A REAL RELATIONSHIP
INTRODUCTION
- In order for us to understand what it means and looks like to Hear God’s voice in our lives, we must grasp the context for which we hear him. The context being the nature of our relationship with Him.
- Hearing the voice of God is truly all about knowing God – developing our relationship with Him.
- One of the most important things, maybe the most important thing about a good relationship is the issue of communication. Good relationships have good communication. God desires this with us.
John 10:27 - "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me”
- Jesus is the Shepard, His people are the sheep. His sheep HEAR His voice, know Him personally and follow Him closely. HEAR / KNOW and FOLLOW.
- I have found that when our pursuit of hearing the voice of God is not embedded in the reality of relationship it will often be askew and I believe we will see that today even more clearly.
- It could be said that if you don’t see God the right way, then you won’t hear what He has to say.
WE WERE CREATED FOR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
- In order for us to grasp this we must understand that God created us for relationship with Him.
In Genesis, the Bible opens with God creating everything; the Heavens, the Earth, the Sun, the moon, the stars, the land, the animals, and last but not least – HUMANS (US)
Genesis 1:26-27 - “Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
- We were made to be like God in relationship with God. This is critical to understand.
- We are special, nothing else was made to understand and interact with God like us.
- God made Adam and Eve with the capacity to learn and understand – blank hard drive (have with you).
- Everything we would ever know would come from God speaking to us (Matthew 4 – what God says).
- The picture of relationship between God and Adam/Eve is beautiful. God walked/talked with them.
OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD WAS DAMAGED
- Relationship between God and man was damaged through our sin.
- God called Adam/Eve to steward the earth, but there was one thing they could not have;
Genesis 2:15-17 - “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. The Lord God commanded the man, saying, "From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”
- With this command, God introduced a choice – which they ultimately made the wrong one.
- The name of the tree is interesting because it introduced a new way for them to obtain knowledge.
- In Genesis chapter 3, we see how the Devil comes (as usual) to tempt them to disobey;
Genesis 3:1-7 - “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, "Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.'" The serpent said to the woman, "You surely will not die! “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.”
- The Devil was allowed to tempt them to eat what God said “don’t eat”. And they ate.
- The temptation from the Devil was to be like God without God, and yet they already had everything.
- The voice of the enemy provoked Adam and Eve to feel deficient, that there was more but God was holding out on them and in order to have it, they needed to go against the voice of God.
- Their sin became our sin and this fracture of relationship caused a disconnect in our hearing as well.
JESUS CAME TO RESTORE OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
- Many things transpired from the time of Adam and Eve to the moment when Jesus entered the scene.
- In time, God implemented a plan to restore our relationship through sending His son Jesus Christ.
- Jesus did two things – Came to restore relationship (cross) and be an example of life with the Father.
Luke 19:10 “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost."
- What was lost/damaged, was our relationship with God, and Jesus came to reconnect us.
- The word “save” can mean restore and the word “lost” can mean damaged.
- Salvation through Christ is not just about what we are saved from (hell, death, destruction) but rather it is all about what we are saved for – which Jesus specifies very clearly in John 17;
John 17:3 – “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”
- In the Old Testament, people would bring a sacrifice to God so their sin could be forgiven and fellowship with God could be restored, but it was always temporary.
- In the New Testament, God the Father sent His son Jesus, to be a perfect once and for all sacrifice, that our relationship with Him would be permanently reconnected. All we need to do is believe!
- Jesus gave His life to bring us near – for relationship, near enough to know Him, to hear him.
- What is crucial for us to understand is the kind of relationship Jesus came to restore; God as Father!
GOD IS OUR FATHER
- As we talk about our relationship with God it’s important to understand what kind of relationship.
- Jesus introduced God as our father, and he lived as a son to show us what that could look like.
- Look at the references Jesus gives for this new relationship he was restoring;
Matthew 5:15-16 “nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
Matthew 5:44-45 "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
Matthew 5:48 "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Luke 11:2 “He said to them, "When you pray, say: 'Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.”
- This relationship is more personal than we may have realized. We are sons and daughters of God!
- God is a good father and He wants to shape us, coach us, and He does so through the Holy Spirit.
- The first thing Jesus teaches the disciples about Prayer is HOW to approach GOD – as a Father.
- How you see God determines how you approach Him, how you hear Him, how you respond to him.
- How do you see God? How do you talk to God? Evaluating your prayer life for a moment!!!!
- Everything God will ever say to you will sound like a loving father. What is a father like?
- I think we misunderstand the role of a father and even what it means to say “a loving father”
ILLUSTRATION – When I married my wife, I also adopted her two boys who were 9 and 11 years old. They were excited to have a father but something I realized very quickly was that they didn’t know how to relate to me. They had to embrace their sonship and acclimate to my voice and my presence in their life. I can honestly tell you that they weren’t too happy with me at times and maybe they wondered if they even wanted a father. WHY? Because they didn’t realize that even the difficult things that transpired between us were meant for good – they had a wrong interpretation of my voice which fractured our relationship until they chose to repent and hear me again.
- Here is what CS Lewis said in his book “The problem of pain”;
“By the goodness of God we mean nowadays almost exclusively His lovingness; and in this we may be right. And by Love, in this context, most of us mean kindness- the desire to see others than the self-happy; not happy in this way or in that, but just happy. What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?’ We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven- a senile benevolence who, as they say, liked to see young people enjoying themselves’, and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, ‘a good time was had by all’. . . . I should very much like to live in a universe which was governed on such lines. But since it is abundantly clear that I don’t, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is Love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction.” (pp.31-32)
- A Father directs, instructs, corrects, encourages – all to instill identity as mature sons and daughters.
DEVELOPING OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
1. Repent
- Jesus came preaching and the first thing he said in His mission to restore us to a relationship was;
Mark 1:14-15 14 Now after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, 15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel."
- The gospel is that God loved you so much, he sent His son to do what you could never do, and in His sacrifice, you can be forgiven, and restored back to relationship with God, as you were made to have.
- Repentance, therefore, is a turning from listening to yourself and listening to the enemy and surrendering back to the voice of the Lord – to hear, to learn, to grow and obey.
- Is your hard drive to full that if God were to speak it would conflict with what you already think?
2. Renew
- Our minds are often twisted about God, ourselves, love, etc. We need our minds to be renewed.
- Our minds are renewed by the Word of God, which causes us to hear the voice of God.
- Remember, how you see God actually determines how you hear from God.
ILLUSTRATION – My wife was meeting with someone and they communicated something that I said to my wife. My wife immediately said “Ben didn’t say that.” She wasn’t trying to stick up for me, but she knows me so well that she knew I could not have said that because I don’t believe that. She knows what I believe. She knows what I would say, because she knows who I am.
- When we hear God speak to us (word or however), we must have our minds renewed to receive properly so that we are not missing what is said and why it’s said.
3. Receive
- It’s imperative that we receive from Him through time with Him.
- When we go to spend time with God we have nowhere to get because we are already there. Receive!