The other day, a coworker shared with me how her daughter has walked away from the faith. This woman is not alone. Many people walk away from the faith, and it seems to happen especially during college years. Certainly the college experience – peer pressure, social liberalism, and the classroom evangelist – contributes to the epidemic of children leaving Christianity. But the problem is much deeper than college.
We the church are great at teaching people how to act like Christians, but so often we don’t show people how to have a relationship with God. We emphasize things like church attendance, ministry, service (which are all good), but we don’t always model intimacy with Jesus Himself.
Perhaps we struggle with modeling it because we ourselves don’t know how to do it. Or we think that a spiritual relationship comes naturally. We talk about the importance of prayer, but has anyone showed you how to pray and meditate? We say things like, “Listen to what God is telling you,” but when’s the last time you heard teaching or attended a workshop on “how to hear and discern the voice of God.”
It’s much easier to teach people how to act like a Believer than how to be intimate with Jesus. But we must remember that acting like a Believer is not the same as being a Believer. This is one main reason why people walk away from the faith.
When the stage disappears, and suddenly an individual finds themselves without those externals that defined their Christian experience – their church, friends, youth group, adult leaders, they don’t know how to act. The Christianity that they’ve practiced is public, but there is no private intimacy with Jesus Himself. Young people aren’t the only ones at risk. Adults, especially pastors, have walked away for the same reason.
This is nothing new. This was an epidemic that plagued God’s people throughout their history. The Lord said, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13). Then some 700 years later, Jesus echoed the same words when referring to the Jewish leaders (Matthew 15:8).
Christian, there is something you need, like you need water. There is something you crave deep within your soul. It is intimacy with the Lord Jesus. And until we taste it, we never know quite what it is. But when we taste it, we know it is everything we’ve ever wanted, and nothing can be its substitute ever again. It is as the poet writes in Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?”
Jesus is the constant. Our life experiences may change. We may end up at different places with different churches and different peers. But the Holy Spirit never leaves us. He is the one constant, and if we have a relationship with Him, then our faith will not falter when the seasons of life change. A prayer relationship with Him must be what defines your Christian life, or I dare say that your Christianity is not really alive.
This is the message that the Lord has been laying heavily on my heart. There’s a need in the church today. The need isn’t how to behave better or how to be more involved in the church. The need is to teach the church how to have intimacy with Jesus. Over the next few months, these Reflections will focus on just that. I’ll be giving biblical and practical instruction on prayer and intimacy with Jesus, and I pray that this will be helpful in your own life.
But today let me leave you with this thought: your prayer life is your lifeblood. It is your umbilical cord. Jesus demonstrates how essential prayer was to His existence. How often we read of Him leaving the crowds to get alone with His Father. If Jesus – God Himself – could not neglect communion with the Father, then certainly, neither can we.
