WITH HIM, SO MUCH TO GAIN | KAIROS GLOBAL | MARCH 2024

Author: Raifiel Cyril

Intro: What prevents us from doing something highly beneficial and life changing? Raifiel Cyril asks as she writes about personal prayer. 

Why are we in the Jesus Youth movement? What draws us into taking this step beyond an ordinary Catholic life, living the sacraments and serving in our parishes? Why do we spend so much of our free time being engaged in the work of the kingdom of God? In Australia, people will often volunteer a couple of hours a week for some community endeavour, but for Jesus Youth, our full-time jobs are usually what we do in our spare time! Jokes apart, why are you and I doing this?

Because we have met the King of the Kingdom we belong to. We may be serving in ministry teams and councils but we are not there to serve the coordinator or the national/international councils. We serve our Father, our God. When we work in a huge company it may not be often that we meet the CEO or managing director. I am reminded of a much-loved director of an organisation I used to work for, which had 2000+ staff and he remembered everyone’s names. This simple gesture made each staff member feel valued and fuelled their motivation to stay and serve. Who is fuelling your motivation to stay in JY?

I have met the most wonderful friends in this movement. Humble, joyful and loving souls with open hearts. However, although we may love the Jesus Youth movement, we may love our family-like friends, we may be drawn by the fellowship, the real reason we stay is that we have met the King. However, without meeting with the King privately and regularly we can easily lose sight of why we give off our time, energy and resources. Forgetting the original reason, we can be prone to start resenting the movement for not giving to us what we think we have given to it.

Our Father, Our God, Our Appa knows our name. He knows my name and he knows your name. But he knows much more than my name. He knows everything about me. Even the things I don’t know. He created me and knows every wrinkly detail of my body. He knows every sigh of my heart and he is intimate with my every thought. This Father is LOVE and the source of all that is good. Our God is also the most powerful over all the Earth. Nothing happens without his awareness or knowledge. The strongest military power in the world right now is known to be the United States. However, there is no army greater than the one operated by my Father, the Commander-in-chief. Unlike other armies that seek self-preservation, our Father sent his only son, our brother and Lord Jesus Christ to sacrifice his life for us so that we who were enemies of God could be reconciled to him and back in his arms again. God fights for us and is always victorious through the precious blood shed by his Son.

If we think about it logically, we know it really doesn’t make any sense at all to miss an opportunity to sit with the Maker of the Universe, my Maker, the most powerful Person and someone who loves me unconditionally. Our penultimate Father, Lover, Doctor, Lawyer, Advocate, Commander, Best Friend, Therapist, Financial Planner, Bodyguard. Think of the human person you admire the most. Have you met them? Would you miss an opportunity to meet them? Sometimes we travel many miles to meet our loved ones but refuse to connect with the Beautiful One right by our side. 

So, let us pause for a moment and think what could prevent us from doing something that is so highly beneficial and life changing? Why do we eat, bathe, brush our teeth with such near perfect regularity? It’s because we know we ‘need’ to. Why do we watch movies, meet with friends, dine out with such regularity? It is because we ‘want’ to.

Humans do things that meet their needs and wants and usually do not need to be forced at gunpoint to do them. However, with personal prayer if we are not watchful, we forget how much we need God and also how much he is able to satisfy our wants. We must not spend time with God because we ‘should’. I enter into a quiet time with God because I know I desperately need him. I also enter into that time because I very much enjoy being loved and delighted in by God. God lavishes his love on me and I can unabashedly say I want to be loved like that. There is so much to be gained in quiet time with God. He provides a deep sense of our being loved and fills us with contentment, great joy, sense of purpose for the present, hope for the future, guidance in decisions, encouragement in struggles, the list is endless.

But being busy in work, ministry, family responsibilities and ‘getting things done’ effectively can often make us think we can manage without God. When things go smoothly in our relationships, and we don’t have many trials again our desire for God seems to be lesser. Recently I went to India after a long Covid imposed break and it was 7 weeks of fun, frolic and food with loving family members. We had a fantastic time. With time differences and tight days, jetlagged and pollution affected, sick bodies, personal prayer took a backseat. Apart from praying Rosaries, I hadn’t spent time sitting and chatting with and listening to God. When I caught the flight back to Australia finally and I had 13 hours of silence with ample time to pray, I took out my Bible and journal and surprised myself by weeping copiously. Unknowingly, I had missed God terribly and I was shocked to find that the most enjoyable and joyful time ever had truly been so empty. Without being in an intimate relationship with God, no amount of success, fun, achievement, loving relationships can satisfy us. But we need to taste God to know how amazing he tastes. If we don’t taste of him for a long time we forget. 

During times of personal prayer, after some worship and thanksgiving, share your heart, spend time pondering on His Word and enter into silence. It is in that silence and listening that God changes us, revives us and fills us with his grace. Those silences ground me and physically feel like growing deep roots into God’s heart that keep me deadly stable. If we are more sensitive to our Spirit we will know that we can afford to not eat and brush and bathe but we cannot afford to miss God.

We need God desperately. We are highly ineffective without him. But we also want and long for God. Our soul and spirit cries out for God and often we attempt to satisfy that want and longing in highly non sustainable ineffective ways. Only and only God is the charger for our batteries. Let us run back into our Lover’s arms as he sings, ‘Long have I waited for your coming, home to me and living deeply our new life. Come back to me with all your heart’. And may His song be what keeps you in this beautiful movement of the Holy Spirit.

'A nobody who is precious to Christ,' Raifiel lives with her husband, Cyril in beautiful Canberra, Australia.