A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

Sometimes God may seem to be so far off and unconcerned that it is hard to think of Him on a personal level. But He is not! God is pursuing you today sweet friend. Though you may not realize it nor feel it, nor even believe it, He is surely pursuing you. He longs for you to know and love Him, as He already knows and loves you. You see God always takes the first step in seeking a relationship with you. He has always taken the initiative to meet us in His perfect timing as he strives to draw us to Himself. Even the scriptures teach that no one comes to the Father unless He draws them according to John 6:44-45 and verse 65. The entire Bible is a witness of this great truth. He came to Adam and Eve in the garden when they were at their worst. He came to Noah, Abraham, Moses, the prophets, the disciples and He is still actively pursuing people today.

There comes a time in every life that the heart seeks after God, but only because God stirs that heart and begins to draw it to Him. That hole in every heart that nothing else can fill, but God, serves only as a means to seek Him. A person may seek Him in the wrong places because of the condition and will of their own hearts, but never the less, they will at some point seek Him. Because sin has effected man so deeply, we cannot seek God on our own initiative. So God comes to us, even when we are His enemy (because of our sin and the hardness of our hearts) just as He did Adam and Eve. He came to Saul in Acts 9 while Saul was actually opposing and working against God’s will. Through God’s pursuing Saul and causing Him to be blind, Saul was able to see the truth. He accepted what God was doing in his life as God revealing to him that in fact, Jesus truly was the Son of God and the act of the cross had paid the penalty for Saul’s sin. At one point in Jesus’ ministry, He ask His disciples, who did the people say that He was. Then He ask them, who they believed He was. You see it does not matter what the world is saying about the Son of God, what matters is what are you saying about Him and better yet, what are you doing about it. Romans 10:13 says, “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved”. Romans 10:9-10 tells us this, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved”. “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”. Simply having an intellectual or head knowledge about Christ is not enough. satan himself believes in the Son of God, yet he will spend eternity in hell. We don’t have to have all the answers in life to know God, but we do have to believe the things that He makes us aware of about Himself. For those are the things that He will hold us accountable for, as to what we did with the truth that was revealed to us.

When God calls us to salvation, He begins to open our understanding about Himself and His Son as He did with Simon in Matthew 16:17. We are moved under His conviction over our personal sin and have a deep compulsion to be forgiven. The result of our choices to resist or ignore God, results in spiritual death  and eternal separation from God. Jesus Christ came to do what we could not do for ourselves. He came into the world to bring us to His Father. “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’ ” John 14:6. He died in our place to pay the penalty for our sin. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit.” 1 Peter 3:18. He rose from the dead to show that his claims were true. “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep.” 1 Corinthians 15:3-6.

Our own efforts to earn God’s acceptance are inadequate according to Titus 3:5. We must realize and admit our need for forgiveness according to Romans 3:23 and receive Christ and His offer and gift of salvation to become His children, not by our own merit but because of the grace of God through personal faith Eph 2:8-9. Romans 10:9-10 says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. “For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation”. God’s commitment to you is that He assures you that if you have trusted Jesus as your Savior, He has given you eternal life. “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.” 1 John 5:13. God promises to never leave you. ” I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5. God has forgiven all of your sins, past, present, and future. “And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.” Colossians 2:13-14.

When someone is born again as Jesus told Nicodemus he must be in John 3, God places His Spirit in them in Ephesians 1:13 that enables them to live in a way that pleases Him. “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.” Galatians 5:25. By placing His Holy Spirit in them, He seals them as His own, and the sealing of the Holy Spirit allows that person to experience a more personal relationship with Him that they could not otherwise experience. Without the assurance and comfort of the Holy Spirit, we would not be able to truly embrace a personal relationship with God. It was and always has been in His plan to restore man’s relationship back to the way it was before Adam and Eve sinned and broke fellowship with God. Through His Son, He accomplished that and invites you to participate, by coming to Him on His terms and only then can you enjoy that deep and personal relationship with Him.  
May I tell you that I would not trade my worst day as a Christian for my best day without Christ! When He calls you out, do not hesitate, run to Him! There is only one way to God and that is through His Son. "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." John 14:6

Loving on you today!
Bren