To have an intimate relationship with God, we are going to have to know what He is like; to know what He is really, really like. Once we get a revelation of His nature, then we can experience Him in our life.
Religion has portrayed an image of God that is not correct, and it may have become part of our belief system, our everyday life.
2corinthians 5: 19To wit (to know, how), that God was in Christ, reconciling (continuous action, to receive one into favor) the world ( every human being, and the whole natural creation) unto himself, not imputing ( continuous or repeated action, to put on the account, to occupy the mind with) their trespasses(definite article-the trespasses)(root-para, “aside,” pipto, “to fall)( stepping outside the path) unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation (definite article- the reconciliation)(change from opposition to friendship)(restoration to divine favor) .
Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has reconciled the whole world to himself. There is no enmity in the heart of God towards people; the enmity is in us because we think God is displeased with us, or angry with us.
The image of God that’s been presented by religion is that when we do good, God is pleased, when we do badly he is displeased.
But that is not the true nature of who God is. God is love and he loves us the same on our best day as he does on our worst day. God loves us because that is who he is. God is love, so everything that he is and does is an expression of love.
So we have to re-evaluate a lot of theological perceptions and doctrines which present God as something other than love.
1 corn 15: 21For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. 22For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
In Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Everyone one of us was born a human being in Adam. We all came out of the loins of Adam. Our natural generational line runs back to Adam. In Adam we all die.
When Jesus died on the cross, the whole human race died in him, and when he was raised from the dead, the whole human race was raised with him.
Eph 1: 4According (implying manner, of time-when) as he hath chosen us (specific point, selection) in (intimate union with) him before (before time) the foundation (the beginning of creation) of the world. that we should be ( to exist) holy (with-pure, sharing in God’s purity) and without blame before (face, presence of) him in (intimate union with, remaining in place) love (to look upon affectionately)
God chose us in him before the foundation of the world. This is talking about the eternal realm, before time began. We exist in this realm pure and without blame before him in love.
When God reveals his nature to us through encounter, then some of the things that we believed about him are not going to line up with what we experience when we are aware of his presence.
Are we going to believe what other people have told us about him, what we have learned in church about him or are we going to believe what God is showing us in an intimate relationship with him as we experience his presence?
A lot of the things we believe about God have not been through personal encounter, we just thought they were true. God never told us, other people told us or we read and assumed it was true. We have many assumptions in our life based on what we thought we knew.
We encounter God as he reveals himself to us. In that revelation we experience his divine nature. Then the Holy Spirit will confirm the revelation in the written word, but we have to look at the original Greek and Hebrew text, and the root of those words, because we lost the meaning through the English translations and our understanding of those words that have been taught to us by others.
God lives outside of time, he is the- I am, he lives in the eternal now. He is connected to every single thought that every single person has every second. And his desire is to bring good out of every decision we make, not to punish us for making bad ones. Even the most stupid decisions we ever make, he does not want us to suffer, because he’s a loving father.
People make unintelligent decisions all the time and we get frustrated with the unintelligent decisions people make. But all this begins to change when we begin to see how God sees them.
God sees all the multitude of infinite possibilities that exist for every person. For God they are all now. He sees the beginning from the end and he is able to embrace it all at once.
As God begins to reveal all the possibilities that exist for our life, our first reaction is which is the right one? We think there is only once choice and if we don’t get it right, we are going to get it wrong.
But in a walk with God all things are possible, there is nothing right or wrong there because we are united to him, we are walking with him. His heart and our heart will allow all these things to become right, and then we learn how to choose that reality, where our circumstances begin to become subject to us.
As we mature we learn how to choose that reality because we have the power to choose to be able to fulfill our destiny in multiple of ways.
We need to understand God’s nature, in order to relate to Him properly. When we understand who God really, really is, we are going to want to get to know Him, and enter into a friendship with Him where we become continually aware of Him.
God has such an amazing, amazing life planned for us that we could not possibly imagine the wonder of it, but as we get to know Him we will begin to experience it.
The amazing thing about God is that He is able to impart His life to us. To know the Lord is to be like Him because we begin to experience His nature in us.
To know the Lord intimately, we need to know who He wants to be for us. He has so designed us that we have been created to wholly depend upon His Spirit.
Jesus is the express image of God, and the Holy Spirit is dedicated to revealing that image to us. It is in the revelation of the Lord to us, where we see His Glory that we are changed into that image. This is how all change comes, the opening of our spiritual eyes to behold the beauty of the Lord, and in that revelation we partake of that beauty, we partake of His nature. The way the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us is the way He changes our life.
As we become aware of the Holy Spirit in our life, we are going to be constantly amazed and excited as His wisdom and power, His nature flows into us. We will become a living testimony of what God is like.
The people in the world really do not know what God is like, to know what God is like is to pursue after him. Religion gives us a false image of God, to know the Lord is to be attracted to Him. In His presence is fullness of Joy, the losing of self-consciousness where we become conscious of Him, in oneness with him.
Because the human race has lost its identity, they do not know who they are, they become self-conscious. The word sin in the Greek is hamartia which means to be without a share in. It comes from the root Ha- which means not, and meros, a part, share of, or portion. Sin is not sharing in the image of God. The loss of our identity and inheritance in God
What religion is designed to do, to tell you that you are not right with God.
But the gospel of God is good news, the word gospel means a news so good, that the human mind cannot imagine it, it sounds too good to be true. But through the cross of Jesus Christ, God has reconciled the world to Himself. As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.
God has reconciled all the people in the world to himself, the problem is people are not aware of it, so they do not experience it.
Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to give it eternal life; it is a free gift that transforms our life. The life of God alive inside us displaces in us all that is not like Him.
Eternal life is knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the very same identical life that dwells in Him. The attractiveness of this kind of life causes everything not like it to lose its attraction. Jesus came to give us this life abundantly. A life so good, that we cannot possible contain it, He came to give us of His fullness, more than we could possibly be able to receive at one time.
Many people have a wrong view of God. They see Him in a number of ways, none of which properly reflect His nature.
It is in seeing the true nature of God that we are motivated to open our hearts towards Him. A wrong view of God causes us to miss out on partaking of His nature.
It’s important that we capture the image that God wants to transfer into our heart. What we think about God is the single most important thing in our spiritual Journey. Our image of God will influence every single part of our life and be reflected through us.
The way we perceive God influences the way we live our life. We’re shaped, emotionally and spiritually, by the image of God we carry in our hearts and minds. He loves us; He enjoys us, and is deeply personal with us. He is faithful to us even when we are not faithful to Him. His love and faithfulness is what wins our hearts to a deeper level in Him.