God Wants a Loving Relationship with You
God created the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. Further, He gave humanity the supreme position in this physical creation. There is, however, a spiritual (that is, invisible) dimension to creation as well. God dwells in this invisible dimension to rule over all His creation through mankind. Summing up, we rule the world and He rules us. That’s not too much for a Creator to ask, is it? Alas, many people think God is asking too much and they spend their lives here ignoring Him.
While it is possible to ignore God and resist a personal relationship with Him, it is impossible to ignore His rule over creation. The seasons, the tides, the solar and lunar cycles – all these things happen without respect to human wishes. Moreover, the consequences of human actions – both good and evil – are pervasive. God is the one who brings about these consequences. We may sow the seeds of thoughts, words, and deeds, but it is God who brings their harvest to us. We can even resist acknowledging that He controls these things, but that doesn’t eliminate, or even reduce, His control of them. The good news of Jesus Christ as made known through the Bible – and the reason He was willing to suffer an ignominious death on the cross – is that God is willing to forgive our previous resistance to His rule and accept us now as beloved children.
As a loving Father, God wants to explain to you how His world works. He wants to be your Deliverer and not just your Judge. He wants to show you the way in which you should live so as to gain the greatest satisfaction in life. This satisfaction is not one of material riches, earthly glory, or worldly pleasures. Instead, it is the satisfaction of knowing you have loved Him above all, and your neighbor as yourself. Do you think Jesus was satisfied with the outcome of His life? Surely He was. He wants you to know that same satisfaction.
Life on earth is just the beginning of your relationship with God. He wants to be your Father through all eternity. Stop resisting. Turn to Him who is invisible. Trust that He sees you and cares for you. Let Him forgive your sin and heal your conscience. Then, through your conscience, serve Him in all that you think, say, and do. Practice this way and He will become more and more real to you.
Can you relate to an invisible God? Of course you can – through the part of you that is invisible to the rest of us. Don’t look to anyone else to be a mediator between you and your Creator. You don’t need a minister, a church, a synagogue, an imam, or even a religion. Just relate to your Creator, Jesus. He never intended that you should live lonely. He intended you to enjoy a loving relationship with Him, a relationship with intimacies to which no one else is privy.
For more, see There Is No Trinity; There Is Only Christ.
Love it. You said it all very well. While I agree and believe with everything you said, I have not looked at it in the way you explained His rule in the things we cannot change. While we have the choice to rebel or obey, we dont always control the outcome. Thank you – it was a refreshing take on an argument I have heard before.
You also win the “new word of the day” award for ignominious! Had to look that one up.
Im in the midst of writing a bible study that would appeal to those with horses. This particular subject is covered in a chapter titled “We Need Each Other”. The parallel being that of a herd and how we were designed by our creator to desire fellowship and what keeps us from engaging in it. To my surprise when I sent this book out to several people to proof, this chapter received the most negative feedback from those who didn’t attend church. They did not like the challenge to pursue a relationship with God outside of the comfort of their car, home or barn.
They may have felt that practicing God’s love in the herd of which they were already a part (i.e., their family, friends, co-workers, etc.) was sufficient challenge, and that they did not need to join an additional herd for that purpose.
They did feel that way. Hypocrisy and pressure to join was a complaint. However, my challenge for them to receiving teaching was the real objection. The “herd” they were comfortable in was not challenging them or questioning areas of growth in their life. Bear in mind these were all people who professed to be christian, but did not want to be held accountable for how they lived. Basically it was the “it’s not like I’m a murderer” argument.
Neither being a professing Christian nor attending a Bible study will lead to the kind of accountability and life change that you hope to see. A genuine turning to the Lord in faith produces both accountability and life change in anyone who practices it. God can deal with the secrets of our hearts, which is where all the mischief starts – whether it be murder, or less obvious forms of evil.
Here you have hit at the heart of my life-long dilemma with Christianity. Of all the belief systems in the world, including that of modern science, Christianity is, as far as I can tell, the only one based primarily upon a personal RELATIONSHIP. And — because I am a human being — all I have ever known about relationships has come from my interactions with other reality-based humans and living beings (dogs, cats, etc.)
I think your explanations are some of the best I have ever read, and I have read a lot, including C. S. Lewis, Wm. James, Wm. Stringfellow, and George Macdonald to name but a few. But I remain unable to discern some characteristic within my own mind and heart which would point me outward from my own thoughts. I have read the Bible many times over the past 60 years, and books such as yours, and I understand the concept of “Faith” and “Belief”, but you might as well be talking about Unicorns.
The Biblical narrative is as good an explanation for what we see in the world around us as any, but it is by no means the only one. How to break through this barrier between the real world and the unseen one has been the mission of my life.
SD
When I walk into a convenience store or bank, I sometimes notice a video camera in the ceiling or on the wall. I know that it is recording everything that takes place in the room. It might even be picking up sound as well. Therefore, I am conscious that someone, other than the people I see in the room, can see and hear me. In other words, I know that my movements are being monitored by someone in a dimension unseen by me.
God is the “camera” who can see and hear not just my actions and words, but every single thought I have. I want to please Him and so I think, act, and speak so as seek His approval. Religion involves seek the approval of other people – specifically, religious people. Faith involves seeking the approval of God in all that we think, say, and do.
Of course, there is more to a relationship with God than this. Nonetheless, this is the foundation of faith. (“All things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do” Hebrews 4:13; “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen” Hebrews 11:1; “He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” Hebrews 11:6)
Thanks, Mike. Unfortunately for me, these are the stock responses. You know that someone unseen is watching you at the bank because you SEE the cameras. My pastor (in 1965) used the chair analogy (I trust that chair over there to hold me up even though I have never sat on it before). But just because I haven’t sat on EVERY chair doesn’t mean I have never sat on ANY chair.
I cannot accept the “Free Will” arguments for a very simple and logical reason. I had no responsibility, volition, will, or choice about the fact of my own birth. I was born with a severe genetic deformity to a single mother who was a Billy Graham Puritan Calvinist and completely neurotic. Once I hit 21 I would have no more of it. I am not an “eternal soul”, because I had a beginning. Is it possible that I was conscious but unaware? That is illogical. Consciousness = awareness.
If I understand you correctly, Humanity is God’s response to sinful angels. A way for good to defeat evil. My mind is asking — “WHAT was he thinking when he created angels?” It ultimately makes God the source of all Evil. I think that Free Will is an illusion. But whether it is or isn’t, I am going to live on in another dimension after I die anyway. In Heaven. You say. No matter what I do. Proving my point about free will. If you don’t see anything else, I want you to understand that.
Having said all of that, I find your prose compelling. No less so your demeanor with people. No one else I have ever read or heard has seemed as clear and logical as you about these questions. I do deserve some kind of award for being able to type on this reply space which never stops jumping around.
It would have been, and still would be, presumptuous of me to think that I could offer a paragraph or two that would answer what has been a lifetime of searching for you. So, when I do offer a response like this, please remember that it is just one beggar sharing his scrap of bread with another.
Actually, all I SEE is something that LOOKS LIKE a camera. I’m trusting that it actually IS a camera. I’m trusting that there’s film in it. I’m trusting that a human being is either looking, or else will later look, at its output. Therefore, I’m trusting lots of things I can’t see that I’ve learned about cameras and surveillance during my life. For me, it’s not that different from trusting that God is, and what He is like, based on things I’ve learned from reading the Bible. But, if this analogy doesn’t work for you, then it doesn’t work and I don’t want to press it.
Ironically, this is an analogy that has never worked for me either. I don’t dispute it; I have just never “connected” with it for some reason.
I don’t know all the “Free Will” arguments, and don’t understand the ones I do know. They are philosophical arguments and I’m not philosophically knowledgeable enough to deal with them. I look at the issue from a more practical standpoint. And that is that I have free will about some things (e.g. I can choose where on the earth I want to live – at least among the inhabitable and economically viable places known to me) but not others (i.e. I can’t live anywhere besides the earth – at least not for long). I feel that this leaves me with many, many choices about where to live. Therefore, for someone to argue that everyone going to heaven violates free will is an objection that doesn’t make sense to me. There, as here, we will have great freedom of choice within broad boundaries (though our boundaries there will largely be determined by how morally we lived here). To have it otherwise would be to make us each a supreme being, which is obviously illogical on its face.
God told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:2). Who’s to say that we didn’t have an existence (as angels?) before this life? And who’s to say we didn’t have some choice about the station into which we would be born? I am not asserting these ideas as truth; I am merely saying they seem possible. Jesus certainly had an existence before His human life and He certainly had some choice about the station into which He was born – even if only to say yes or no to what was proposed to Him. Therefore, these ideas are not unprecedented in human history.
It must have been difficult, even in ways I cannot fully appreciate.
A infant can be conscious without being fully aware of everything going on in the room. A person recently awakened from a deep sleep can be conscious without being fully aware of things that the person who awakened him is. A person with amnesia can be conscious and yet deprived of awareness that was previously his. Therefore, consciousness can exist along a spectrum of awareness from dull to sharp, rudimentary to sophisticated, and so on.
“Eternal soul” to me is like “Free Will” – an idea so big that my mind cannot fully grasp it. Therefore, I have to find a practical way to deal with it. And that practical way is, whatever my beginning, I am a soul here and now. I have the promise of unending life before me. Therefore, how can keep my soul so that it enjoys righteousness, peace, and joy on a daily basis? To this issue the teachings of Jesus speak abundantly.
Yes.
There always comes a point in my contemplation of God, and I suppose in everyone’s, that I reach such a state. That is, I get to the edge of my understanding and am perplexed without resolution. This continues to happen even as God teaches us and expands the boundaries of our knowledge of Him. At times like this, I remember Bible passages like Psalm 131 and Psalm 139 (especially verse 6). And then there’s the book of Ecclesiastes that speaks so accurately and poignantly to the limitations of our musings. I also think about my dog. His ability to understand me is analogous to my ability to understand God. My dog acts on the understanding he has of me, and trusts me for that which he doesn’t understand. In any relationship, trust is required where knowledge is less than omniscient.
Alas, I don’t understand it…for the reasons I gave above.
I am sorry that commenting has been frustrating for you. I have had no other reports of this kind of difficulty. I tried to comment myself to replicate the problem, but all seems fine. Perhaps you could report it to WordPress, which is the blogging platform I use.
Mike,
Thanks for your thoughtful, point-by-point response. (The px I am having with the reply box may be related to my browser (i.e., javascript). I am therefore now composing and pasting from Windows Word.)
Because I had clubbed feet as a child, and could barely walk let-alone run, I was bullied by both my peers and even gym teachers. My father abandoned us when I was five years old. (Why me, God?) It was at that time I began to develop what my wife refers to as “Armadillo skin”. When I retired in 2004, not only did I still have the disease I was born with, but I also had developed blood clots in my leg and twice in both lungs, and lost my colon to IBS — brought on, I suppose, by obsessive worry. So while I have been blessed with a lovely wife and daughter, I have gone through my own hell-on-earth.
All this to say that life, death, heaven, hell, and God remain mysteries to me still. Even as you thoughtfully lay out the most concise summation of the some of these unknowns which I have ever read, it still boils down to this — it’s a mystery even to such as you. It is at THAT place that I assume Faith comes into play.
All my life I have wanted — really yearned for — one unique and original thought or insight. As I have studied quantum mechanics (imagine me, an English major no less!), I am aware that science now shows us that there are probably parallel universes which exist side-by-side. But more importantly, we see that all of Reality is the result of the Observer, their own perspective and POV, and relative to him or her. And that by the very act of observation, Reality is changed. I don’t think we will ever be able to understand that, by its very nature and definition. But I now, at least, am closer to the insight I crave — the empirical connection between the “real” world we inhabit and the “unseen” world both scientists and theologians insist exists right here together in this same space. I think you would say that connection is Jesus. (Too “other world” for me). I think, if there is a God, he created in me an acute and sometimes painful awareness of Place. I left the place I grew up in to come to Yoknapatawpha County — the mythical setting of William Faulkner’s novels, and I found it 45 years ago in South Carolina rather than Oxford, Mississippi. Maybe it’s here. Perhaps not.
I have a friend from college with whom I have kept in touch since 1971. While I consider her own life somewhat chaotic, whenever we speak of these things, it always boils down to this — she says “I love you. And God loves you. No matter what.” End of discussion. She once spoke to me of my excessive self-examination. I thought of her as I read your words on this topic. Too much introspection. Taking too far the dictum “The unexamined life is not worth living”. So when I requested from one of the ubiquitous preachers who almost weekly ring my front door bell that all I needed was a prayer from her to “find God”, I am somewhat struck by how one author invariably leads to another, and I have ended up now at your doorstep. It’s really eerie in a way. Another mystery, perhaps, but one I am open to.
Thanks again. SD
Sam, to anyone searching for the nexus of the seen and the unseen i can think of nothing more interesting than the story of the One whom came out of the unseen dimension to live in the seen dimension in order to return to the unseen dimension with us in tow.
Beyond that, I will only add that I love you. And God loves you. No matter what.
Mike, I apologise for stepping in to your conversation but I feel uncharacteristically inspired to reply… I wanted to address this conumdrum with the presence of God. I’m not a christian, but am a deeply enquiring person. I have just come across your blog and am excited by what I have read, I hope you don’t mind that I put forth my own ‘method of contact’ for Sam.
Sam, you are looking at the end product for the answer..I don’t think it’s there … its in the process.. God is not the other human or cat or dog… God is the ‘Relationship’ . God is in the love you feel for that other being.
You are trying to see him in a physical presence with your eyes… stop looking…
The ability to experience the manifestation of God (I believe) comes to us through the experience of emotions such as love, compassion, empathy, appreciation of beauty, creativity; through witnessing and reflecting the powerful energy of the life force (a seed changes into a tree, an embryo becomes a baby )… I feel that we are meant to be connected to the things and beings held within our world. It is not the world..it is the ‘connection’ to it that makes us aware of God’s presence.
Step away from the insistence that you need to see him for real. Take a leap to let go of the fear of being misled or hurt and let the energy which is an expression of him to flow to you. Allow yourself to give in to the emotions of love . What have you got to lose? You might just feel happy … it may not be God at all but ‘happy ‘… ‘loving’… ‘compassionate’ are all very rewarding states of being.
The ability to know God comes not from without, but is a state of being that comes from within yourself. You are the only one who can journey through your self to find the way to open the door to be able to experience his power.
Stop examining and start feeling.
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