Welcome to Theology Thursday! Theology is the study of God, his relation to the world, and our relation to him. I hope these newsletters help enhance your faith and deepen your love for God and his people, the church.
Today's question:
What does it mean to have a relationship with God?
Pastor Brady’s thoughts:
If you’ve been around church or consumed Christian media for even a short amount of time, you’ve likely heard a pastor or author or someone say part of the goal of the Christian life is to have a “relationship with God.” I’ve said it myself in more than one sermon.
What Christians mean when they emphasize a “relationship” with God is that good, strong, enduring faith is more than just intellectually believing certain accurate things about God, his word, and his world. Faith that sticks and transforms is faith in which effort and attention and affection toward Jesus - his example, his teachings, his holiness - is an everyday, meaningful part of the believer’s life.
Just like a marriage or a friendship requires mutual intentionality and devotion to thrive and persist, a relationship with God means not just believing he exists but actively working to know him and love him. God has done his part - he knows us (For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. - Psalm 139:13) and loves us deeply (See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are… - 1st John 3:1).
Our job - our great privilege! - is to know and love him back.
I first met my wife, Melissa, in the fall of 2014. We exchanged pleasantries and did a little small talk, but it wasn’t until a few weeks later when we started dating that we really began the process of knowing each other, a process that does not have a finish line. Shared experiences - both happy and sad; time spent in deep, personal, vulnerable conversations; observing each other and how we each handle different situations - how we treat people, how we respond to adversity; learning what we each value. Each of these reveals character and contributes to building intimacy and closeness.
Regular fellowship establishes trust and familiarity.
Shante Grossett O’Neal says “To know God is to become more than acquaintances. It involves knowing his heart, his character, and his love. Knowing him means that you are able to recognize his voice and feel his presence. When we know God, he doesn’t feel distant or far away. Even when things get difficult in life, it means trusting the plan of God because he has proven to be trustworthy.”
God in his grace has invited us into relationship with him. We can accept this invitation in three main ways:
Listen to him
All good relationships require communication. God has revealed his great, grand narrative for the universe - he has communicated with us - through the Bible, and he continues to offer guidance and power through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers.
When we read and study scripture, we are hearing God’s desires and expectations for our world and for our lives. It is through purposeful and consistent time in the Word that we most directly encounter and engage with God’s communication of his will and discern what our response should be.
God talks to us through the scriptures and through the nudging of his Spirit.
Talk to him
And we talk to God through prayer. That’s the other side of this communication coin.
A healthy prayer life means we share with God our hopes, dreams, and desires, and we pray for God to help align those things with his. We pray to ask God to help our hurt, our doubts, and our anxieties. We pray to express gratitude to God for his provision, his goodness, his grace, and his acceptance of us even though we fall short of his glory (Romans 3:23-24). We pray to confess and repent of our sins, and ask God to show us mercy.
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus (1st Thessalonians 5:16-18).
Teresa of Avila, a nun in the 16th century, wrote this prayer in her journal: “Let nothing trouble you, nothing frighten you. All things are passing; God never changes. Patient endurance attains all things. Whoever possesses God lacks nothing: God alone suffices.”
The more we pray, the more we come to know God, and the more God enables us to know that our truest identity - who we are in the deepest and fullest sense - is his adopted children.
Serve him
We do things for the people we love. Laundry, dishes, helping a friend move, going to our niece’s soccer game, sharing tomatoes from our garden with a neighbor, setting up before and cleaning up after church events.
If we love God, we do the things he asks us to do, and we do the things we know bring us closer to him.
Go to church to sing songs about God, to God; to hear the Word preached; to participate in the Lord’s Supper; to gather with the people of God and be reminded of your place in the family of God.
Give financially to kingdom causes. Support the proclamation of the gospel in your neighborhood and to the far reaches of the earth.
Sacrifice your time and use your gifts and talents to contribute to the work God is doing in your community and to live out his call of obedience on your life.
Extend to other people the same love and grace God has extended to you. Treat others the way you want to be treated, and the way our good and compassionate God treats them.
One of the great things about a relationship with God is that God doesn’t leave for several days on a work trip. He doesn’t forget to text back, doesn’t misunderstand us, and doesn’t neglect to love us even when we’re unlovable. He’s always with us, wherever we go and whatever we do, regardless of our mood, and even when no one else is.
Take comfort in this promise from Isaiah 41:10: So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Doesn’t that sound like a relationship worth pursuing?
To know God and make Him known!
- Pastor Brady
Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to minierccstaff@gmail.com and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.
Today's question:
What does it mean to have a relationship with God?
Pastor Brady’s thoughts:
If you’ve been around church or consumed Christian media for even a short amount of time, you’ve likely heard a pastor or author or someone say part of the goal of the Christian life is to have a “relationship with God.” I’ve said it myself in more than one sermon.
What Christians mean when they emphasize a “relationship” with God is that good, strong, enduring faith is more than just intellectually believing certain accurate things about God, his word, and his world. Faith that sticks and transforms is faith in which effort and attention and affection toward Jesus - his example, his teachings, his holiness - is an everyday, meaningful part of the believer’s life.
Just like a marriage or a friendship requires mutual intentionality and devotion to thrive and persist, a relationship with God means not just believing he exists but actively working to know him and love him. God has done his part - he knows us (For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. - Psalm 139:13) and loves us deeply (See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are… - 1st John 3:1).
Our job - our great privilege! - is to know and love him back.
I first met my wife, Melissa, in the fall of 2014. We exchanged pleasantries and did a little small talk, but it wasn’t until a few weeks later when we started dating that we really began the process of knowing each other, a process that does not have a finish line. Shared experiences - both happy and sad; time spent in deep, personal, vulnerable conversations; observing each other and how we each handle different situations - how we treat people, how we respond to adversity; learning what we each value. Each of these reveals character and contributes to building intimacy and closeness.
Regular fellowship establishes trust and familiarity.
Shante Grossett O’Neal says “To know God is to become more than acquaintances. It involves knowing his heart, his character, and his love. Knowing him means that you are able to recognize his voice and feel his presence. When we know God, he doesn’t feel distant or far away. Even when things get difficult in life, it means trusting the plan of God because he has proven to be trustworthy.”
God in his grace has invited us into relationship with him. We can accept this invitation in three main ways:
Listen to him
All good relationships require communication. God has revealed his great, grand narrative for the universe - he has communicated with us - through the Bible, and he continues to offer guidance and power through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers.
When we read and study scripture, we are hearing God’s desires and expectations for our world and for our lives. It is through purposeful and consistent time in the Word that we most directly encounter and engage with God’s communication of his will and discern what our response should be.
God talks to us through the scriptures and through the nudging of his Spirit.
Talk to him
And we talk to God through prayer. That’s the other side of this communication coin.
A healthy prayer life means we share with God our hopes, dreams, and desires, and we pray for God to help align those things with his. We pray to ask God to help our hurt, our doubts, and our anxieties. We pray to express gratitude to God for his provision, his goodness, his grace, and his acceptance of us even though we fall short of his glory (Romans 3:23-24). We pray to confess and repent of our sins, and ask God to show us mercy.
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus (1st Thessalonians 5:16-18).
Teresa of Avila, a nun in the 16th century, wrote this prayer in her journal: “Let nothing trouble you, nothing frighten you. All things are passing; God never changes. Patient endurance attains all things. Whoever possesses God lacks nothing: God alone suffices.”
The more we pray, the more we come to know God, and the more God enables us to know that our truest identity - who we are in the deepest and fullest sense - is his adopted children.
Serve him
We do things for the people we love. Laundry, dishes, helping a friend move, going to our niece’s soccer game, sharing tomatoes from our garden with a neighbor, setting up before and cleaning up after church events.
If we love God, we do the things he asks us to do, and we do the things we know bring us closer to him.
Go to church to sing songs about God, to God; to hear the Word preached; to participate in the Lord’s Supper; to gather with the people of God and be reminded of your place in the family of God.
Give financially to kingdom causes. Support the proclamation of the gospel in your neighborhood and to the far reaches of the earth.
Sacrifice your time and use your gifts and talents to contribute to the work God is doing in your community and to live out his call of obedience on your life.
Extend to other people the same love and grace God has extended to you. Treat others the way you want to be treated, and the way our good and compassionate God treats them.
One of the great things about a relationship with God is that God doesn’t leave for several days on a work trip. He doesn’t forget to text back, doesn’t misunderstand us, and doesn’t neglect to love us even when we’re unlovable. He’s always with us, wherever we go and whatever we do, regardless of our mood, and even when no one else is.
Take comfort in this promise from Isaiah 41:10: So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
Doesn’t that sound like a relationship worth pursuing?
To know God and make Him known!
- Pastor Brady
Have a question for Theology Thursday? Send an email to minierccstaff@gmail.com and we'll respond, or we'll include in a future Theology Thursday Buffet.
Posted in Theology Thursdays
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