Afterward, we talked to them about the importance of building a relationship. In order to build a relationship with someone, you have to talk with them and learn about them. That's kind of what a relationship is.
God is very much the same way. In order to build a relationship with him, you have to spend time with him and talk with him. This means not only praying to him, but taking some time to listen and taking some time to just be around him.
Later on in the week, during a staff devo, we read from a devotional book about what it might would be like to be around the embodiments of certain things such as righteousness, hope, and compassion. Generally, we decided that if these things were anthropomorphized individually, they would be a group of extremely annoying people that would be miserable to hang around with. Then someone dropped the big question:
Isn't Jesus the embodiment of all those things?The answer we came to was yes. Jesus is indeed the embodiment of all those things. But he's the embodiment of ALL those things.
So often when we talk about Jesus, we talk about him as if he's just one aspect of his being. We look at him as healer, savior, brother, father, friend, judge, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, vending machine, etc. We went on and talked about the fact that if we look at God as simply on part of him, then we are setting him up for failure. If we look at him as a healer and he doesn't heal someone, we lose faith. If we look at him as savior and someone is excluded from this salvation, we lose faith. If we look at him as a giant cosmic vending machine (as many unintentionally do) and he doesn't grant our request, we lose faith.
How then do we go about viewing our God fully and completely? Building a relationship.
When you meet a stranger on the street, you make snap judgements and develop an "identity" for them in your mind. As you talk to them, you likely begin by learning of one aspect of their personality, then another, then another. Eventually, you are able to view them as a full and complete person.
The only way to set ourselves up for anything other than failure is to be in relationship with God. You have to get to know him through prayer, discussion, reading the Bible, and just spending time with him. The more you get to know him, the more you realize how cool he is. As you learn more aspects of his personality, you can start to truly view God as someone you could just hang out with.
The more you get to know him, the more you realize how cool he is.
God is really freakin' cool.
