Jeremiah 30.21 asks who is he who will devote himself to be close to Me? declares the Lord.
How close to God do we really want to be?
Our tradition, because of our disobedience to God, has been to run and hide from Him. This is the way we deal with most conflict in our lives: we avoid it.
We are a people who ‘hope’ things will work out in our relationships where issues are occurring. We run from rather than resolve most of our relational conflicts. Our relationship with God is no different.
Fortunately He pursues us. He loved the world so much that He gave His Son as a sacrifice to reconcile us back into a right relationship with Himself. But who, God asks, really wants a relationship with Him?
Being close to God, walking in a right relationship with God, requires a commitment to living holy, godly lives that reflect the character and nature of God Who is holy and godly for that is His essence. To be close to God we must become like god in the sense that we hold the same values and truths as He holds.
To live like God and to think like God will require us to abandon the worldly living and thinking we are accustomed to doing.
To live as God’s friend will cause us to separate from our human friends. Not because they will be unworthy of our time and attention but because they will be uncomfortable with our ‘other worldliness’ that makes us too different from the norm. This world is very intolerant of that which is different from the norm.
When God lived among us as one of us He too was without many friends; in the end those He loved most abandoned Him. God’s ways are not man’s ways thus creating an alienation not by desire but by difference.
God wants us as friends but He will not change Who He is in order to make that happen. If we would be a friend of God we must change our ways in order to become more like Him.
How do we know what He is like and how we are to change? Read, study and learn the Scriptures.
Everything we need to know about God has been given to us by God for knowing Him and developing a relationship with Him.
God loves us and longs to passionately pour His love upon us but it is given most generously to those who devote themselves to knowing Him intimately.
