Relationship – Paul Nordman

Couch Dynamics

One evening a couple weeks into our marriage, Peggy and I had just finished cleaning up the dinner dishes when she said, “Let’s sit on the couch.” “Ok,” I replied, and so we sat. “What do we do now?” I asked. “We talk,” she replied. “Oh. About what?” echoed my response from a chasm of cluelessness. “Anything. Our days, maybe,” she said. And so we did. We’ve since come to call this “couch dynamics” — purposefully carving out time to share and hear what’s on our minds. We can, and often do, accomplish the same on our walks together; either way, we regularly and intentionally take time to relate to our “other half.”

Believers are fond of saying, “Christianity is not a religion; it’s a relationship.” Actually, it is both. Have you ever noticed, though, that even as we tout “relationship” with God theologically, we too often feel distant from Him experientially? We wonder why, yet the answer is close at hand, for when asked about daily time in prayer and the Word, we mumble our confession, “Not so much.” But if Christianity is a relationship, doesn’t it follow that we regularly and intentionally relate with Him who has made us one with Himself? Then how?

We purposefully carve out time with God to share and hear what’s on each other’s minds. Think of it as celestial “couch dynamics.” Then to hear Him, where better to go than to His Word? It is life itself,¹ and it is truth.² The Word is “breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that [we] may be complete, equipped for every good work.”³ His Word is “alive and powerful. . . .It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires”⁴ when we cannot understand them ourselves. It is “a lamp to [our] feet and a light to [our] path.”⁵ Yes, God speaks.

Yet the Father also listens; we are heard. Through Jeremiah He promises, “You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you.”⁶ John, too, assures us, “this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.”⁷ No wonder Jesus himself “would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.”⁸ He was relational, intentional; He still is. Then let us likewise take time to relate with Him.

You know, like couch dynamics.

Father, grace me to “[store] up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”⁹ And “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!”¹⁰ Amen.

¹ Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3
² John 17:17
³ 2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV
⁴ Hebrews 4:12 NLT
⁵ Psalm 119:105
⁶ Jeremiah 29:12 ESV
⁷ 1 John 5:14 ESV
⁸ Luke 5:16 NASB
⁹ Psalm 119:11 ESV
¹⁰ Psalm 141:2 ESV

What a Friend!

“She knows how to be a friend,” my wife observed of another. Peggy seemed to have given the matter some thought, so I asked her what she meant. “A friend initiates contact and stays in touch; she is kind, and she listens and shares.” I was convinced (and a little convicted). In fact, can we all agree relationships take effort? They require the most demanding type of work, calling us to give though we prefer to receive, to self-sacrifice instead of self-satisfaction, and to inconvenience when we want comfort.

How many times have we heard—or maybe said—“Christianity is not a religion but a relationship”? In truth, it is both. Insofar as Christianity is the belief in a supernatural power, we would rightly call it a religion. But not merely so, for the true God—He in whom all things exist—is not reduced to an idea, a philosophy or a mere worldview in a cafeteria of many, nor is He content to be distanced from a people who cannot approach him by merit. So, He who made us in His image came to us in our image, that He would take upon Himself the punishment for our sin and redeem us as His people. In other words, He knows how to be a friend.

Which begs the question: Do we? Stated differently, if Christianity is an intimate relationship with the God of all there is, then why don’t we listen more for His voice through His Word and His presence within? How does anything keep us from speaking with Him openly and confidently throughout the day? An exhortation seems in order here: If Christianity is a relationship, then relate! Left to ourselves, however, “Relate!” would be yet another burden to bear in our own power; “Read and pray!” would be just two more commandments in the opposite direction of our natural inclination. So, what is missing?

I think friendship with God lives and breathes in this: “We love because he first loved us.”¹ This is not the imposition of an obligatory quid pro quo, i.e., He loved me first, so I am duty-bound to return His love and to pay it forward; rather it is the celebration of a liberating truth—that God knows everything about me, and He still loves me, forgives me, unites me with Himself, lives in me, and makes me forever new. God’s love for us is truth that sets us free² and sends us forth in the joy of friendship with God. He knows how to be a friend, and in His liberating love, so can we.

Father, how greatly You love us! Draw us near to you, that, knowing Your love, we will live in open, trusting friendship with You. In Christ we pray. Amen.

¹ 1 John 4:19 ESV
² John 8:31-32