The Bevans

Prepare The Way For The Lord!

In Jeremiah chapter 31, the Lord makes the following declaration to His people:

Being a Christian is about relationship with God. It is not primarily to do with knowledge about God, about theology and doctrine, important as that may be. We can know a great deal about God without much knowledge of Him: "You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that - and shudder." Nor is it primarily about religious 'rituals' and disciplines (baptism, communion, worship, prayer, Bible reading, etc.), however valuable they may be. Nor is it primarily about good behaviour, about holy living, although that too is required. Like the Pharisees, we can know a great deal about godliness without much knowledge of God Himself.

No! The essence of New Covenant living is knowing God. This is what was to distinguish it from the Old Covenant: "They will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest." It is about having a genuine relationship with the Living God. And this is not supposed to be something abstract and theoretical, but an ongoing experiential reality affecting every part of our being. It is not just about head-knowledge, but also about heart-and-soul-and-spirit-knowledge. Do we truly know God personally, or is He just a vague acquaintance whose book we've read? It seems that many of us are happy to talk about knowing God without there being a deep daily reality behind the words. What a calamity that being a Christian has so often been reduced to accepting a few truths and following a few rules. As Jeanne Guyon wrote three hundred years ago, "What inexpressible damage new Christians - for that matter, most Christians - have suffered because of the loss of an inner, spiritual relationship to Jesus Christ."

Jesus said that eternal life was to know the only true God, and to know Jesus Christ whom He sent. Nothing more, nothing less. This is the heart of our faith. But even before Jesus, knowing God was commended and valued. The Lord said through the prophet Jeremiah, "Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me." Is this what we boast about or are other things more important to us?

Whatever the depth (or shallowness) of our relationship with God, we can always know Him better. In this life we shall always only know God in part, but Paul's prayer for the Ephesian believers should also be our own daily prayer for ourselves: "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better." There is no greater pursuit than the pursuit of a deeper relationship with God and nothing that should have a higher priority in our lives. Jim Packer summarises it like this:

As Henri Nouwen once put it, "The only thing that really matters is your relationship with Jesus."

But what kind of relationship can we expect to have with the Lord Almighty? How are we supposed to relate to the infinite, awesome, holy King of the universe who reigns in glory and majesty? The answer to this question is really altogether astounding.

We would perhaps expect that His "wholly otherness" would create an insurmountable chasm between the Lord and us, and that we could only know Him at a distance. But that isn't how He relates to us at all. His amazing love has completely bridged the gulf between us and He calls us His friends. On His way to Gethsemane, Jesus said to His followers, "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from My Father I have made known to you."

Even under the Old Covenant, it was possible to know God as a friend. Three times in Scripture, Abraham is described as God's friend. Similarly, it was said of Moses that the Lord would speak to him face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. And in the dark days of his suffering and apparent abandonment by God, Job exclaimed, "Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God's intimate friendship blessed my house!" How much more should we, who have received the Holy Spirit under the New Covenant, know God as our intimate friend!

The King of kings wants us to relate to Him as friends and not just as His subjects. We can relate to Him just as we relate to our closest human friends. As our friend, we know He is committed to us. He understands us and is on our side, wanting the very best for us, sticking with us through think and thin. We can relax with Him and be totally open with Him because we can trust Him because He is for us. He wants us to share our lives with Him and for us to do things in partnership with Him. He desires to be our companion in all we do.

But, not only is God our friend, He is also our husband or bridegroom. Jesus referred to Himself as the bridegroom and His return is described in the book of Revelation as the wedding of the Lamb. Jesus is returning as the bridegroom for His beautiful bride. Indeed, Paul sees human marriage as but a reflection of the profound mystery of the union between Christ and His church. In the uniting of man and wife is an illustration of the intimacy of the relationship God desires to have with His people.

Again there are echoes under the Old Covenant. As we have already seen in chapter two - in words very similar to those of Jesus above - the Lord says through Hosea to His people, "You will call Me 'my husband'; you will no longer call Me 'my master'". Similarly, He promises through Isaiah, "As a young man marries a maiden, so will your Builder marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you."

We are the bride of the King of kings. We can relate to Him as His wife and not just as His subjects. The relationship between husband and wife is an intimate one, in which everything is shared, a relationship of oneness and love. This is the kind of relationship Jesus wants us to have with Him. He desires to draw us into the depths of His heart.

As well as being friends of the Lord and the bride of the Lamb, we are also God's children. In his first epistle, John exclaims, "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!"

Under the Old Covenant, the Lord declared, "I am Israel's father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son." And the Psalmist proclaimed, "As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him." But Jesus revealed a new closeness to this relationship. He knew God as His personal loving heavenly Father. "This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased." came the voice from heaven at both His baptism and His transfiguration. And, as we noted in chapter three, Jesus' use of the Aramaic word Abba - the word of intimacy from child to father - to refer to the Almighty God was a revolutionary departure for the Jews.

The astounding fact is that, like Jesus, we too can know God as Abba, father, 'daddy', by His Spirit whom we have received. We, too, can have the same depth of relationship with God that Jesus did. We, too, can call the Most High God our 'dad'. Just before His arrest, Jesus prayed to His Father for us, "I have made You known to them, and will continue to make You known in order that the love You have for Me may be in them." We, too, are God's beloved children and can know the same kind of relationship with Him that Jesus did.

We are children of the King of kings. We can relate to Him as His children and not just as His subjects. Our relationship with God should be like that of a small child who delights in being with his or her father. We should never grow out of that simple trust and joy and become like cynical 'teenagers' towards our loving Father. He desires us to love Him and be reliant on Him as our heavenly Dad.

Jim Packer, in his book, Knowing God, writes the following:

And yet the expectation of Jesus and of the New Covenant prophecies is precisely the opposite: that we would not only know God, but that we would know Him as our closest friend, intimate lover and loving heavenly father. Sadly however, few of us would naturally respond to question, "Who is your best friend?" with the answer "God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit".

Are we willing to lay down other goals in our lives in order to pursue the highest goal of all, that of developing and deepening our intimacy with God until we can truly say that He is our closest friend and confidant - until we are captivated and absorbed by Him and passionately in love with Him? For this assuredly is our primary calling: to love God.

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." This is the first and greatest commandment. This is a pretty all-encompassing, radical type of love, isn't it? If only we pursued this first commandment more than any other!

There are Christian churches with many different emphases: worship, prayer, preaching, pastoral care, healing, evangelism, care of the poor, etc., etc. But only very rarely does one come across a church that explicitly gives the highest priority to loving God - even though that is the first and greatest commandment! Perhaps equally revealing is the fact that none of the ancient creeds or confessions of faith (nor indeed the modern "doctrinal statements") contain mention of this first requirement of Christian discipleship: to love God.

If we truly experienced the Lord's extravagant love for us, then our hearts would respond in kind. For it's our experience of His love for us that causes us to love Him in response. We love God because He loves us. A. W. Tozer expressed it as follows:

This dynamic of love responding to love should be at the very heart of the expression of our faith. "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him", the apostle Peter wrote, "and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy."

We have already explored, in an earlier chapter, something of the depth of God's amazing love for us. But what should we expect our love for God to look like? Surely it should look like the love of a man or woman for his or her friend, the love of a husband and wife for each other and the love of a child for his or her father. Each of these human relationships at best is but a weak reflection of what we can experience in our relationship with God, but the affection and fondness, the attraction and desire, and the devotion and commitment that characterise human love relationships should also be present in our fellowship with God. There should be a deep emotional content to our relationship with our heavenly Father. But true love affects not only our emotions, but also our minds, our wills and indeed the very depths of our being. "For love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame." Every part of us should be on fire for God! There is no upper limit on how much we can love Him.

And there are no fanatics as far as loving the Lord is concerned — just people who love Him more extravagantly than we do! Jim Packer made the following comments about the behaviour of John Bradford, who was martyred in London in 1555:

Are we those who’d readily confess that our Loving Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus are all the world to us?

Sadly, in our relationship with God, many of us often substitute other things for love. As Jeanne Guyon wrote, "For some reason men try to love God by forms and rules. Can you not see it is by these very forms and rules that you have lost so much of that love?" But love is not the same as good works or obedience or service or sacrifice. Certainly these things should flow out of our love relationship with God; they are expressions of and our response to love, but they aren't themselves love. John Arnott has expressed it like this:

Perhaps the Scripture that elucidates this most clearly is Jesus' letter to the church at Ephesus, in the second chapter of the book of Revelation: "I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary." This sounds pretty good, doesn't it? But Jesus continues, "Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen!" The Ephesian Christians used to be radically in love with Jesus, but now they're just working for Him.

How many of us have lost our first love for God? Some of you will remember what it was like when you first experienced God's love for you personally: how it eclipsed everything else in your life, the passionate 'crush-on-Jesus' love you had, and how your mind re-interpreted every pop song to be speaking of God's love for you! How has your love for the Lord fared since then? One of the saddest things is when the love of a new believer dies away over time and this is considered normal. Of course this initial love is immature but, like the love of a wife for her husband, its depth should increase, not decrease, as it develops into maturity. If your love for God is not growing stronger, it will grow cold. As Mike Bickle has written, "Those who do not press on in pursuit of the breadth, length, height and depth of God will eventually become bored with their faith. Their shallow understanding doesn't capture their imaginations, much less inflame their passions." God made us to have a passionate, committed relationship with Him.

But, so often, we replace service for relationship, focussing more on what we do for God than on loving Him. We are like the older son in Jesus' parable who complained to his father, "Look! All these years I've been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.", to which his father replied tenderly, "My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours." Is our focus on being always with the Father and knowing His bounteous generosity or on our 'slaving' for Him?

As the apostle Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth, any kind of ministry or service without love is worthless. The idea of "doing our duty to God" is totally absent from the New Testament, yet for many of us, much of what we do is out of sense of duty rather than as a love-response to His grace towards us. It's not our work and achievements that please God, but our loving Him. He is more interested in the attitude of our hearts towards Him than in the work we do for Him. The only true success is to know Him better. Our fellowship with Him should always be central. Then our 'ministry' can flow out of the relationship we have with Him.

If we are not careful, we may find that we place the ministry God has given us above our relationship with Him. This is, of course, idolatry and spiritual adultery, but it is sadly very common among those in Christian leadership. Do we get more excited about God Himself or about the things we do for Him? Some of us may need to heed the words of Rick Joyner concerning the behaviour of the prophet Jonah:

Are we more concerned about the fruitfulness or 'success' of our ministry, or about what people think of us, or about our status as ministers, than about how well we are 'getting on' with God? Often our busyness keeps us from drawing near to Him and in fact separates us from His presence. Let us seek to abide with Him above all else.

Maybe, however, for you it is not service that takes the place of relationship, but the pursuit of knowledge. The apostle Paul writes, "Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know. But the man who loves God is known by God." Some of us love doctrine or theology - knowledge about God - more than we love God Himself. We behave as though it is more important that we understand God than that we know Him. But if we wait until we understand everything about God before offering Him our devotion, we will never find Him. Our passion to know God, in humble dependence on Him, has to exceed our passion to understand everything about Him.

Others of us place a higher value on studying the Bible than on developing a deep relationship with God, loving the 'book of the Lord' more than the 'Lord of the book'. Here are Jesus' words to the Pharisees on the matter:

Studying the Scriptures does not guarantee relationship with God. This is because Spiritual truth is discerned not through the application of our intellects, but through the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not intelligence and education that is required (indeed the Bible itself suggests that these may be more of a hindrance than help), but humility and "coming to Him". The condition of our hearts is the important thing, not the ability of our minds. Oh that we would pursue true 'heart knowledge' of God with the same discipline and persistence that the scholar pursues 'head knowledge'! As Gene Edwards has put it, "You need Christ - not in your mind, but in a consuming encounter."

How, then, can we go about deepening our relationship with God, getting to know Him better and loving Him more? Firstly, we need to decide that it matters enough to us that we're going to do something about it. In his book Passion for Jesus, Mike Bickle writes the following:

Lindy Croucher, a young Australian woman, expressed it like this in her first sermon:

But just desiring isn't sufficient, we need to make the effort to draw near to God. Rick Joyner writes:

God is most available to those who are most available to Him. The ones who find Him are those who seek him with all their heart.

As has often been pointed out, the Bible is one long invitation to come to the Lord. From God calling to Adam and Eve in the garden at the beginning of Genesis to the Spirit and bride saying "Come!" at the end of Revelation, God entreats us to seek Him, to come close to Him, to draw near to Him. "If you seek the Lord your God, you will find Him if you look for Him with all your heart and with all your soul.", teaches Moses. "Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost.", invites the Lord through Isaiah. "Seek the Lord until He comes", calls Hosea. "Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink.", offers Jesus. "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.", writes James. "Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with Me.", says Jesus to the church in Laodicea, inviting the believers there - and each of us now - to deepen our relationship with Him.

In order to get to know God better, we need to give time to Him. When we want to develop relationships with our friends, with our husband or wife, with our parents or with our children, we set aside time to do so. Indeed we talk about spending "quality time" with someone when we want to work on our relationship with them: that is, time spent with someone alone with no agenda and no distractions. God wants to spend quality time with us, time when He has our undivided attention. Mary, the sister of Lazarus and Martha, understood this:

Mary chose to spend time with Jesus and refused to be distracted; Martha chose not to spend time with Him. And Jesus said that Mary had chosen better. (Later, we see Mary express her devotion to Jesus in a most extravagant way, pouring a bottle of extremely expensive perfume over Him. Again, Jesus commends her action.) Jesus invites us to learn from Mary and spend time with Him as she did, letting Him change us by the encounter.

How much do we value spending time with the Lord? Does the idea of being with Him fill us with expectation and joy as it did Mary? Given how incredibly wonderful God is, it is somewhat astonishing how little time many of us spend on deepening our relationship with Him. When a young man and woman are courting, only things over which they have no control will keep them apart. If we let God captivate our heart with His love, then we too will desire to be with Him above anything else.

The gospel accounts record various occasions when Jesus Himself withdrew to places of solitude to spend time with His Father: Once, "very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed." Another time, "after He had dismissed the crowd, He went up on a mountainside by Himself to pray. When evening came, He was there alone." Luke writes that "Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed." If this was part of the rhythm of Jesus' life, how much more do we need to build it in to the rhythm of our lives too.

Are we willing to invest time in our relationship with God? Western society is so goal-oriented (in contrast to the more relationship-oriented cultures of much of the rest of the world) that we often find it hard enough for us (especially perhaps for men) to invest adequate time in developing deep human relationships, let alone in deepening our relationship with God. There is a Filipino description of Westerners as "people with gods on their wrists". This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the typical British attitude to the length of church services, in which the watch (rather than anything God might desire) is clearly king. It seems ludicrous that we are so unwilling to invest more than an hour or so each week in meeting corporately with God. We should take note of the often repeated observation that the churches that are growing are those with the longest services. The trouble is that giving time to just being with God, to just being in His presence, is in conflict with the values of the world we live in. Are we willing to 'waste time' in this way?

We may need to make some tough decisions to do this. Spending time with God is important - indeed it's of crucial importance to the way we live - but it never seems urgent. As a result we find it easy to postpone, delaying indefinitely until it never happens. But, the window of opportunity is now: "Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on Him while He is near.", says Isaiah. We need to "seize the day" before the years pass away and God misses out on the best part of our lives. Why let slip the opportunity of having a close relationship with Him now? Most of us will need to plan in order to give time to communion and fellowship with God. We need to make practical decisions about how we use our time. We should all arrange to have a regular 'date' with God.

Carl Jung tells the story of a man who was seeing him for counselling. The man wanted an appointment at a particular time on a particular day. "I'm sorry," said Jung, "but I have an appointment at that time." When the two met together the next time, the client was furious. "You told me that you had an appointment on Tuesday. But I happened to see you. I know exactly where you were and what you were doing. You were sitting on the bank of the river, doing nothing other than dangling your toes in the water!" "That's right," said Jung. "It was my appointment with myself and I never break it!" We should have a similar attitude about meeting regularly with God. It should be an unbreakable appointment.

God is unlikely to force us to spend time with Him (though sometimes He may let us go through a time of illness or unemployment to help us see what is important). In his book The Sixty Minute Father, Rob Parsons gives the following advice to busy human fathers: "Plan as soon as possible a half day with your child when you can spend time alone doing ordinary things together." He explains that "the problem for children is that they do not have the power of bosses, customers or colleagues." With God, it is not that He doesn't have the power, but rather that He doesn't use the power He has to compel us to spend time with Him. He longs for us to give Him time as a result of our own choice - because we want to - rather than under compulsion. Our loving heavenly Father's desire to be with us is much greater than ours to be with Him, but He always allows us to reject Him and remain distant from Him. It's our choice.

Do we believe we're too busy to find time for this? Our society seems to honour busyness, but we need to decide whether we can afford not to plan time alone with God into our timetable. Rob Parsons writes, "The truth is that there are many demands on our time that we can't do much about, but so often the biggest time pressure is the unnecessary busyness that is created by us." Some of us work long hours irrespective of any real need to do so and many of us pursue unnecessary goals (perhaps most obviously greater wealth and a higher 'standard of living'). Probably all of us spend time on things that are neither urgent nor important, so-called 'busy work'. How we spend our time shows what we value. We can't do everything. We have to choose. Are we choosing not to spend time with God, in favour of other activities? Or are we willing to sacrifice the unimportant, saying "no" to some of the demands we or others place on us, in order to give time to God? How much is our relationship with God really worth to us?

What this means in practice will vary widely according to our circumstances. For some, it may just be necessary to enter unbreakable appointments with God in a Filofax or diary - and then keep those appointments. For others, it may be right to give up participation in Sunday sports in order to be able to attend church regularly. Others may decide that a change in employment is required. A recent BBC 1 Songs Of Praise programme contained the story of a woman who had given up a lucrative job as an architect to become a cleaner in order, in her own words, "to spend more time with Jesus". In pursuit of intimacy with the Lord, are we willing to reject the values of our culture? Are we willing to choose a lower 'standard of living' in order to pursue the higher 'quality of life' that we find as we live in close communion with our loving heavenly Father?

In addition to our regular daily and weekly times spent with God, it is also good to plan some more extended periods of time for the sole purpose of deepening our relationship with our Father. Structuring a short private retreat with God every few months is likely to be one of the most profitable things we ever do. If we give a day or weekend totally over to meeting with God, the benefits are likely to far outweigh any 'sacrifice' we make. We may feel we are too busy to do something like this, but we have no problem finding time for holidays, or to spend with family and friends, or for pursuing our hobbies or making progress in our work. No, the most difficult problem is not in finding time but in deciding that it is important enough to find the time. If we truly love the Lord with every part of our being, it should be evident in our diaries and calendars!

Relating to God is like any other relationship. If we relate to Him as a person then we will develop a personal relationship with Him. The primary focus of time we spend with God must be on God Himself - on our relationship with Him - rather than on either what we can do for Him or on what He can do for us. We should not be coming to Him primarily to be given orders to obey (as if we just worked for Him), or to ask Him to meet our needs (as if He worked for us), but to relate to Him deeply and profoundly as our closest friend, lover and father. Henri Nouwen once gave a lady the following advice: "Just take five minutes a day every day for two weeks to sit quietly and ask to be with Jesus, and ask for His presence." It is His Presence, not His presents, that should be our priority. Anthony Bloom tells the story of a peasant who would daily slip into a certain church at a particular time and sit, apparently doing nothing. After some time of observing this, the parish priest asked him why he wasted his time in this way. The man's answer: "I look at Him. He looks at me. And we tell each other that we love each other."

We need to be honest with ourselves as to whether the way we spend our 'God time' helps or hinders deepening our relationship with God. Are we like the peasant man who simply gave time to be with the Lord or do we fill the time with our activity? The danger is that we rush into His presence with our thoughts and desires uppermost, pour out our requests to Him, and rush away again, without ever discovering His thoughts or desires and without giving Him any real chance to minister to us. No human relationship could develop based on one-sided encounters like that! We must give space for God Himself to speak and act and tenderly touch our lives. Jack Deere has expressed the problem like this:

The Scriptures repeatedly speak of the need to be still before God and wait on Him: "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him", "Be still, and know that I am God", say the psalmists. "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.", says the Lord through Isaiah, "The Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. ... Blessed are all who wait for Him!" "It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.", say Isaiah and Jeremiah.

The stillness that is required is a stillness of mind and heart, of soul and spirit. Many find stillness of body helps with this - sitting or kneeling or lying down; others find it easier to be still before God while engaged in some simple activity like walking the dog or washing the dishes. The important thing is that we learn to rest in His presence, to slow down and turn off the noise inside, and to set aside our busyness and our own agendas. We need to recognise that coming to God is not about us doing or achieving anything (even 'praying') but about relationship, so we need not strive but only relax and be silent, becoming aware of His loving presence. God can reveal Himself to us more in one minute of quality time spent with Him, than in hours of 'distracted' time. This is the road to true intimacy.

For intimacy is entering into God's glorious presence: not remaining at a distance but drawing close. Intimacy is two-way: receiving His love for us and expressing our love to Him, our spirit being united with His Spirit. Intimacy is a place of transparency and vulnerability: where we receive both His incredible, unconditional love and also healing for our hurts. Intimacy is a place of security, protection and peace, of acceptance and affirmation, of restoration and healing, and of refreshment and renewal.

For the benefits of a true, deep relationship with the Living God are beyond measure. We discover how true it is that we are blessed with "every Spiritual blessing in Christ". It is as we draw near to God that we find out how wonderful He is. It is as we enter into His presence that we discover for ourselves His incredible unconditional love: that we are completely forgiven, fully pleasing, totally accepted, and deeply loved by Him. And as we get to know God's perfect acceptance and affirmation, no longer will we feel that we need to meet certain standards to feel good about ourselves; no longer will we feel that we need to be approved by others to feel good about ourselves; no longer will we be afraid of failing or of rejection because we will know how God feels about us. Through knowing Him, He desires to meet all our emotional needs.

Mike Bickle has put it this way:

Every inner need we have can be perfectly met, not because we have the supply, but because God does. No material possessions can bring us true joy. No human relationship can fill our hearts with divine love. No circumstance can provide us with God's peace. God - and only God - can truly meet all our needs perfectly. He gently invites us to let Him do that.

Another great blessing of having a relationship of intimacy with God is that we know the Healer who heals the wounds of the human heart, the Deliverer who sets us free from all that seeks to overwhelm us. Many of us are hurting and are broken-hearted in one way or another. Many of us face painful struggles of one sort or another. Some of us struggle with pains and hurts from the past. Some of us are in despair, and close to defeat. But, whether our struggles are due to our own sin, due to the sin of others, or simply due to the situation we find ourselves in, God wants us to come to Him and let Him take away our fear, wipe away our tears, heal our pain.

For our God is a Father with a tender heart towards His hurting children. He desires to restore and refresh us: to heal the broken-hearted and bind up their wounds, to comfort those who grieve, to wipe away our tears, to comfort the downcast, and lift up our heads. We can give our tears to God, because He is our comforter. We can give our fears to God, because He is our confidence. We can give our pains to God, because He is our healer. We can give our stress to God, because He is our peace. We can give our heaviness to God, because He is our joy. We can give our loneliness to God, because He is with us like no one else could ever be. We need only to come close to Him and no longer remain at a distance, to risk being transparent and vulnerable, and enter that place of complete security, where the self-protecting walls we have built up around our hurting hearts can be gently and lovingly broken down so that we can be set free.

Joyce Huggett, in her book Listening To God, describes intimacy as "when your heart and mind and will are relaxed, focussed on Him, surrendered to Him, cleansed and renewed so that you are ready to gaze on Him in adoring love and to know yourself the object of His undivided affection and attention." She goes on to describe her own experience of spending time in the Lord's presence:

Here's another testimony, from Philip Keller, of the delights of true fellowship with the Lord:

Out of true intimacy with God, comes the power to live as He wants us to. Indeed, without it, we are impotent. As Jesus said as He was on His way to Gethsemane, "I am the true vine ... No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing." These words are a challenge to our independence and often we don't really believe the truth of them, but Jesus says that we need to be attached to Him as a branch is to a tree if we are to accomplish anything. Sadly, many who seek to minister in Christ's name give relatively little time to attaining true intimacy with Him, preferring constant activity instead. But (unsurprisingly) they achieve almost nothing, seeing few results in terms of significant Spiritual growth from year to year as they minister out of their emptiness.

Two of the values that are high on God's list are humility and vulnerability. We must set aside our pride and fear and come to the Father. However much our hearts or lives are broken He will gently heal them. We must refuse to minister when the well is dry but come to the Father and then He will renew us and refresh us as we rest in His presence, bathing in the light of His love and drinking the Water of Life. Oh that the Christian leaders in this land would give as many hours to spending time being with God as to trying to do things for Him. Oh that they would fall in love with Him again and the joy of being with Him would spill out into everything they do!

Spending time in God's presence should not only be the focus of our times of private devotion but also of our times of fellowship and corporate worship. Where two or three come together in Jesus' name, there He is, longing to meet with us. As we gather as brothers and sisters in Christ, we should expect to meet with Him through each other. It should be God we have fellowship with, not just each other. Whether we pray with our marriage partner or have family devotions with our children, whether we meet with just one prayer partner, or in a small group, or as a congregation, or as part of a large conference or celebration - whenever and however we meet - we should always expect to come away knowing that we have met with the Lord, and that He has deepened our relationship with Him as a result of the encounter.

This is particularly true of our weekly church services, as the local body of Christ comes together. What is the purpose of our services? Sadly, it seems that many believers go to church on a Sunday expecting to leave the same as they enter, with the same unresolved problems and struggles, and the same limited awareness of God's desire to transform their lives. Often, attending church seems to make almost no discernible difference to us. We rush off at the end and couldn't tell anyone the next day what the Lord wanted to say to us or do in us through the service. No doubt there are a variety of good reasons for attending church, but surely the primary reason should be to meet with God. Of course, we can meet with God anywhere and at any time, but the New Testament makes it clear that there is a sense in which the Lord is uniquely present by His Spirit when His people gather together in His name.

If we choose to go to church in order to meet with God, we will go with expectancy, knowing that God will meet with us as He has promised and that our encounter with Him will bear fruit in our lives. We will be looking to relate with God through each other as we worship, when the Scriptures are read, through the praying and preaching, through the sharing of our lives with each other, and even in the announcements. We will focus our attention on the Lord and choose not to be distracted by how much or little the service matches our personal likes and dislikes. (The immature criticism and complaining about the form of services that occurs in most congregations must surely be one of the most depressing things the Lord has to put up with in His children.) If we let Him, God will meet with us and speak to us every time we gather in His name, deepening our relationship with Him and bringing transformation to our hearts and lives.

Our heavenly Father invites us to walk along the path of life with Him. But sometimes we go our own way, diverted by something in the distance that attracts our attention more than Him, or else we are so busy that we don't notice we're following a different road, wandering away from Him. Many times we lag behind, drawn aside by something at the side of the road, happy to enjoy the scenery where we are; but God moves on and we don't follow. Occasionally we run ahead, having been shown where He's taking us, not noticing that He wants us to walk more slowly or to take a different route to the destination. He wants us walking with Him, holding His hand, listening to His voice, in step with Him. As Enoch and Noah were described as men who "walked with God", so should we be.

For the real goal is not just to "find time for God", but, by giving Him time when He is the total focus of our attention, to learn to relate to Him and experience His presence with us throughout the day, knowing Him in the midst of all our activity. Jesus, as He wandered Galilee and Judea, looked on His time as God's time, and was completely available to fulfil His Father's desires. We too, need to be always available to God, always in communion with Him. It is quite possible for us to give God half an hour every morning and an hour on Sundays and never to be available to Him outside that time. We must let Him completely own our days, with the freedom to reorder them any time He chooses. In the next chapter, we will consider this in more detail.

Mike Bickle says, "God designed the human soul to be passionate, abandoned and committed. ... God intended our souls to be captured, consumed and enthralled with Jesus." Those who have a deep love-relationship with God value Him so much that everything else pales into insignificance in comparison. Charles Spurgeon expressed it like this: "Believers love Jesus with a deeper affection than they dare to give to any other being. They would sooner lose father and mother than part with Christ. They hold all earthly comforts with a loose hand, but they carry Him fast locked in their bosoms."

This has been the testimony of God's people throughout the ages: "You are my Lord; apart from You I have no good thing.", declares David in the Psalms, "I have seen You in the sanctuary and beheld Your power and Your glory. Because Your love is better than life, my lips will glorify You. I will praise You as long as I live, and in Your name I will lift up my hands. My soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods; with singing lips my mouth will praise You." "Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You.", sings another psalmist. "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord ... I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him.", writes the apostle Paul to the Philippians.

More recently, Malcolm Muggeridge expressed it like this:

Benny Hinn puts it like this:

Those of us who have truly tasted something of real intimacy with God have no trouble in declaring that nothing else in life is worth anything in comparison to knowing Him. Drinking deeply from the River of Life soon removes any desire for the empty things of the world that enamoured us so much before. Knowing the Lord personally and relationally so far surpasses all other things in value that their net worth is zero; they are a total loss. As we open ourselves to experience the Lord's love, it both satisfies us deeply in a way nothing else can, and yet also makes us hunger for more. May this be the testimony of each and every one of God's children!

At the heart of any relationship is communication. And this is no different with our relationship with God, for God promises to speak to His friends. So, in the next chapter, we will be looking at how we can hear what He has to say to us.

The following questions and exercises are to help you to respond to what the Lord has been saying to you through what you have read. They can be used in any way you like, either individually, or for discussion in a small group or between friends.

1. How is your relationship with God? To what extent does it match the pictures of joy and delight painted in this chapter? In what ways have you experienced God as friend, lover and father? Ask the Lord to reveal Himself to you in some new or deeper way than before.
2. Do you find it hard to say that you love God? Was there a time when you were more in love with Him than you are now? To what extent has working for, or knowledge about, God replaced relationship with Him in your life?

No-one but You, Lord,
Can satisfy the longing in my heart.
Nothing I do, Lord,
Can take the place of drawing near to You.

Only You can fill my deepest longing,
Only You can breathe in me new life;
Only You can fill my heart with laughter,
Only You can answer my heart's cry.

Father, I love You,
Come satisfy the longing in my heart.
Fill me, overwhelm me,
Until I know Your love deep in my heart.

Use these words as a prayer to draw near to God and to ask Him to increase your love for him and your awareness of His love for you.

3. What is your pattern of daily and weekly coming aside to be with the Lord? Are occasional private retreat times part of your practice? Is the focus of these times primarily on developing intimacy with God, or on other things? What changes (in structure or content) do you think you should make to your routine? Decide what you are going do and ask the Lord to help you fulfil your resolution.
4. Why do you go to church? To what extent is the focus of activities in your church on relating with God? When you meet with other Christians, how aware are you of the Lord's presence with you? What part does He play in your meetings? What changes (in your attitudes or in the activities themselves) could you make to make meeting with God a greater focus?
5. "Apart from Me you can do nothing." How much does your life flow out of your relationship with God? In what ways is He involved in your 'everyday' life and your Christian ministry? Choose one area of your life in which you want to walk with God in closer fellowship than before, and invite Him to walk with you.

One or more of the following books may be useful if you feel you'd like more direction in pursuing intimacy with God:

Chapter 6: Listening to Our Father

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