How many times have you heard someone say this, ‘Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship with God’? Many of you have probably heard it say before. I know, because I am one of those.

However, recently, I was again reminded of this profound yet so easily forgotten truth about our faith. It is ALL about having a relationship with the creator of this universe, the creator of you and me and all that moves and don’t move. We get lost in all our man-made rituals and practices that we sometimes lose the whole point of all these things that we have set in place.

I am not against rituals and rules and processes, but it is always good to remind those who practice them and ourselves why exactly we are doing all that we are doing. Why do we encourage each other to pray more and to read the Bible more? Why do we ‘make’ believers go to church early on Sunday mornings? The sole reason is to enable us to develop a deeper, closer and more intimate relationship with our Father in heaven. Apart from this objective, all these things don’t matter at all.

I suppose this issue came to mind as I was attempting to improve my prayer life and trying to get hold of good books on prayer and trying hard to spend more time in prayer. Then He reminded me that I need to pray more not because there is a requirement in heaven that believers need to clock a certain number of ‘prayer hours’ but rather that I need to draw closer to Him so that I can actually hear when He speaks!

Then I began to ask this question again, why God, do you make it so difficult and tedious to draw closer to You? We may have experienced periods in our walk when we are bursting with excitement to study the Word and to pray, but I must confess that personally, the periods when I feel the exact opposite seem to outweigh the former. Relationship with God more often than not is not as ‘fun’ as hanging out with friends over coffee or watching a movie together. Is that supposed to be the way? Is that really what God planned when He made us?

Somehow I don’t think so.

So what are we left with to conclude? Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not sure too. I know that while we may not always feel like praying or reading the Bible, there is a need for a certain level of discipline to kick in or most of us will end up never praying or reading. Another thing I am left to conclude is, while we always call God our friend, we cannot interact with Him like we do with our other friends. If we don’t feel like seeing a particular friend, we just don’t and we continue doing so until we feel like it. However, this will definitely not work with God as chances are, we will just stop being friends with Him altogether. Rather we need to discipline our minds and body to continue talking to Him even at times when we don’t feel like it. Only then, will the times that we feel like it become more often and regular. It’s strange but that’s how it seems to work.

I know I seem to be rambling, but these are just some of the things that God seems to be bringing into my mind. Christianity is indeed all about a relationship with God, but we should not be misled into thinking that the word ‘relationship’ is defined in the same way we do on earth with our people. This relationship is unique in many ways and we cannot expect to use the way we deal with relationships on earth in the same as we deal with God. There is discipline, work and pain involved in this relationship. But it is still a relationship. And perhaps as we draw closer to Him through good and bad times, that we will understand better how to take this relationship to the next level.