny and journey completely changes as we grow in relationship in him. No matter what we go through though in our lifes, we have Christ walking with us helping us in every thing we deal with. How awesome is this. The benefits of the christain life far outwieghs in hardships we go through. I can truley say that its worth the journey.

So today I hope those who read this will feel compelled to continue to commune with the Lord in personal relationship with him, but if you are not I hope you will start. Its amazing what God can do when you get alone with him and totally surrender everything you have in personal relationship with him. I can guarantee that you will never be the same again.