One of the things that has always baffled me about God is that He is interested in humanity. We are spinning around (literally and figuratively) on a planet on the outskirts of the universe, and there are more than a billion reasons why He could simply ‘move on’ and focus on other things—but He doesn’t.
Instead, He seems intently focused on wanting to grow closer and closer to each of us. Humanity is prone to discount God, and God seems more and more intent on moving closer to humanity. Just as young single boys chase after girls, until one of the girls catches the boy, so it seems that God is on a chase for us – until we ‘catch’ Him. The wedding analogy between Jesus and the church in the Bible extends one additional way.
This morning, I just finished looking deeper into the three accounts of Jesus’ baptism. This is the opening of Jesus’ ministry, and it speaks into this baffling thought: Why does God care about us?
Three gospel writers talk about this event, and each one tells us that as Jesus came out of the water, the Holy Spirit descended on Him in the form of a dove, and God the Father spoke affirmation on Jesus as a person. God the Father says, “This is my Son and I am very pleased with Him.” (my paraphrase)
In this event, we see some of the nature of God the Father – specifically that He is a Father. God created humanity, and it is in this lens that we are able to see how we can be special to Him. Just as nothing can change who our biological parents are, nothing can change the history that shows us that God created humanity – no matter how hard many people try to rationalize and deny it. No matter how bad we try to reject Him, He is still interested in the chase. He will always be chasing and chasing us, and our part to play is the catching Him.
How do we catch God?
First, we must stop running from Him. This may sound too obvious, but we must actually change our thinking about God and give up running. God can catch us, but that would be counter to His character that gives us our freedom to choose Him.
Next, we must turn towards Him. We must begin to change our thinking that God is ‘catchable’. God wants to be close to us, and when we move towards Him, nothing will be able to stop us from finding Him – except for our own preconceived notions, and the distractions of life. We can face these things with God.
We cannot ever clean up our lives enough to earn our way back to God. He knows this and we should accept it. God is more interested in us simply turning to look at Him, acknowledging where we are, and sharing with Him that we need His help. This is what ‘turning towards Him’ means. If you’d like more information on this step, consider downloading the FREE ebook “My First Steps With Jesus” from designercam.com.
The third thing is to be intentional about growing towards Him. We are able to grow towards God through reading and studying the Bible, and also by taking time to stop, reprioritize our lives, and rest in God.
If you are struggling with the idea of Bible study, or even where to start, I just released a free video training series about how to study the Bible effectively. If you are interested in checking it out, visit the NEW ReflectiveBibleStudy.com. It is still in development, and there may be a couple of bugs to squish, but I’d love your feedback as we take the next step in our relationship with God!
As always, thanks for being a regular reader and I look forward to reading and hearing your feedback in the conversation below!
~Cam