Investing in the Relationship

  I’ve been praying for something for years.  I’ve prayed many times and never felt that God was answering my prayer.  My prayer was for something very good.  I couldn’t imagine God not wanting to give me what I was praying for.  I’m not gonna lie, there have been times that I have felt frustrated by what seemed like God's silence regarding my prayer!

Do you ever read the Bible and then put it down and look around wondering why things seemed different back then?  I have!  Why does the relationship that the disciples had with God seem so much different that what we see today?  I long for things in the "here and now" to look more like what I read in God's word, so I asked myself what's the difference and why aren't things like that? I looked at my own life and wondered if there was something wrong or if something needed to change, but never really got to the bottom of it.  

Stay with me here because I’m going down a little rabbit trail. 

A wise man once told me that after getting married I should keep doing the things that I had done to win my bride in the first place.  One of those things was buying flowers.  As a man I feel that dollars spent on something already dead and guaranteed to wilt and be thrown away is a waste of money.  But, because I was given that advise, I still do it.  Not as much as I should, but I do it.  I have found that sometimes I do it for her, and sometimes I do it for me.

What I mean by that is that most times things are great and I just want to do something special for her.  Then there are other times...  During those times I have found that when I “invest” in my wife, I can feel my heart turning toward her.  My heart follows where I put my investment. 

So, back to the point.  

  My prayer for all those years was simply this.  “Lord, I love you.  I want to want more of you.  Please help me to love you more!”

Now don’t get me wrong, this is a prayer that I would highly recommend!  But, after years of praying it, I felt the same as when I had first started.  I loved God before, but I wanted to love him more and couldn’t in my own strength.  I believe that God calls us to repentance in the first place and then, because of our sinful nature, has to help us even to love him.  The thing that didn’t hit me until recently was that I needed to “invest” more in the relationship for my sake.  

It was a couple of weeks ago that I started looking around at the circumstances of my life.  We have no plan B.  We haven’t sold everything, but we have much less than we did a year ago.  I don’t think God calls everyone to sell things as part of the process, but are we willing if he does?

God called us to “invest” in our relationship and now I realize that he has answered my prayer!  More than ever I find myself looking forward to my times with God!  When I read The Word it seems to be more alive than ever before!  I am depending on him like never before.  God has helped me to love him more!  

But...

I think that before God helped me to love him more, he helped me to “invest” in our relationship.  Taking this step in the process has turned my heart more toward him.  Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that I DID anything to deserve answered prayer, but he helped me through the process. 

The cool part about loving God is that it’s never enough!  He answered my prayer, but I’m still praying the same thing today.  I pray that my Heavenly Father will take me through this process again and again.  I hope that at the end of my life, my love for him will be something that I can’t even imagine now!  

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field.  In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.”                Matt. 13:44

Did you see the word excitement in that verse?  Other translations use the word joy.  Relationship with God is the treasure and spending eternity with him is worth selling “everything” in this life to get!  We get to find joy in our relationship with God and can be excited for the next time he calls us to “sacrifice” earthly things in exchange for more treasure!

My prayer for each of you reading this is that you would know the joy of investing in your relationship with the God of the universe!  In what ways is he calling you to "invest" in your relationship with him?  Will you do it?  There is joy in it!  I pray that he takes you through the process again and again and that you find yourselves closer to him but longing to be closer still! 

  We find ourselves more and more connected to the people that God has placed in our lives here in Costa Rica.  We've found a great new church home and we get to meet new "family" each week.  One of our concerns for moving down here was uprooting our kids one more time.  We knew that finding new friends can sometimes be hard, so we prayed about this quite a bit before we left.  Not only have our kids found some great friends, but Faith and I have found new friends as well as friends that we had here before!

That's right we now have no more need for diapers (during the day)!!
If you can't see in the photo, we bribe our kids with chocolate!

  Times at the Centro de Vida (the youth center) have been really good.  I've really started to enjoy and look forward to times there with my Monday night buddies as well as times spent hanging out with the youth group on Friday nights.  Our pastor here has asked that I become the director of Centro de Vida and after praying about it for a time we felt a real peace in it.  I will now be starting to schedule activities as well as looking for those willing to teach english, computer, music, and other types of classes as part of the outreach of the center.  Please pray for wisdom and that God will bring the right people in the right times to fill needs.  It is in filling these needs that we hope to have opportunities for sharing Jesus with our community!

Crazy times at Centro de Vida!

  We continue to go into the orphanages every other Friday and love it!  Some of the kids are starting to remember our faces and when you see them smiling it makes the long drive totally worth while!  Please pray for these lives!  Please also pray that we can show them the love of their Heavenly Father.

  

Craft time with our friends at the orphanage.

   Thank you so much for your support of our ministry here!  So many of you have added us to your prayer lists and are praying for us every day!  Prayer is the thing that makes the impossible possible in our lives!  Please keep praying for us and let us know if there are ways we can be in prayer for you!  Thank you also to all of you who are partnering with us financially!  You have brought grateful tears to our eyes!

                                                                                       We love and miss y'all!,
                                                                                           The Ridderings


P.S.  We are working on our budget and have found that we are around 60%.  For those of you who feel led to donate to our ministry please visit www.WorldOutreach.org/donations -  you can select Aaron and Faith Riddering from the list under the donate tab.  Or, simply mail your check to:  World Outreach Ministries, PO Box B, Marietta, GA 30061 and designate it for Aaron & Faith Riddering #239.