The Real Relationship

I was flipping through the CCEF website the other day and came across a blog post about their upcoming conference, titled “Not Alone.” This quote in particular caught my attention:

"One of our core goals,” my colleague suggested, “is to move people toward a relationship with God that is every bit as real as their relationships with other people."

My heart skipped a beat as I processed the magnitude of the hope he was holding out. I am yearning for a deep experience of that but not feeling it right now, I thought, and I bet I’m not the only one.¹

As I read that, I realized… that’s my yearning too. I’ve been trying so hard to “fill up” on good teaching, intimacy in relationships with people, and working hard toward changing to how I think God wants me to change. And all I feel is tired. I’m working so hard for these tangible “results” that I want to hold on to, but after each insight, each hang-out the feeling of dissatisfaction creeps back in. I’ve been looking for something that can only be found in God. I’ve been running so hard after the work of God that I disregarded God Himself. Reading those few sentences started to turn the tide of my weariness into a thirst for the Living God.

 

The fact is our relationship with God is THE most real relationship in our lives. However, this is not the way we naturally live our lives. We get so consumed in our own lives – our responsibilities, our concerns, our wants, our purposes, that we tunnel vision into our own reality that has us as the main character in our little world. It’s exhausting. And it is often in those times we feel like God is very far away. We can recall biblical truths, but it just doesn’t feel like God hears, much less cares.

God remembers. God sees. God knows. Jesus came and became a friend of sinners. And now we have the very Spirit of God living in us. This is an intimacy beyond what our brains can comprehend. In Jesus’ last prayer for us he prays, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me (John 17:20-23).” God our Father’s purpose for us is for our relationship with Him to be as intimate as the love between the Father and the Son.  I don’t think we really believe how real our relationship with God is. God is holding out an intimate, daily, “I will never leave you nor forsake you” relationship.

If you are feeling tired, weary, or purposeless, maybe, just maybe, you are looking more at what God is doing in your life than loving God Himself. God invites us to come. He invites us to come and have rest. He invites us to drink living water. He invites us to have a relationship with Him that will make our closest relationships pale in comparison.

Dear church, we talk about our relationship with God all the time, but I don’t think we realize the fireworks-going-off-in-my-brain hope that we’re talking about. We worship a living God. He is real. Do you want to know Him?

1.       Groves, Alasdair. http://www.ccef.org/blog/hungry-friendship-god-me-too