Resting on the windowsill in my study is a picture frame with five windows of varying shapes and sizes. This is old and a little tacky, and I would happily have disposed of it long ago, but for the fact that it is populated with photographs of our daughter and son when they were very young, and these evoke memories for me. As I glanced at the images earlier, I was reminded of a previous time when I took my daughter to the hospital to meet her newborn baby brother; we had just celebrated her third birthday. I was proud to walk through the corridors to the maternity ward, hand in hand with my neatly turned-out little girl. It struck me, as I evoked this memory, that although Elizabeth had been with Jean for most of each day, while I was out at work, it was only because I regularly spent precious time with her that she was content to be living with just me until her mum and baby brother were discharged from the hospital – she trusted me.
Strangers
Most children are wary of strangers, especially if neither mum nor dad is present. They can feel comfortable with someone they know well and are familiar with. The same applies to each of us with our relationship (or lack of it) with God. How can we trust someone who is distant and whom we don’t meet with regularly? Yes, we can credit them with trustworthiness, but that tends to last only as long as they continue to behave as we expect, as we want. We can believe in God if the Bible makes sense to us, and if we adopt a theological position based upon what we read there. But trust is something more than this – trust holds firm when things don’t go according to how we think they should. Trust is based upon the foundation of a close relationship.
Relationship
There are many who embrace Christianity, but for whom relationship hardly plays any role in the equation; their ‘faith’ is about religion and religious practices. But what about those who actually have a personal experience of God? This will have begun with being born again, following a confrontation with the reality of who God is, as well as who and what we are – sinners. It will have entailed surrender and a recognition that God has done what we asked when we repented of our sin and received his forgiveness. But what expectation do we have of experiencing God beyond this initial transaction?
Surrender
You may recall stories of military personnel returning from long periods of service during the Second World War, whose children felt distant and wary, having lived without close contact with their dads. Yes, they were told about them, had seen photographs, and recognised that they were important people within their family, but their relationship was stale, or even non-existent. Is your relationship with God a little like that? Maybe you feel that he is like an absentee dad? Actually, if God does stand back, it isn’t because he doesn’t want to be in close communion with us, but rather that we have drifted away and he won’t condone our behaviour. God always wants to be close, but that comes with our surrender to his lordship in our lives. If we decide to go it alone, then we should expect to feel alone – even though he is still there for us and ever ready for us to have a change of heart and resume communion with him.
Experience
It seems to me that there are two things in play here. The first is what we believe about a relationship with God – our theology, and the second is what we do about this. I appreciate that there are those who emphasise head knowledge, somehow discounting the need for a real and active relationship with God that we can actually experience. That is very sad. We, humans, are relational beings, as is God, as evidenced by the central tenet of Christian faith that God is in trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit; three persons in one. God himself is relational and desires to have a relationship with us. This isn’t emotionalism on our part, but rather it is reality. If we cannot experience God through a real, personal relationship, then surely our faith is dry, lifeless – no matter how sincere and apparently doctrinally sound. Doctrine on its own, whilst very important, is lifeless. So, yes, what we believe is important and impacts what we experience because if we don’t expect, then we are unlikely to seek or to receive.
Leftovers
I expect to hear from God. This isn’t because I deserve this in any way, but it is what I am confident of through reading the New Testament, and what I have experienced over many decades of walking with him (John 10:27; John 14:26; 1 Corinthians 14:31). God guides, he leads, and he reveals things. He convicts, he liberates. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is to do these things, and he came to the Church (people like you and me) at Pentecost, such that we could know God and receive power to minister in his kingdom. He hasn’t left us alone; this wasn’t a temporary assignment. God wants to speak to us, but generally speaking, if we want to hear from him, then we need to be listening; we need to spend time in his presence, to become familiar with his ‘voice’ and to wait upon him. Time with God needs to be our priority. That isn’t to say that this must take over all of our lives, but the desire for him does need to be the centre of our focus, the thing that we put first. If ‘doing life’ demands the best of our time, such that God gets only the leftovers, the scraps, then there is something awry with our priorities. When the challenges come, will a shallow relationship hold fast – will we be able to trust God when life gets difficult? Sometimes, he allows challenges to come upon us because he wants to draw us close to himself so that we will come to trust him more deeply. How will we respond in the face of adversity – will we melt in his presence, or become angry and resentful because he allows uncomfortable things to happen to us? I encourage you to spend quality time in his presence, to listen for his voice, and to set your heart on living to please him above all else (Matthew 6:33; 1 Thess 5:16-21).