Crazy Love, by Francis Chan, is by far one of my all time favorite books. His words do a great job of putting God and our relationship with Him into perspective.

Here’s an excerpt from the book:

"If life is a river, then pursuing Christ requires swimming upstream. When we stop swimming, or actively following Him, we automatically begin to be swept downstream.
Or, to use another useful metaphor more familiar to city people, we are on a never-ending downward escalator. In order to grow, we have to turn around and sprint up the escalator, putting up with perturbed looks from everyone else who is gradually moving downward."

The excerpt from Crazy Love is completely true. When we become complacent, we begin to move backward. Be intentional with your faith - growing in your relationship with the Lord. Without time and communication, the relationships in every area of your life would slowly dwindle away. Your relationship with God is no different. The Creator of the universe wants to spend time with you. I think that this is a privilege we have as a child of God that is easily over looked, but it is the best way to grow in our faith. How we grow in a relationship with anyone is by getting to know their character. With God, we do this through reading His Word and seeing His always consistent character over the course of the whole Bible.

2 Timothy 4:7 says: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith."

Paul, the author of Timothy, was a devout follower of the Lord who actively sought out God and constantly grew in his faith. He had a deep faith, was constantly hopeful, and had strong convictions. Paul had no boundaries with his faith; he was even imprisoned for it. He “fought the good fight.” This kind of character did not come from a mediocre, passive relationship with God, where God was just a part of his life. God was Paul’s life. Paul was in constant communion with the Lord. Without this consistently close relationship with God, Paul would not have been the great missionary and man of God that he is remembered as today. Paul saw the value of his relationship with God, and I think we can really learn from that. Pursuing God through prayer and reading His Word is the the fuel to drive us to “finish the race.”

Someone once said to me “If Satan can’t make you bad, he will make you busy.” This is an eternal struggle of mine. The busyness of life can easily push our time with the Lord to the back burner. I know this more than anyone. The things consuming your time might not necessarily be bad things, but I think that good things can quickly turn into a problem in our life when they begin to get in the way of the time we spend with the Lord. Learning to see the value in a relationship with God can help alter our priorities in order to place time spent in building our relationship with the Lord first.