When Adam & Eve brought sin into the world they severed not only the close relationship they had with God but that of every person who came after. It wasn’t until Jesus paid the penalty for their and our sins on the cross that the opportunity to reestablish that relationship was restored. A.W. Tozer wrote, “Essentially, salvation is the restoration of a right relation between man and his Creator, bringing back to normal the Creator-Creature relation.”
It doesn’t happen automatically. We must turn and go home to God the Father, much like the prodigal son did. We’ll see Him running toward us with arms open wide, eager to forgive and forget our trespasses and lavish us with love and acceptance. But, being the rebellious children we are, the “turning” required doesn’t come naturally.
Tozer commented, “Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him, to bring Him nearer to our own image.” Unless we surrender our pride and accept God’s absolute sovereignty over our lives our relationship with Him will never be what it should be.
Like the 24 elders surrounding the throne in heaven proclaim, we must worship the Father by saying to Him, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, since you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created!“ (Revelation 4:11). Nothing less than total submission to His authority will do. He deserves nothing less.
Therefore, we must approach God with the proper attitude. What we can’t allow ourselves to do is to have false expectations concerning His reaction. Dr. Larry Crabb wrote about how he’d once tried fasting to grab God’s attention and cooperation:
“As I resolved to carry out my plans, something felt wrong. I couldn’t suppress a noble whisper within me that said, ‘That should impress Him!’ My desire for help from God had twisted my thinking to the point where I felt that God should help, that His claim to goodness required it of Him. I was approaching God, but not with an already settled confidence in His goodness. I wasn’t prepared to call Him good if He refused to cooperate with my plans. But that’s exactly what He calls us to do. He is good, whether my brother dies in a plane crash or your son commits suicide.”
Crabb added, “Now this can be said harshly like a barked command: ‘Now you listen here! God is good, and you better believe it!’ Or it can be said gently, as an invitation to delight in someone whose powerfully loving commitment to us exceeds our wildest dreams.”
The biggest mistake we can make in establishing a close relationship with anyone, much less God Almighty, is to impose self-centered requisites on them. When it comes to God we must lay down our egotistic preferences and accept His will without conditions. One of the most significant passages in all of the Bible teaches us to “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding. Acknowledge Him in all your ways, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own estimation; fear the LORD and turn away from evil. This will bring healing to your body, and refreshment to your inner self“ (Proverbs 3:5-8).
Trusting in an invisible God is hard. Especially when things are going well for us because that’s when we don’t even think about trusting Him. Rather, we trust in ourselves. So sometimes God causes us to go through hard times whereupon we have no one to trust but God. Brennan Manning wrote, “Often trust begins on the far side of despair. When all human resources are exhausted, when the craving for reassurances is stifled, when we forgo control, when we cease trying to manipulate God and demystify Mystery, then – at our wits’ end – trust happens within us, and the untainted cry, ‘Abba, into your hands I commend my spirit,’ (Luke 23:46) surges from the heart.”
Surrender is key. Tozer wrote, “Anyone who might feel reluctant to surrender his will to the will of another should remember Jesus’ words, ‘Whosoever commits sin is the servant of sin‘ (John 8:34). We must of necessity be servant to someone, either to God or to sin. The sinner prides himself on his independence, completely overlooking the fact that he’s the weak slave of the sins that rule his members. The man who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave driver for a kind and gentle Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.”
To surrender in battle is to give up. But spiritual surrender brings victory. It opens the door to receive God’s blessings beyond measure. J.I. Packer wrote, “There’s tremendous relief in knowing God’s love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point on prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion Him about me, in the way I’m so often disillusioned about myself, and quench His determination to bless me.”
Packer continued, “There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the ugly things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and am I glad!), and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, He wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.”
I know the phrase, “Develop a relationship with God”, gets tossed around loosely like an empty cliche. But the amazing truth is that it’s no pipe dream. In fact, it’s a relationship more substantial and rewarding than any other we can have. And it lasts forever.
Even Christians Get the Blues 