Draw Near to Your Father

 

Can you imagine a time with God that feels like coming home and not like a checklist? 

 

Intimacy with God seems out of reach to many Christians. They may even get to the point where they question whether having a personal relationship with a living and powerful God is possible. For these, salvation with God has been a labor or work and “feeling” like a disappointment to God. 

 

The Cross is where life overcomes death, and work is no longer born of self. But so many Christians still live on the side of death and never experience abundant life. Which side of the Cross do you live on?  The side of the Cross where winning God’s love is your goal or the side where you receive God’s love Christ won for you? One side of the Cross steals your joy because of your inability to prove your worth. Living on this side of the Cross is death to intimacy with God. The other side of the Cross—the Resurrection side—doesn’t focus on your failure but on Jesus’ perfect performance. It receives the abundant life and peace Jesus died to give you. Living on this side of the Cross brings you into an intimate and loving relationship with God.

 

The Cross is all about bringing us into a relationship with God. It is where this living and powerful God becomes your Abba Father. The Cross is not about a list of things to do to win your Father’s love. The Cross is where you receive His love. Having a relationship with God is not about religion. It is not about trying to be good enough for God to heal or use you. In a relationship with God, Jesus satisfied all the requirements of a holy God so that we now have a joyous entrance into His Presence. The Cross is your invitation to know Him.

 

God has invited us into a deep personal relationship where we know His voice, heart, and will. He wants us to experience His pleasure and joy. God wishes us to discover what Jesus has already purchased on the Cross and the new life He has given us. God’s love pursues us and seeks our response. Our Creator loves us, His Creation. 

 

Do you wish to experience the abundant love of your Father? He wants you to be free of religion, disappointment, and the inexhaustible checklist. He wants you to come into the freedom and joy of your salvation and discover the loving heart of your Father, who came to die and give you His new life. When you live in intimacy with your Father, your performance is not your focus. Your Father is your focus and your desire. The checklist is fulfilled because He fulfills it in you.

 

Discovering the heart of God begins with knowing Him.

 

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:23-24, ESV).

 

All of us are invited to know and understand the Father thoroughly. You do not need to prove your wisdom or might. God is your Father who invites you into His Presence to know Him.  But does His invitation make you hesitate because it calls for a vulnerability you would rather escape? God practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness and delights in doing these. The Father looks for vulnerability in His children, which inspires honesty. You cannot hide behind masks when you know and understand the Father. You are free to let all the fat hang out. You can let all the things you don’t like about yourself surface completely before the Father. It is in His Presence you discover intimacy and healing beyond human comprehension. 

 

If we wish God’s miraculous life-changing power to change us, we will only discover it in our most profound union with Him. We can only be vulnerable and open in a trusting, intimate fellowship with Him. God responds to our unveiled honesty as we respond to His unveiled love. He helps us see our lives from His perspective. Our intimacy with Him is a secure fellowship in which we receive truth about Him and knowledge about ourselves.

 

Satan hates our union with God. He is even afraid of it. Satan knows that a relationship with God will reveal how weak he really is. Satan wants you powerless, living in a stagnant religion instead of living in a vibrant, alive relationship with God. A stagnant religion will kill deep intimacy with God. It will keep you from truly knowing Him.

 

God is always moving toward you, seeking you, and drawing you. A stagnant, motionless faith keeps you from responding to Him. Religion holds God at arm’s length. But relationship invites Him in. A stagnant faith can result from the legalism that many Christians have allowed in their lives. Many believe God only loves them when they emotionally experience His pleasure or perform well. Their emotions and checklists have become a means to measure their relationship with God. They believe they have failed Him if they don’t feel God’s love and acceptance. Regrettably, the devil will use our emotions and persistently thrust our failures in our faces, reminding us we will never be good enough to do God’s work. 

 

An emotionally driven life is a never-ending, fear-inducing, and faith-defeating existence. This kind of life does not receive the abundant life Jesus has given. It remains in bondage to the enemy, who seeks to rob it of Jesus’ victorious freedom (John 10:10). Instead of humbling himself to receive more grace, such a person submits to his emotions and is held hostage in the devil’s snare. To break the bondage, this person must submit to God, resist the devil, and humbly receive Jesus’ gift of more grace (James 4:6-7).

 

An abundant life is knowing God intimately. God invites you to enter His presence based on His goodness and capability. You can’t come to Him based on your performance or perfection; what you lack will never bring you into His Presence. But what you lack is found in Jesus. It is Jesus’ perfect performance that brings you into God’s Presence. Knowing that this powerful and living God wants you to know Him fully is humbling. As you completely surrender your desires, fears, and wounds, He is already within you, receiving you just as you are and healing what you cannot.

 

Nothing in life comes close to the abundance God wishes to share with those who choose to have a profoundly personal relationship with Him. He calls us to respond to His love. Choosing to know Him and to be known by Him is the most profound joy. Open your heart to all He has to share with you. Seek to understand who He is in you. When you know your Father intimately, you boast in His perfect work, not in your checklist performance. You are one with the Father. As Jesus is steadfast, you, also, are steadfast. As He is just, you, too, are just. As He is righteous, you, also, are righteous. And just as He delights in all of these, so do you. 

 

As Jesus is in this world, so are you (1 John 4:17). This is your inheritance, and nothing can keep you from God’s Presence when you truly know and experience Jesus’ love given without cost to you. You don’t have to live on the side of the Cross that has judged and condemned you. You have a Father to know on the Resurrection side who loves you. 

 

Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you (James 4:8). Come home and know the Father who loved you first. 

 

 

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