My child, My intention for you was never about focusing on what you can produce or what you could do for Me. My intention has always been about relationship. I desire a people who want to come into an intimate relationship with Me. Not by coercion, not by force, but by faith and by desire. To come to Me for Me. To want to spend time with Me for the sheer delight of it. No amount of work will boost your favor in My eyes. You can’t earn My love. I have loved you from the beginning. Before you had a chance to do anything right or wrong. I love you and I always will.
Tag Archives: relationship
What The Law Could Never Do
My child, I sent My Son for you, to do what ‘the law’ could never do. My plan from the beginning was relationship, intimate relationship. This could only be achieved by showing you how much I love you. It doesn’t take works of the law, it takes belief in My Son.
Nothing To Fear
I came so that you would know Me. I died so that you would have life. I rose again so that you and I would be together for eternity. Live today in intimate relationship with Me. Do not set your hopes and dreams on temporary things.
Know that I have your eternal home waiting and we will be together forever. I will not only take care of your needs here, but for all eternity. You have nothing to fear.
Family
My child, being in My family comes with awesome rewards, but also great responsibilities. I draw you in to experience an intimate relationship with Me, but you are responsible for your response. I am calling you deeper. Will you listen? Will you come and let Me take you to that deep communion I long for? This requires your time and cooperation. Let the distractions fade away. Spend time with Me and everything else will be provided for you.
Matthew 6:33
He lives; you died
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Jesus joins us to Himself, blanketing us with His righteousness as He lives His life in us. He lives; you died; you share His life.(Colossians 3:3-4) In Christ Jesus we have died to sin and are now free from its power. Why? Because through Christ God has eliminated sin as the reason for separation from Him.
Sharing in Jesus’ life is the cornerstone of our relationship with God. While we must not minimize the importance of sharing in His death, it doesn’t end there. To be sure, in Romans 6:5 Paul emphasizes the fact that, “if we have become, united with Him in the likeness His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.”
Remembering that in God there only exists life, the only possible outcome of being joined with Christ in His death is that we also share in His resurrection. Just as Christ was raised from the dead, so we too are raised up from our dead old self into glorious new life in God.
Rescued from Sin
Think back for a moment to what your life was like at the time Jesus rescued you from your sin. In and of ourselves, could any of us have achieved righteousness in God’s eyes? Of course not! Each and every one of us had to rely totally on Jesus to clean up the mess we’d made of our lives.
Then how in the world could we ever think that now we might somehow be capable of building relationship with Him by our own efforts?(Romans 5:10) Well, needless to say, it’s impossible. Still, it’s not at all uncommon for believers to keep trying, since our human nature instinctively inclines us to do so. Therefore, we must always be vigilant not to retreat into a mindset of trying to earn a position of good standing with God.(Colossians 2:20-21)
Not Just Religion
The Christian faith isn’t just another religion wherein one must try to earn enough brownie points to get to heaven. Every religion on the face of the planet operates in this paradigm, but not so with Christianity. Rather, our faith is based on a living, vital relationship with our Creator Himself. He understands us, and has made provision for our sin.
But the nature of this provision is difficult to comprehend—and sometimes even harder to accept—because it flies in the face of what we typically learn about religion through our life experience (what Paul calls the “elementary principles of the world”).(Colossians 2:8, 20-21)
Being inbred in man’s psyche, these “elementary principles” intuitively serve as the foundation of our efforts to please God. But He has provided something better than a host of rules and regulations to deal with our sinful nature. It is the Spirit who gives the kind of life the law never could!(2 Corinthians 3:6) Still, there exists within each of us a basic instinct to rely on law in our attempt to live for God. And a better understanding of the nature of law sheds great light on why we behave this way.
We Need Purpose
Do you ever feel like you’re in some sort of holding pattern as a Christian? Even though you may be pursuing relationship with Christ—faithfully fulfilling your sense of duty by going to church, loving God, your family and others, and just being a good person in general—there’s a good chance that you’re still left with a sense of emptiness.
The reason for this is that along with being born as a child of God into Christ’s kingdom there comes an innate sense of destiny. So if we’re living life simply biding our time, more or less going through the motions of our faith, we shouldn’t be surprised to find ourselves not entirely satisfied.
The issue is purpose. not necessarily our eternal purpose in Christ, but rather the purpose for our life while on earth. One very perplexing problem for the Christian is that it’s possible to have a good understanding of God’s heavenly purpose and still be quite bewildered as to His earthly purpose for us.
Take Care with Gifts
Freedom from the power of sin is a phenomenal gift of God. But we need to be careful as we revel in it. Our death to sin, brought about by our freedom from law, has one purpose and one purpose only: that we might be endowed with the ability to pursue unfettered relationship with God—in spite of the weakness of our sinful nature.
Never is this freedom to be thought of as a license to sin. Rather, we have been joined to Christ “in order that we might bear fruit for God.”(Romans 7:4) The byproduct of being given this amazing privilege is that we now have the capacity to make good choices, whereas formerly we did not. We have freely and gloriously been given everything we need for our pursuit of Him.(2 Peter 1:3)
Not into Guilt Trips
Believers often fail to appreciate a principle critical to our pursuit of God. It’s this: God isn’t into guilt trips; He’s on a gift trip. Which means what? It means that everything we need has already been provided in Christ. Picture God’s outstretched hand, all His abundance there for the taking by anyone who will simply come to Him asking for it.(2 Corinthians 1:20)
We can have all we want of God, but on the other hand He will never force anything on us. God won’t brow-beat or coerce His children in any way into receiving what He wants for them. Given the fact that the gift itself (not to mention the Giver) should provide more than sufficient motivation to seek greater intimacy with God, resorting to the use of guilt to compel someone to take advantage of such abundance seems a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it?
It’s true that we are obligated to build relationship with God.(Hebrews 6:12) But a sincere pursuit of God should stem from the fact that we are assured of all He has promised, not by a twisted hope of obtaining God’s blessings from the incentive of guilt, pressure or greed.(2 Corinthians 7:1)
Still, intimacy with God needs to begin somewhere. So it’s not surprising to see our motivation to spend time with Him springing from a somewhat distorted sense of obligation. And that’s an okay beginning. Yet there’s something wrong—something missing—if seeking to be in His presence doesn’t eventually become a pursuit of the heart rather than merely that of duty.
Excerpted from: Free from the Power of Sin: The Keys to Growing in God in Spite of Yourself