There are four pillars to building a relationship with God that some believers don’t know about.
Many people are believers but don’t feel close to God. They’re married to Him but not thriving in that relationship.
They think, “If I’m a Christian, why am I not close to Him like Moses or the apostles were? Why don’t I have that kind of relationship?”
I want you to visualize your relationship with God as a structure with a roof supported by four pillars.
In this article, I’ll reveal those four pillars you must have to build a relationship with God.
I’ll also give you a list of practical solutions you can add to your life today to create time to build these pillars.
Let’s jump right in!
How Should a Relationship With God Look in the Life of a Believer?
Christians have a relationship with God. This means they exist in Him because they got saved.
However, most of them do not cultivate that relationship. In other words, things don’t go beyond simply acknowledging God in their life.
Think about it.
Out of the thousands of Christians who walk into a church every Sunday morning, how many actively do things to go deeper into God throughout the week?
A genuine relationship with God looks like a typical healthy marriage.
And what do those look like?
It gets deeper and more meaningful as time goes on.
It doesn’t stay the same or get worse. It doesn’t turn into an afterthought—something that is just there and only given attention sometimes.
It’s real and living because the two parties put into it.
That is the key—the believer must put into their relationship with God for it to thrive and become more real.
We do this by setting up the pillars that we'll talk about shortly.
You Don’t Need Desire or Willpower
I used to think, “A person has to want it. If they don’t, they’ll never go after it.”
With this line of thinking, a person must desire something before they set out to do what is necessary to get it.
Because if they don’t have that initial desire, they just won’t budge to begin with.
There’s some truth to that.
But I feel that God showed me something a bit contrary to that.
I think people can achieve things even if they don’t have a strong desire for the outcome immediately.
For example, a person can win a race even if, in the beginning, they don’t desire the gold medal.
When starting, all it takes is the work, not the desire.
Isn’t this true? When you’re starting to create healthy habits in your life, you kind of have to force yourself to do things.
With the race, even if you don’t initially desire the prize, the desire will come later if you start by doing the work.
It’s the same with our relationship with God.
I think a lot of people lie to themselves to practice virtue signaling—they say they want a stronger relationship with God because this is the “right” thing to say.
They might even believe they do.
But their actions and lifestyle say differently.
In reality, they want to go to a football game on Sunday more than church. They want to go shopping rather than pray.
I’ve been there! It’s called the flesh.
Paul said in Romans 7 (MSG version):
“I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.”
“I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.”
“I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.”
Because of this familiar dilemma, we settle for an odd solution to resolve the matter.
We say, “You know what? I’ll do the work when I can, and God understands when I don’t.
He loves me anyway. I will settle for a mediocre, unsacrificial life with God because I know I don’t desire it deep down, and it’s too hard to do the work to see it happen.”
And from then on, we don’t have to do anything.
We can come to church when we want. Pray when we want. Be a Christian when we want.
It’s so much easier!
I propose that we be honest with ourselves and admit when we don’t desire God.
After that, it’s time to do the work to get this thing back on track.
So, start with the work. The desire will come later precisely because you’ve put in the work.
It becomes a lifestyle and something you like.
I encourage everyone to read Steven Pressfield's small book, The War of Art. It discusses these concepts.
It’ll change your life.
You Need Time
Now, the question becomes, “If I don’t need the desire to start building my relationship with God, what do I need?”
The answer is simple: Time.
As Professor Brand says in the movie Interstellar, “The problem is time.”
The truth is that we’re all too busy.
The three things Americans spend most of their time on are:
Work
Screen-time (social media, computers, etc.)
Personal things (cooking, kids, chores, etc.)
Starting out, all you need is time. But the problem is that we don’t have it.
So, the solution is to reorganize, manage, and make time.
You literally have to make time for something you don’t really want to do right now in your life—be still and pray.
However, the payoff is life-changing, rewarding you with peace that passes all understanding.
Just as it takes physical hours and minutes to work, cut the grass, cook, and clean, it takes time to better your relationship with God.
If you never give your relationship with God time, it will never flourish.
I’ll show you how to get more time in your day in a minute. But first…
How to Build a Relationship With God (The Four Pillars)
We’ve already defined what a relationship with God looks like—a healthy marriage.
Now, we need to define what it takes to actually do the building. How do we build it?
I define them as four pillars holding up a roof structure.
1. Prayer
The first thing you must have in your life to create a thriving relationship with God is prayer.
Every believer needs to pray. Not just the leaders.
The Apostles had what the Bible calls an “hour of prayer” (Acts 3:1).
This short video explains how to pray:
2. Meditation
Meditation is tied to something called “rumination.” This is when cows roam around all day and chew the cud.
I live in south Texas, where there are many cows and farms. When they’re not lying down, they’re constantly chewing.
Rumination is the process of chewing, swallowing, vomiting it back up, then repeating the process.
I heard they do this for digestion and nutrient purposes—they want to soak up everything they can in the most beneficial way.
That is what meditation is. It’s pondering on God and soaking up everything from His Word.
Psalm 119:15
I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.
When meditating, you’re usually not speaking that much but thinking.
Maybe you read the Bible and take notes. But these practices don’t do any good if you don’t meditate on them.
What does the reading mean to you? What is God speaking to you? What can you further grasp from your notes?
Truly, meditation is all about listening, and you must do it to excel in your relationship with God.
3. Hearing
The Bible says, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”
Some believers are defeated because they go through their entire week without hearing the word.
When you finally physically hear the good news, it refreshes you and brings you back to faith.
In Acts, the Christians were constantly gathering and talking about the Word.
As a result, the early believers heard it. The more they heard it, the more they believed it, and it positively impacted their lives.
You can hear God’s Word in several ways. Try listening to:
Good sermons
Other believers talk about God
Yourself speaking God’s Word over your life
Good Christian music
Christian podcasts, audio Bibles, and YouTube videos
4. Reading
Yes, you’ll need to read your Bible.
You might hate reading. I know I did.
But again, to start enjoying reading, you just need to read. It’s an acquired taste.
As Christians, we base our beliefs on this book. Everything we believe, we believe because the Bible says so.
That’s why it’s probably a good idea to read it.
You might not like to read. You might not understand it. It might be boring.
But the more you do it, the more you desire and understand it.
We have TONS of content on this site about reading the Bible more effectively, making it more interesting.
The Two Kinds of Time Every Christian Gets
We now know what we need to do to build a relationship with God—the four pillars.
But again, the problem is time. We only need time, but we don’t have it.
How can we get more?
IMPORTANT NOTE: There are two types of time we have when building the pillars.
1. Sporadic Time - Time we take advantage of amid the business of life.
Maybe you’re on a break from work, so you use this time to read the Bible for 15 minutes.
Or perhaps the kids finally crashed on the couch during some random evening hour, so you look out the window and pray for 5 minutes.
This is great!
I think I would refer to this as “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17).
I’m sure the apostles went throughout their day and did some of the four pillars at random times.
This might surprise you, but I’m not talking about this kind of time with this article.
The time you need to build your relationship with God is not Sporadic Time.
Honestly, using Sporadic Time will not build it.
If it does build a relationship with God, it does so very, very slowly.
It’s not realistic to build a skyscraper laying one brick a day, and only if you get the time to lay that one brick.
Why? Because things will come up—weather, challenges, city ordinances—and it just won’t get done.
In order for the skyscraper to go up, there have to be goals, objectives, and very specific set-aside time to do certain things on certain days.
Likewise, it’s unrealistic to build a relationship with God using little random time frames you may or may not get.
As Pressfield says in that book, you can’t wait for inspiration to strike or for the opportunity to arise.
The real ones know that inspiration does strike, but it strikes every day at such-and-such time if you catch my drift.
They create the opportunities, not hope for them.
You should spend Sporadic Time with God, But really, you need the other kind of time.
2. Organized-Protected Time
I call it “OP” time.
This kind of time entails a specific time that you set aside on certain days of the week to build the four pillars.
It is not “in the midst of a busy day.”
Again, the apostles had the “hour of prayer.” It was planned at a certain time and would last a specific amount of minutes.
For another example, consider the Sabbath Day for the Israelites.
By law, they were required to set this day aside to worship and rest. They could not work.
They did this to preserve their community relationship with God and honor Him.
To them, you were not even a true Jew if you did not take the time to celebrate the festivals, obey the laws, and keep the Sabbath.
Interestingly, the most differentiating characteristic that separated the Jews from all other religions was the Sabbath.
The Romans even accused them of being “lazy” because they did.
However, the Israelites understood the importance of taking time to seek God. It’s what made them different.
Why do some think it’s OK to live an everyday, busy life and only look to God at random times or when they need something?
Why shouldn’t we have a “sabbath,” so to speak—when we devote time to the most important thing in our life?
What excuses us from that?
No, it takes OP Time to create the relationship with God that you want.
It’s time you pre-plan and set aside. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can encroach on it.
Job wants me to work an extra 10 hours a week, which will interfere with my OP Time? Sorry.
Netflix has a new series out? Nope, it can wait until when I’m done.
The family wants to do something during OP Time? Trust me, it can wait.
Do we want to build a relationship with God or not?
We often sacrifice our time for other people. But you know what? These people do not care about your relationship with God.
Only you will.
They’re special people, but they can’t get on the boat with you when you float off. They can only wave you off at the shore.
I see some Christians giving all their time to others over God, and in doing so, they never influence anyone in their life for Jesus.
You won’t win them if you sacrifice your OP Time for them. On the contrary, you’ll win them if you don’t sacrifice that time.
Your OP Time shows them that you’re the real deal.
How to Create Organized-Protected Time to Build the Four Pillars
You cannot build a better relationship with God without OP Time.
To do this, you need a formula and a list of practical things you can do to create this time.
The Formula
Here is the formula we’re going to use. Don’t write it down just yet; just look at it:
“On ____ at ____, I will ____ for ____.”
This is a sentence you will write down and fill in the blanks.
In the blanks, you’re going to write the following down:
So, when you fill in your blanks, it might look like this:
Write this down on a sheet of paper and put it somewhere you’ll see it every day.
When you write it down and see it, you’ll do it.
To create our OP Time using this formula, let’s put it in steps:
Decide which day(s) of the week you will devote to the four pillars. You can alter this day if you need to later, but try your best to stick to this day(s). (“On ____”)
Pick a time on that day(s) for when you will build this pillar. (“at ____”)
Decide which pillar you will do. On this day at this time, will you pray, meditate, hear, or read? (“I will ____”)
Determine how long you will do this pillar. Whether it’s 5 minutes or an hour, God will honor it. The important thing is that you’re learning to plan this time so it becomes a habit. Again, the more you do it, the more you’ll like it, and you will give more time to it because of that building desire. (“for ____.”)
You might think, “But I just don’t have the time for this stuff, Jamey. I can’t have this formula because I don’t have the time.”
That’s why we need to proceed to the next step: a list of practical things you can do to create this time.
The List
I will give you a list of things you can do to free up time for OP Time, but the reason is so that you get ideas for things you can do.
Not everything on this list is easy, but it’s doable.
And if there is something you can’t do, get ideas and think hard about things you can do. Ask your pastor and other believers for ideas.
Reminder: The three things that take up our time are work, screen time, and personal stuff.
A lot on this list will revolve around those three things.
Work less hours
Work from home
Find a job where you work fewer hours but make the same or more
Say “no” to certain demands
Talk to your boss about what you’re trying to do
Delegate tasks to other workers so you don’t have to work so much
Start your own business and work your own hours
Use AI to do certain tasks
Get a job that is more flexible with your work schedule
Work part-time and supplement your income in other flexible ways
Make passive income (do something now, earn the money for it along the way, like writing a book)
Only work 40 hours and no more
Wake up early—my personal favorite (15 minutes, an hour?)
Go to bed earlier
Take weekends off
Limit TV and social media
Use only one or two social media platforms
Put your children on a schedule
Schedule your chores on a calendar
Delegate home tasks to spouse and children
Set bills to be paid on autopay
Schedule time for spouse and family, as opposed to randomly doing it
Conclusion
I don't mean to end on a negative note, but I think many Christians just don’t desire to go this far in God.
But more importantly, they will never make time to build that desire.
As a result, many will probably never read this article because they’re not searching for content that teaches how to build a relationship with God.
But somewhere out there, someone is. And that someone is you.
And I hope this article finds you well.
I hope to see you stronger in the Lord and in the power of His might. (Ephesians 6:10)
Let’s build a relationship with God.
Please SHARE this article on your social media to help others looking for it!
Comments