I am continually bombarded by every possible substitute for true, authentic relationship with Jesus. It sometimes seems easier to embrace religious rules or even existential thought than to be in a real one on one relationship with God.
I think relationships are difficult for us as humans. They take energy, effort, vulnerability, time, communication, forgiveness, grace, flexibility, intention, attention, etc. etc. It’s much easier to turn to the TV, the computer, or anything else as a substitute.
Relationships are messy. They require change. We have to grow and develop in order to maintain them. We are either changed by them, or we change with them. If one person in a relationship is constant (unchanging) the other will need to change in order to stabilize the relationship.
Surely you’ve seen this in marriage. Where one partner is stubborn and strong-willed and will not change so the other person becomes whoever the strong-willed partner needs them to be. It’s sometimes hard to watch this change take place. Years into the marriage, the “flexible” spouse barely resembles the vibrant young person they once were - all to hold the marriage together.
Then there are those marriages where both spouses are unwilling to change. Unfortunately, more than ½ of all the marriages today end in divorce - very often the result of both partners being unwilling to change they way they must to live together in harmony.
The least common expression of marriage is what I call a Transformative Marriage. This is a relationship where both partners grow and change to become ONE. After 17 years of marriage, I can honestly say I am no longer the girl I was at 16 or even 21. I am now a counterpart to my husband and he is a complement to me. We’ve been molded, shaped into ONE by God and our willingness to DAILY surrender our selfish wants, needs, idiosyncrasies.
This is not a very popular concept nowadays. We’ve grown up in a country that places significant value on independence, self-sufficiency and personal goals. As a result, we have no idea how be interdependent, how to share what we have, or how to be flexible so we can grow and develop into who God intended us to be. We get stuck in the strongholds of our personalities and our inflexible nature.
How does all this apply to our relationship with God? How well we function in our interpersonal relationships in general point directly to how well we’ll function in our relationship with God. We behave the same no matter WHO it is that we are relating to.
However before we can consider a relationship with God, we must first acknowledge that He is a PERSON we can have relationship with.
Today many popular spiritual paradigms view God as an impersonal force - a spiritual being who watches us from a distance (like the old Bette Midler song). This Force doesn’t interfere with or intervene in the details of our daily lives. It focuses it’s energy on taking care of the cosmos - making sure the planets are orbiting in space. As I understand it, in order to have success in this paradigm you align yourself with the force and things go well for you. If you are misaligned, your life results in bad luck, sickness and poverty. Personal relationship with God is not a necessary ingredient in this spiritual system. There’s no interaction or conversation with God as a person, only the leading of the force.
Christianity is very different. In Christianity God IS a Man. Jesus was and is and will always be fully God and fully man. This is a very important aspect of our faith - not only because He must be fully human to feel what we feel, love how we love and die for all of our sin so we can have an unobstructed, unencumbered relationship with God. But, He MUST be fully man so that we can have a personal relationship with Him. Jesus is completely human in every way and yet completely GOD - one with the Father and the Spirit while on Earth, now in the Heaven and in the future when He rules and reigns as KING on the New Earth for Eternity.
As Christians our main purpose, our ultimate goal, our number one desire is to be in RELATIONSHIP with Jesus - not to perfectly follow a man-made set a rules, adhere to some religious structure or to align ourselves with a distant spiritual force.
Our faith is based on a relationship with a man, a man who is God, Jesus. And this God-man, Jesus desires to be known by us. It’s in this relationship where we have a two-way interchange as we spend time together, get to know one another, talk to each other and listen to each other. It’s similar to our relationships with other people. We need to spend time together to BUILD the relationship.
Our relationship with God is so personal, so intimate that it can be easily distorted or ruined by man-made laws or religion. Imagine what your marriage might look like if you simply tried to fulfill your relationship by following a set of rules established by others many years ago. What things might you do in your role as husband or wife that would not even come close to meeting the needs of your spouse? After all, you are unique individuals with a unique relationship. How could any set of rules meet the needs of your growing, transforming relationship? That’s how it is with our relationship with Jesus.
As we communicate with Jesus and get to know Him better, we are transformed by His love. Just like I mentioned in my example of a marriage. We must be flexible and open in order to have a growing, healthy relationship. Jesus is constant, unchanging. He is perfect and complete in everyway so He does not need to be changed by His relationship with us. However, we NEED to be transformed through our relationship with Him. We will not be transformed by following a set of rules. We can only be truly changed through a living, breathing two-way relationship with Jesus.
Changing to adhere to rules is religion. It’s putting on a new suit without getting the heart transplant we desperately need. Leaning on man-made structures causes us to become lazy in our intimacy with Jesus. It seems much easier to “do” things a certain way than to take the time and energy necessary to talk with Jesus directly, to seek His will, and hear from Him.
Now when I talk about religion and man-made structures, I’m NOT referring to the Word of God. I believe the Word of God is infallible and unchanging - however, I do think some interpretations have caused misunderstandings. This is one of the many reasons why a personal, intimate relationship with Jesus is so necessary. If we hear God’s voice, we can rely on the Holy Spirit to teach us the meaning of the scripture. God’s Spirit will communicate directly to our spirit and we will have a deep understanding of God’s Word.
As we grow in our intimacy with Jesus, our understanding of God’s Word will grow and develop as well. You will re-read familiar scriptures and they will have deeper, more complex meanings. While your original understanding will still hold true, the deeper meaning will touch a deeper part of your spirit.
This year it’s my one desire to press deeper into my relationship with Jesus. To make more time for Him. To talk with Him. To listen to Him. To choose to surrender more of my heart, mind, will and emotions to Him. To be transformed by Him and then to end up looking more like Him. Everything else is truly meaningless and will burn away in the end. Only one thing will remain, Him in me and me in Him.
This is my one desire… a deep, intimate relationship with the God-Man, Jesus
