How do you define Relationship?
The Good Samaritan was about being a neighbor, and Jesus defined "neighbor" by relationship not by affiliation or status. Being a neighbor meant you loved that person, and loving others was what God said was the greatest commandment....because we know ourselves with certainty, if we've experienced even just a small measure of real love, that it is worth fighting for to know the love God has for us. Whether that knowing comes from our complete desperation of having lost all that means anything to us (money, looks, achievements, etc) so that we are ravenous for the hope of something so profound or if it comes some other way that I am not familiar with, however we experience the love of God one thing is for sure: it does not fail to entice us for more.
Being a neighbor is a title that is affirmed by relationship, not by proximity of one's house to another or one's ethnicity to another.
Being in relationship.
What does that mean? How do we define "relationship?" And what are specific differences between a "relationship" and just knowing a lot of things about a person? Because clearly I can know a lot about President Obama--what his schedule is, what his diet is, what his personality is like, what others think of him, what his likes and dislikes are, but we all know that that does not mean I KNOW president Obama, and it certainly does not mean that I have an actual personal relationship with him. So how do you know you KNOW God and not just a lot of things about Him?
Is it possible to be in a personal relationship with an invisible God? (By invisible I merely mean that we can not make plans to have coffee at Starbucks with God or FaceTime with Him.)
So how do we know whether we actually KNOW God and not just a lot about Him?
Answer: the Holy Spirit.
"But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away;
....Jesus never lied, and yet we see here that he was emphasizing that what He was about to say was the truth because it was going to sound so unbelievable! Can you imagine if you were one of his disciples who, having walked with Jesus for 3 years, heard Him teach and heal friends of their sicknesses, being a part of Him meeting the needs of hunger in any situation by blessing the food, and witnessing him bringing loved ones who died come back to life...to be told that it was to their advantage that He ....go away. Sometimes when loved ones we know leave us it seems that nothing good can come of it, but Jesus also left His disciples and told them it was better for them. In other words, Jesus is saying that it would be worse for them if He stayed with them! Why? It sounds unbelievable! That's why Jesus had to preface his words with "But ....(seriously) I am telling you guys the truth, just as I always do, but most emphatically right now, perk your ears up to hear Me say what I'm about to say because if you don't listen you won't think it's actually true. Listen: IT IS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE THAT I GO AWAY."
for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you."
-John 16:7
Right there. Him. The Helper.
As awesome as Jesus was, to realize that God had come to earth in flesh and bone-- He was embodied just as we are and that means He could only be in a real relationship with only a handful of people, namely the 12 disciples. Why only 12? Because being in a relationship is not in the words or pictures but it is in the knowing, and knowing someone means spending time with them, sharing deep secrets them, going through trials and celebrating with them. A real relationship means messing up and needing forgiveness, it means trusting the other person to be there for you, it means relying on the other person to meet your needs and to allow the other person to fail but to remain committed nonetheless. That's a real relationship. It's about loving one another. So how was it that Jesus leaving would be better in terms of his disciples being more loved and more closer to Him if He left them? It must have sounded so difficult to believe, to trust, that what you have always known for so long to provide you with that love that sustained you to suddenly go away....be gone. And yet, that is exactly what Jesus did and He did so for a reason.
The Holy Spirit isn't hindered by things like needing to sleep, travel, or eat. Because He is Spirit He can enter our hearts and KNOW US deeply. And understanding that because He is Spirit He does know all of what's in our hearts, even more than we might like Him to, this frees us up to be loved more powerfully by God. The disciples knew Jesus and Jesus knew them, but He could only reach their assent of them acknowledging that He knew them based on how most humans know another: through time spent together, things spoken in conversation and visible things. The disciples would probably not have been able to really believe how Jesus could personally know what they did not share with Him because it might have felt coercive or invasive to them, and a relationship is about mutual trust. Jesus knew that, and that's the way God intended us to be, because He is about that relationship. He is about us knowing we are loved by Him and then choosing to love Him in return.
The Spirit, then, is our most intimate access to the heart of God, and it is also His most intimate access to our hearts. To have the Spirit in us is have God in us! So we have access to God's heart and He has access to ours! It is a relationship of mutual trust. So when we say we have the Holy Spirit we are saying we know the heart of God! We know God the same way we know our closest friend and confidant. And because this saying is so unbelievable Jesus said, "it is to your advantage that I go away." The only thing better than Jesus in the flesh with us, is God in Spirit within us! If you had a device that could read minds it would tell you everything someone thought about you, and that sounds so crazy and invasive....but we have to know WHY that sounds crazy and invasive. Isn't it because our inmost thoughts are pretty vulgar and there are things we just don't want people to know that we think. Why? Because we believe that if they did they would leave us, think badly of us, or just run screaming in the opposite direction. No one would want someone to have that kind of device and use it on them for THAT REASON. But...what if the person who had that device promised us that it would be used to help us overcome areas of fear, and that upon looking at the naked truth about our thoughts would love us in those dark places. What if we understood that such a device in the hands of someone who loved us would actually only increase their love for us? Perhaps perfect love would cast out the fears we have in the first place of such a device. Maybe.
The relationship, or amount of love that Godbhas for us does not change but something changes. We change. We change in the amount or the depth we realize of how deep He actually does love us. We think we know how much God loves us, but we don't! That's why so many Christians live the way they do despite the knowledge that Christ died for them. They don't live like they are loved to the degree that they are. They live like they are loved to the degree that they accept as true.
Something significant changes when God's Spirit enters our hearts.
It's like dating for 5 years, and then getting married and sleeping together for the very first time. Two naked people joining together and being so exposed to one another, so intimate, and so vulnerable yet willing...it's different now. You thought kissing was exciting and intimate while you were dating and then there's sex within a marriage that takes you into a whole new level of intimacy. At least that's how we all see and know it is supposed to be. But things aren't the way they are supposed to be, and we can deeply sense a need for them to be made right. We sense that healing and restoration and redemption are needed. But that's another agenda.
That's what changes. Two people are still in a relationship (from dating relationship to married relationship) but now the level of intimacy has significantly increased. The pleasure of knowing your spouse more and being known by them needs to deepen for the relationship to deepen in intimacy. This continual movement towards one another in love and trust and vulnerability is the best illustration for God's Spirit drawing near to us relationally. However, just like in the example, if one person in the marriage retracts, hides or ignores the other than it is literally impossible for the relationship to deepen in intimacy. In fact, it can feel annoying or intrusive. You cannot be intimate with an un-intimate person. It doesn't work that way. It requires mutual assent, mutual trust, mutual adoration, mutual value and mutual responsibility.
Hear me when I say this, our responsibility to God's Spirit in us is to be intimate with Him for intimacy to occur. So what does it mean to be intimate with Him? It means to be in relationship with Him, to know Him not just know about Him. It means you trust Him and you accept that He loves you, accept that He cares about your needs, accept that He knows all of you. There are no strings attached in a real relationship built on love. You don't do something to merit a return result...that's not a relationship that's pro-quid-pro, otherwise called a contract agreement.
You go to Him just as you are. You allow Him to love you. You open your heart to His request that You assent to His knowing all of you, accepting all of you, accepting your bad ugly parts, loving you in your sins, and accepting your half ass everything. You think you know how to love without first knowing His love? You think you know how to give good gifts without first accepting His gift? You think you can do something good for Him without Him first doing something good for you EVERY TIME? You think He doesn't see that feeling of shame and guilt in you even though you claim to believe that He paid for that with His very own blood? That guilt and shame you feel is more of the sin than the actual sin, because it is giving power to sin rather than power to Him!
I am writing this because I am here. I am just a broken girl with nothing to offer. And I am realizing more and more that no one has anything to offer. Which makes me feel good because I hate comparisons. I hate comparisons because when I start to compare how much more I do or how much prettier I am, skinnier I am, smarter I am, right I am, liked by people I am, gifted I am, successful I am, richer I am than someone else....It's freaking exhausting to stay on top of my game, and even when I do (of course these times are a self delusion that I hold to just to make me feel better about myself) I am always in fear of losing it. When the truth pervades this space of comparison by flattening me out with equal value and responsibility as the bum holding the "God bless you, please feed me" sign on the side of the road, I see who the bigger phony is: me. At least the bum recognizes the reality of his state more truly because of his poverty being so apparent to him! But before God we all fall flat on our faces. Not one of us has a single tiny speck of something, anything to give to God. You are the same value as the bum and president Obama. You are the same value as your secretary and as John Piper or the apostle Paul. Crazy! All we have is what we accept. All I can do is accept His forgiveness, accept His mercy, accept His grace for every rebellious act, accept His love and gifts for me ...for my empty beggar hands that have nothing. Then when we start to accept all of Him, maybe just maybe we will begin to actually grow in knowing Him and not just about Him.
The Spirit of God doesn't need what you have if you have nothing, but He needs you to accept what He gives you so that you CAN do what His will is. You think going on missions or planting churches, feeding the homeless, building schools, or donating millions of dollars will be in the context of being for the glory of God? For His kingdom purposes? It will mean nothing if you do not first have Him in you and you in Him. If Jesus could break 5 loaves and 2 fish for 5000 people to eat with leftovers, I think it makes sense to say that He doesn't need a radical game plan from you, He can use exactly what you have even if that's a short attention span and a truckload of issues. Which describes myself. God has given us exactly and everything we need...because ALL we need is Him. His very heart in us and ours in His. But our biggest obstacle is our willingness to accept Him.
We resist and we resist and we resist, sigh.....and we resist. We resist intimacy with the Holy Spirit. Instead of a relationship we try to get approval from Him. We don't let the Spirit's presence in us have much meaning ... A presence without meaning does not make much of an impact. If your darling lover walks into the room after a long and stressful day and gives you a smile that means they love you ....in that presence there is the meaning of love that wraps around you and makes you feel safe and even ready to take on whatever was worrying you just prior to there arrival. However, if your darling lover walks into the room but it's more like a stumble because they've been drinking all day and they stare blankly at you with annoyance and then slump down on the couch knocking out cold it is void of any good meaning. It means something completely different.
Presence of the Holy Spirit is all in the meaning of your relationship to Him. What does His presence really mean to us? For me, His presence really means ambiguity, mystery and a fickle feeling. It's no wonder I don't trust God or submit to His will as much as I claim to want to. I need the real Him! I need to be intimate with Him! No one can tell you about your relationship with God because it's that personal. But when I share about my relationship it should reflect some of your relationship because you and I are only as good to God as we are to one another.
Your relationship with God is also your relationship with others. You offer them what you receive from God. If you can love others then you know it's because God gave you that love to give.
So take an honest look at your relationship to God. All you need is His Spirit, which is better than having Jesus in the flesh with you, why? Because of the intimate relationship that allows the Spirit to reveal to you your darkest sins in order for you to acknowledge them and accept His love in deeper measures...which in turn you then have in order to offer to others. You cannot offer love if you first do not get love for your sins. I have so many sins! I'm rich with sins! They are my tokens to love. I get love because I have sins unending, and this means no fear in letting the Spirit intimately know me and show me every one of them in exchange for love.
Yes. This feels true. This validates the tears I cry almost every night. This is worth it. It's worth the pain I feel when acknowledging the depth of my sadness and my failures as a person and deep wounds in my soul from people I loved, to get the love that God gives me in return.
"Be a sinner and sin boldly,
but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly."
-Martin Luther
Luther wrote this to those who have already confessed their sins, repented of them and decided to follow Jesus. From there on it's all about growth in the gospel. Maturity is going into the new relationship. It is about intimacy with God and with others. Knowing God and being known. No one has arrived yet, so stop comparing your spiritual life to someone else's. God will use the bum if He so finds that the bum needs God more than you do. All you need to get God is to accept that He loves you. That is all you need.
So I encourage you to join me in allowing the Holy Spirit to show you what is hindering you from letting Him love you, and break those walls down with love, truth, and a faucet of grace. It means finding that you are desperate in an increasing measures...and that is growth. Every level of desperation is a level to have more love to give...a place of flowing rivers that do not dry up. Real love casts out all fear, and when you have no fear you have more room for courage and peace and joy to come in. It's all in the relationship with God in you and you in Him. The Spirit of God is calling you now ...he wants to get intimate. How are you responding to Him when He shows you something you don't want to see? When He shows you the fear? The loneliness? The sadness? The failures? The dashed dreams? The pain? The insecurity.
"Therefore, leaving the elementary message about the Messiah,
let us go on to maturity,
not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, faith in God,"
-Hebrews 6:1
"We have this hope
as an anchor for our lives,
safe and secure.
It enters the inner sanctuary
behind the curtain.
-Hebrews 6:19
Jmegrey
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