Thank You, for a Personal & Intimate Love Relationship
“If you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth;
(The 1st Letter of Peter 1:17-19 NASB)
knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers,
but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.”
During this entire week, I have found myself consumed with this fact: GOD REALLY LOVES US!
Plant yourself there for a moment.
Dwell there and don’t run away, thinking, “Yeah, I know this.” Instead, allow yourself to stay in that thought, to ponder long upon it, turning it over in your mind, as I have in mine.
- JEHOVAH GOD REALLY DOES LOVE HIS CREATION! &
- FATHER GOD REALLY DOES DESIRE A PERSONAL & INTIMATE LOVE RELATIONSHIP WITH THOSE WHO HAVE RECEIVED HIS GIFT OF SALVATION TO BECOME HIS CHILDREN!
Now, before we begin, there is a stipulation to this ‘Love’ relationship with God; we must be His child. That is correct.
God Loves His Creation. MOST DEFINITELY TRUE!
BUT—
God Dwells Intimately and Personally ONLY within the Hearts of His Children Who Have Accepted and Received His Only Son Jesus Christ As Their Savior & Redeemer. 100% TRUTH!
If we know what it means to ‘Love’ another person, then we also know what it means to ‘Love’ in a personal way. Personal. What this means is that when we are ‘personally’ connected and in love with another, we will share time with that person, and even look for more opportunities to share time. Clearly, it is impossible to love another person without the other person present within our lives. If the one we ‘love’ is not present, if we are not talking, if we are not sharing time together, if we are not enjoying the intimacy of relationship found in ‘loving’ another—WELL THEN—we are only ‘loving the idea of being in love’ and not the person.
God is a person.
Jesus, the Son of God, is a person.
The Holy Spirit dwells within a person who is a believer, a child of God.
Knowing God, becoming a Christian, walking with Christ, being led by the Spirit, listening as God speaks to our heart is not ‘a belief system.’
NO!
We who know Jesus as our Savior and Lord have not obtained a ‘religion.’
Those who have received the gift of God’s Amazing Grace, have received an intimate, personal relationship with Father God.
Thank You, Father, for a Personal & Intimate Love Relationship YOU provide for all who believe & have received Jesus as their Savior.
One of my favorite apostles I enjoy studying under (probably because he was oftentimes impetuous in his actions as I am) had much to say about the personal relationship Christians can enjoy with our Father God. Read with me from Peter’s first letter sent to those believers who were—
“aliens, scattered . . . who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: . . .”
(The 1st Letter of Peter 1: 1-2 NASB)
To better illustrate this thought of ‘a personal & intimate love relationship,’ I want to take us all the way back to the year 1982. In that year, my older sister graduated from high school, my two younger siblings were attending the local, community school near our home, and my baby brother had not even been born. In 1982, our community, smaller high school (along with a few other small schools) were being closed as high schools, and students were being bussed to one solitary, consolidated high school in a somewhat larger city a few miles south. This was a BIG DEAL to so many other students and parents.
For the first time in my life, instead of playing on the local high school basketball team, I was not playing. My parents, just as so many other parents, said the consolidated high school was JUST TOO FAR AWAY FROM OUR HOME. In that decade, people were much more frugal in their driving than we are today.
From that time forth, after leaving a small high school of 400 students, I needed to focus on different school endeavors: the school newspaper created while we were at school, taking courses that challenged me in new ways, and learning to ‘swim’ in school hallways PACKED SHOULDER-TO-SHOULDER with other students in a building designed for 1,000 students that was now filled with 2,000 students.
To say life was different was not an understatement.
Due to the consolidation of the community high schools, much of our lives were spent on yellow school busses.
It was there, on the bus, being driven to & from school by my mother, who was the bus driver, & sitting halfway back in my assigned seat over the wheel hub, daily riding the bus to the consolidated high school—where I began a relationship with a boy who was to become ‘the love’ of my life. Let me just say, “I desired to spend every moment possible in his presence!” As I reflect back on our bus-riding days, I can smile and say, “Thank You, God, for allowing me to walk through a high school consolidation so I was able to talk with one You led me to marry.”
This year, we will celebrate thirty-eight years of marriage.
As I reflect upon our time together, I am reminded of the way God pursued me from the moment He created me and placed me in my mother’s womb. GOD LOVES US WITH AN AMAZING KIND OF LOVE, UNLIKE ANY HUMAN-TYPE OF LOVE!
On the radio, Matthew West sings a new and catchy tune “Love on the Radio,” a melody that reminds us of the personal and intimate love relationship Christians experience with God. Pause to listen and be prepared to tap your toe.
So, in closing, I am reminded how Christians only have a short “stay on earth; . . .” one day we will die and be led directly into heaven. There, we will share eternity with our Father, Savior, Redeemer, and Lord. While we are here, living in our short “stay on earth; . . .” may we not limit God within our lives, only talking with Him when trouble arises. May we not just pull out our Bible on Sundays when we go to church, and may we not only just talk about our Friend we have in Jesus when we are hanging out with our brothers & sisters-in-Christ at church.
Instead, may we allow our Father God to work through us, working out His plan for His kingdom, all while we enjoy a very Personal & Intimate Love Relationship with Jesus Christ our Savior.
Thank You, God, for creating us & for sending Your only Son to die for us & for raising Him to new life & for loving us, Your creation, so much that You Desire to Know Every Person Alive—Personally & Intimately!
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope
(The 1st Letter of Peter 1: -3-5 NASB)
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away,
reserved in heaven for you,
who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to revealed in the last time.”