Whether it’s marriage or a relationship that’s not quite there yet, our significant relationships can teach us a lot about the kind of relationship that our Heavenly Father desires with us. In our personal lives, when we find the person that God has ordained to walk with us through life, it’s exciting and fulfilling. It makes our souls feel good because not only do we like this person, but we want to spend time with them. We love being in their presence and look forward to the relationship deepening through communication, affection, respect and honor. We’re created by God to respond to each other in this way, and we need to think deeply about that. Our Heavenly Father is an ‘on-purpose’ God. He’s doesn’t do anything randomly. Because of this, we can have confidence that He wants us to learn about the intimacy He desires with us through the intimacy we desire in all our relationships with other people.
Just as we understand the importance and benefits of what marrying the right person will do for our lives, we must understand, even more so, the benefits of what having an intimate relationship with God will do for us. It literally makes us! Without a relationship with God, we cannot live through His power and authority. He doesn’t want anyone to live that kind of existence. 1Timothy 2:4 tells us that He wants everyone to be saved. God wants us to live a powerful Christian life, and through it, He wants us to demonstrate His love and power to others.
God has a Will, and His Will is His Word. If we ever want to know the plans that God has for us, we need only look in His Word. 2Peter 1:3 tells us that God, the One that created and called us to His own glory and excellence, has given us extreme and unfathomable treasure. This treasure was given to us through His divine power and here’s what it is: it is everything (All, without exception) that is related to life and Godliness. The treasure is wrapped up and delivered to us by access to the knowledge of Him through His Word. In other words, God has provided us beyond overwhelming access to the knowledge of God’s Will, and this knowledge of Him and His Will is everything (All, without exception) that you and I need to live a more than abundant, Godly life.
God didn’t leave not one thing out. The knowledge of Him and His Word fills us to overflowing with His goodness, and it is all that we need in life. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 4:4(ESV), “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” God’s Word feeds us deep down in a place that is at the core of our very existence. All of us are aware of this place deep down, and we are all aware that it needs to be fed. Jesus Christ makes it clear that we must be fed by the Source, which is the One True Living God.
Our problem is that most people don’t do this. They don’t go to the Source through Jesus Christ, but look to people, relationships, materialism, substances, and other things that are disconnected from God. They seek these and try to make them their source. We will always run on empty when we do this.
As human beings, we long for connection. God built us that way. Genesis 1:26-27(ESV) tells us, “26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Our Heavenly Father is letting us in on the conversation He had with His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, in 1Thessalonians 5:23(ESV), God sheds more light on how He’s created us. This verse says, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
From His Word in Genesis 1:26-27, we know that we are created in the image of God, and we are three-part beings. He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and 1Thessalonians 5:23 affirms that He created human beings to be three parts as well. We are spirit, soul, and body. The spirit of a human being is often referred to as “spirit man” or “inner man”. The human spirit is not to be confused with God’s Holy Spirit. Our human spirit or spirit man is the highest part of our being because it is the part of us that connects to God through the salvation that Jesus Christ offers.
Many people haven’t learned about our Heavenly Father and His love. They don’t know that He created us to be His children so that we can be in close relationship with Him. They don’t know that what they’re really longing for in life is an intimate connection with their Creator in the most intimate of ways. This longing for God is in us, and it responds to His longing for us.
Jesus Christ said in Luke 15:10(ESV), “Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” He then went on to elaborate on this in his parable of the prodigal son. The parable begins with a father who had two sons. As it was common for a father to leave an inheritance to his sons after his death, both his sons understood that they would inherit their father’s wealth. The youngest of the two brothers was impatient and did not want to wait until his father died but wanted it right then and there. Luke 15:12 tells us, “And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.’ And he divided his property between them.”
Most of us can relate to the younger son, because this is how we are. We’re an “on the double” society and we don’t want to wait. Some of us will go to God with this same impatient attitude in our prayers. The young son squandered his money, and it just happened that a famine hit the land. He was in quite the fix, no money, no family, and no one willing to help him. He got hired by a country farmer to feed his pigs, but he said to himself, “the pigs eat better than me.” He remembered that his father’s servants also ate very well. He then hatched a plan to humble himself and return home to his father’s house.
One would think that his father would be angry with his son, but instead, his father rejoiced when he saw him and threw a great feast to welcome him home. This wonderful parable that Christ taught paints a beautiful portrait of our Heavenly Father’s love. God delights in us, and He wants us to delight in Him. He wants us to know that only He can fill our cups.
When two people marry, God tells us that they become one person. That’s how He sees them. Jesus Christ taught us this in Mark 10:6-9(NLT), “6 But ‘God made them male and female’ from the beginning of creation. 7 ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, 8 and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, 9 let no one split apart what God has joined together.” This very special marital union teaches us the reverence and blessing of our union with God through Christ. It’s out of our union with God that the love, unity, and strength of Christ truly ministers to the heart of the other.
God placed all these yummies in us to learn to live in relationship first with Him. When this is our reality, all of His goodness flows from us to others. God wants to spend time with us. He wants us to read about Him in His Word, and to communicate with Him all the time. This is what we desire from the people we love, and this is what God desires from us. He created relationships for His good pleasure, and everything that pleases God will please us. Jesus Christ prayed to God for the disciples in John 17:21(NLT), “I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.” Through Christ, we are one with our Heavenly Father. Let’s be as attentive to our relationship with Him as we possibly can, because the more we live in Him, the better our lives will be.■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) is adapted from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. All rights reserved.
“In Relationship with God”, written for Springfield Fellowship © 2023. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.