Know Him. Love Him. Trust Him. Walk With Him.
Knowing God Changes Everything
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
1 JOHN 1:9(ESV)
There is a difference between knowing about God and truly knowing Him. We can know Bible verses, attend church, pray when we need help, and believe everything Scripture tells us about God, yet still have much to learn about walking with Him personally. God wants us to know Him beyond the things we have heard someone else say about Him. He wants us to learn His heart, understand His ways, trust His wisdom, recognize His faithfulness, and become secure in who He has revealed Himself to be.
Our relationship with God touches every part of our lives. The more we know Him, the more our thinking begins to change. We learn to bring our decisions before Him, surrender what we want to what He wants, obey Him when His direction is difficult, and trust Him through circumstances we don't understand. This kind of relationship doesn't develop overnight. We grow in it as we spend time with God, remain in His Word, follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, and keep choosing to walk with Him. These teachings are here to help you do exactly that.
These teachings are here to help you grow in that relationship.
What Does It Really Mean to Have a Relationship With God?
God Created Us for Himself
God did not create us simply to believe that He exists. He created us for Himself. He wants us to know Him, love Him, trust Him, worship Him, and live our lives in fellowship with Him. Think about the magnitude of that for a moment. The God who created the heavens and the earth, who has always existed and needs absolutely nothing, desires a relationship with us. He doesn't need our worship to make Him God. He doesn't need our love to complete Him. Yet, because of His great love, He created us with the capacity to know Him and to belong to Him.
Sin Separated Us, But Jesus Reconciled Us
Sin separated humanity from the fellowship with God that He intended, but God did not leave us separated from Him. Through Jesus Christ, He made the way for us to be reconciled to Himself. Jesus tells us in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” Our relationship with God begins with Jesus Christ. Through Him, we are forgiven, brought into God's family, and given access to our Heavenly Father. This is why Christianity can never be reduced to following religious rules or simply trying to become a better person. God wants us. He wants our hearts and our lives.
God Wants Our Love, Obedience, and Surrender
But what does God want from us in this relationship? Jesus gave us the answer when He said, “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). God wants first place. He wants us to trust Him when we understand what He is doing and when we don't. He wants our obedience, not because we are trying to earn His love, but because obedience is part of loving Him. Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love me, obey my commandments.” There will be times when what God wants conflicts with what we want. There will be things He asks us to surrender, places where He corrects us, and seasons when following Him requires us to trust His wisdom more than our own. That, too, is part of relationship.
Relationship Grows As We Walk with Him
Growing in our relationship with God means learning to walk with Him through the ordinary parts of our lives. We talk to Him in prayer. We learn His truth through His Word. We allow the Holy Spirit to teach, convict, guide, and transform us. We learn His character well enough that disappointment doesn't automatically cause us to question His goodness. And little by little, we stop building a life and asking God to bless it, and begin allowing Him to lead the life He gave us. The more we know Him, the more we understand that relationship with God is not about fitting Him somewhere into our lives. Our lives belong to Him.
"Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you."
JAMES 4:8 (NLT)
