How Important is our “Personal Relationship w/ God”?

We’re supposed to have a “Quiet Time” everyday. A Quiet Time basically breaks down to reading the Bible for 5-30 minutes and then praying for 2-15 minutes. Sometimes we’re given “Accountability Partners” (which go by various names) to help us be consistent with our Quiet Times (or QT’s for short).

All this because the most important thing in Evangelical Protestant Christianity is your “Personal Relationship with God.” A question like, "How are you doing spiritually?" is usually code for, are you having consistant Bible studies and prayer times?

But, is it the most important thing? Is it worth the weight we attribute it?

Some of you may have asked yourselves these questions before, others may feel that they are blasphemous and it is one of those “off limit” types of questions you just aren’t allowed to ask.

Well I was talking to my wife last night, who has a great knack for being able to sum up large portions of the Bible into a sentence or two. She’d been reading through Galatians and 1 John or 1 Timothy and said that she’d realized that basically what Paul was saying was that “whatever it is you’re arguing about doesn’t matter, just love people and do good.”

Isn’t that what so much of Paul’s letters are about? Just love people and do good. Isn’t that what Jesus was so often about? Love people and do good.

What really struck me after she said that is how neither Jesus nor Paul really made the focus on having a personal relationship with God. To look at our contemporary church, though, wouldn’t you think that this was the sole focus of the Bible? What I’m not saying here is that a personal relationship with God isn’t important, it certainly is. It’s just that maybe it shouldn’t be our focus.

Think about this, when Jesus talks about specifically about Hell it’s always in reference to people who didn’t love or do good. It’s never about someone who didn’t have a personal relationship with God in the sense we often mean it today.

What about the vast majority of Christian (not to mention Jewish) history when people didn't have access to a Bible. For centuries church was even performed in Latin. Of the thousands of years of history, only within the past few hundred has the Bible been available to the common man.

Maybe the question we should ask ourselves then is, why do we need to be held accountable for reading our Bible and praying everyday, but no one ever asks us if we loved someone today? Reading the Bible is great, we need to read the Bible more. Praying is great, we need to pray more. But who will you love today?

Love wins.