For most of my life, I believed that the heavenly Father and I shared a relationship for my benefit. However, His primary purpose for creating intimacy with believers is to reveal Himself.
In a truly loving relationship, each person wants to continually know more about the other. As believers, we are sometimes guilty of taking a more self-interested approach and forget that God is the rightful center of attention. When that is the case, we may head to church or into quiet time looking for something to inspire us, motivate us, or help us.
Part of the problem is that we would like to practice our faith in the safest way possible. Bible study, prayer, and church are relatively easy, compared to stepping out in faith or enduring persecution. But to know God intimately is not a purely intellectual pursuit. A truth about the Lord is not really ours until He works it into our daily experience.
Our Father wants His children to understand how He operates. The only way to gain such knowledge is by allowing God to unveil Himself in our life. This means we must be willing to go through difficulty and pain as well as happiness and peace. A man can read that the Holy Spirit is the believer’s Comforter, but he does not know this truth until he has need of solace.
The Christian life is not about feeling good and deriving the greatest personal benefit from our connection to God. Rather, the Lord builds an intimate relationship with each of His followers. In this way, He can reveal more about Himself—truth by truth—as a believer needs that knowledge. What a privilege!
Bible in One Year: 2 Kings 16-17
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