Think about your closest and best friends. The ones that love you for who you are and not what you do. They know everything about you, the good bad and ugly, yet they love you the same.
The more you know someone, the more comfortable you are around them. The more you know and experience life with people, the more you understand who they are and how they operate. Shared life experiences and knowledge of each other, builds trust and connection with all kinds of relationships.
The same is true with our relationship with God. There are certain truths about God that affect how we connect with Him. We have all grown up different ways and we all have different reference points of God. Some people have a vague concept of God and do not know how to connect with Him. Others try to connect with God through religious activity or positive living. While still others might know that they can have “relationship with God” but have not yet fully walked in the reality of that or might just need a fresh reminder of how.
I believe that true Christianity is about having a deep, intimate friendship with God. It’s the most important relationship we can ever experience that was never meant to be complicated. God offers his close friendship freely to all, but many people reject this because they think it means “religion”. But having a relationship with God is simple, just as any true friendship should be.
- Consider the word “Relationship,” which can be defined in theses ways: A connection, association, or involvement; Connection between persons by blood or marriage; An emotional or other connection between people.
- “Religion” is defined as: the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices, concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
- The word “intimacy” can be defined as having a close association with or detailed knowledge or deep understanding of a place, subject, period of history, etc. and also the quality of being very comfortable, warm, or familiar.
My goal as a Follower of Christ is not to provide you with religious messages on this blog or elsewhere, but rather point people to and connect with Jesus, who is mankind’s only hope: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).
Jesus is, in fact, the model of intimacy with God because He and the Father are one (John 10:30), and no relationship can be closer than that oneness with the Father that Jesus experienced.
His relationship with the Father was characterized by love and obedience. In love, Jesus came to earth to do His Father’s will. He did nothing on His own, but in all things did the will of His Father (John 5:30).
This was most evident in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before His crucifixion. Suffering the agony of anticipating what was to come, Jesus asked that the fate He was about to suffer might be removed from Him, but He ended the plea by saying, “Yet not My will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Here we see a perfect example of true intimacy reflected in obedience as Jesus yielded His will to that of His Father.
If we hope to attain true intimacy with God, Jesus must be our model. We love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:10), and we prove our love for Him by obeying Him. Jesus told His followers, “If you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). When we obey Him and keep what He has commanded, He promised that we will remain in His love, just as He remains in the love of the Father by doing the Father’s will (John 15:10).
