Walking with God

Yes, you are seeing correctly, there are in fact two posts in one day! Oh, the joys of having a job where, if I'm scanning all day, I can actually write blogs while pages are being scanned. These two entries really flow out of each other and come out of the same place in my heart. This has been something that God has been working deeply into my heart over the last couple of weeks and months. The two books I'm reading at this moment are John Eldredge's "Walking with God" and Keith Green's biography. Both of these men of God have incredible relationships with their Heavenly Father and it's been bringing up some major questions in my heart that I think everyone needs to wrestle through.

There seems to be this assumption in the church that if you are a Christian, you have a relationship with God. I've been coming to the realization that that isn't necessarily true ... at least in the way that we tend to think. Yes, every Christian has the potential to be in relationship with God because they have the Holy Spirit living inside of them through the work of Christ, but most Christians' relationships with God are akin to a relationship one might have with a giant redwood tree. I know it's there, I admire it, I can learn many things about it, but that's about it. There's no back and forth conversational relationship. We kind of live our lives side by side and try not to get in each other's way. In the same way, most people's extent of relationship with God is reading the Bible and praying every day ... interacting, but not in relationship with Him

Now, I'm obviously not saying that those activities are bad, I'm just saying that there needs to be more our relationship with God, if it is even going to be defined as a relationship. Keith Green is constantly wrestling around with God, asking at every moment if it's God's will for Him to do what he is looking to do next. Every decision is brought before the Lord and his guidance and opnion is asked. John Eldredge similarly assumes that every Christian should be able to have conversational relationship with God in which you can sit and have a conversation with Him, speaking to Him, bringing Him your heart and hearing from His in return.

May I be so bold as to ask, why has no one, up until this point in my life, described to me what in the world a relationship with God looks like? Does no one know? Even after 2000 years of Christianity ... 2000 years of people who have the Holy Spirit living inside of them!? I'm just beginning to realize that there's got to be so much more tied up into what it looks like to be in relationship God. If God really does satisfy all of our desires, there has got to be a depth of relationship that we can go to with Him that would soothe lonliness and rejection.

If His sheep hear His voice and know Him, and we are His sheep, why isn't that happening? Have we gotten to the point that we understand so much about Christianity that we just discuss away what a relationship with God looks like? John Eldredge has some really good thoughts on what it looks like to walk with God and I've been learing a lot. But I still struggle to know what it looks like to be in relationship with God for me. As you can see, there are more questions than answers, but I'm driven on to discover deep intimacy with God. We are one flesh, now that I have died to myself with Christ and been resurrected with Him into this new creation. But how do you relate intimately with the God of the universe that lives inside of You that is already one with you and knows you intimately.

All I know is that it takes one step at a time, and as I continue in this feeble attempt to walk with God, I pray that I begin to know more of what it looks like. And most of all, I pray I never reach the point where I am content with where my relationship with God is. Always deeper into God!