Not knowing how to relate to God, we often separate Him from our personal circle of family and friends, keeping Him at an arm’s distance throughout life, leaving Him out and treating Him like an outsider in our lives.
We often glance over the days leading up to the cross, never considering how Jesus walked through them. In looking a little closer, we see how He spent His last days cherishing relationships with those who loved Him.
John 13:1 emphasizes how Jesus loved us: “It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for Him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.”
Through Jesus, we see exactly who God is: His heart towards us, His longing to know us, and His desire to have a personal relationship with us.
As Hebrews 1:3 describes, seeing Jesus is seeing Him. “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.”
Jesus confirms in John 12:25 that “The one who looks at Me is seeing the one who sent Me.’
What Kind of Relationships Did Jesus Have on Earth?
While on earth, Jesus spent time with His disciples and multitudes of people, walking together, eating together, and praying together. Jesus was up close and personal in His relationships with people, dwelling and living among them, revealing God’s heart towards them.
Before the cross, Jesus gathered His closest friends, His disciples, to spend time together, sharing the Passover meal and praying with them. “Then Jesus went with His disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and He said to them, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray’” (Matthew 26:36).
Matthew 26:37 describes what Jesus was experiencing: “He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with Him, and He began to be sorrowful and troubled.”
It was a critical time in Jesus’ life, one of sorrow and trouble in looking ahead to the cross, and He wanted His friends nearby. “Then He said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me’” (Matthew 26:38).
We most likely don’t think of Jesus ever being troubled, yet He was and asked for the presence, companionship, and support of His disciples. Matthew 26:39 describes how, “Going a little farther, He fell with His face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’”
Luke 22:44-45 describes the agony Jesus experienced: “And being in anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. When He rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, He found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow.”
Does God Want to Know Us Personally?
What does it mean to have a personal relationship with God? What does He want from us? Like Jesus told the disciples in the garden, He wants to spend time with us.
“Then He returned to His disciples and found them sleeping. ‘Couldn’t you men keep watch with Me for one hour?’ He asked Peter.” Matthew 26:40
Often, we approach God standoffish, in a very formal way, by praying and talking with Him on specific days and times, like we’re fulfilling a duty, rather than spending time and sharing our lives with Him.
Not knowing how to relate to God, we often separate Him from our personal circle of family and friends, keeping Him at an arm’s distance throughout life, leaving Him out and treating Him like an outsider in our lives.
But if we look at our personal relationships with family members, friends, co-workers, and neighbors, we see what God desires from us, too. With them, we share our joys, our sorrows, our accomplishments, our failures, our comforts, and our sorrows. In times of our successes and our hurts, most of run to or call a parent, a spouse, a sibling, or a friend. How we share our lives with them is how God longs for us to share our lives with Him.
So how do we achieve this kind of personal relationship with God? What does it look like with Him? Is it even possible?
How Do We Have A Personal Relationship with God?
Adam and Eve’s fall in the Garden of Eden brought a separation from God, one we couldn’t repair or reconcile on our own. Sin separated humankind from God, and He could no longer have a relationship with us.
As Isaiah 59:2 describes, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.”
Through the cross, the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God offers us reconciliation with Him, giving us the opportunity to have a personal relationship with Him once again. "For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:19-20).
Only through Jesus, which leads us to the cross, are we able to have a personal relationship with God. Without Him, there is no way for us to reach Him. As He explained in John 14:6, “Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'”
As 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 explains, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”
Some wonder why God would go to such a great extent to recover us. As John 3:16 explains, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Explaining further in Ephesians 2:4-5, “But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”
How Does God Want to Relate to Us?
In reading the Creation story, we learn how God walked among Adam and Eve, giving them personal access to Him at their level, like we experience with one another, which certainly makes it easier to have a relationship with God.
Genesis 3:8 describes, “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
God established in the Garden His desire to know us individually, to walk and talk with us at our level. He set life up for us to have relationships not only with one another and animals but, primarily, with Him. Still, since the fall of humankind, many of us are unclear what that really means and how to interact with Him.
Jesus’ coming to earth brought God to our level once again, where we could walk and talk with Him. Through Scripture, we discover this has been God’s desire all along, what He’s always wanted, and what He has planned for our forever future. It’s why Jesus came, so our relationship with Him could be restored.
God wants us to know Him and to even boast to others that we know Him. Jeremiah 9:24 urges, “'But let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know Me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight,’ declares the Lord.”
As Revelation 21:3 foretells, God wants to be with us, to have a personal, up-close relationship with us for eternity: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God.’”
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/kckate16
Lynette Kittle is married with four daughters. She enjoys writing about faith, marriage, parenting, relationships, and life. Her writing has been published by Focus on the Family, Decision, Today’s Christian Woman, kirkcameron.com, Ungrind.org, StartMarriageRight.com, and more. She has a M.A. in Communication from Regent University and serves as associate producer for Soul Check TV.
