by Jacinta Cannon

Suppose a friend invited you to go ice-skating. You’ve never been ice-skating before in your life, and you are sure you aren’t going to have fun, but your friend keeps bugging you to go. You finally cave in and go, but you say, “I’m sure this is not going to be fun for me!” So you get there, and you start nit-picking and finding any and everything to complain about; you don’t like the way the skates fit you, there are too many people around you, your pants are wet from falling on the ice, etc. Obviously, you aren’t having fun. Now, let’s change the situation around. If your friend invited you to go ice-skating and you thought to yourself, ‘Wow, I’ve never been ice-skating before. This should be fun,’ then of course you are going to have fun.

The same thing applies for our relationship with God. If we have a willingness to spend time with Christ, then we are going to grow stronger. If we think of praying and being in the word as something we have to do, a part of a schedule, then we will not grow. It needs to be something we are excited about doing. The disciples spent a lot of time with Christ. In Acts 4:13, Peter and John astonished the people and they could tell that Peter and John had been spending time with Jesus. When we are doing it willingly, we are going to have a certain glow about us and people will be drawn to us. We will be able to reach out to others and God will show us things that we will not be able to see if we are not spending time with him. As the disciples spent time with Christ, they became unstoppable, preaching the word of God and showing the people that they were in fact followers of Christ. As we spend more time with God, we can grow to become unstoppable followers of Christ.