Basic Preparation for Transformation
Week 6, Email 1, Monday
Week 6, Email 1, Monday
Guide for a More Personal Relationship with God in Eternity: Part 1
Relationships emerge from connections that lead to bonding. Understanding what another person is going through and having the same thoughts and feelings can really connect people.
For example, two women without children are going through a divorce because their husbands abandoned them for other women. This might create a tentative connection between them. But then they find out that one of them is overjoyed to be rid of a man she grew to dislike and the empathetic connection does not develop. But then they might discover that they are both having trouble finding a suitable apartment and they begin to feel close again. But when it comes out that one of them has a lot more money for rent the relationship grows distant again.
We have no way of knowing specifics of our relationship with an omnipresent God in heaven. In the period of a thousand years, will we each get to walk with Jesus for 5 minutes or will our “face time with God” be allotted differently? However our personal time with God in heaven, face-to-face or as it is now in prayer, the closeness of your and my relationship with God will depend on how similar have been our experiences and if we have had the same thoughts and feelings as Him. Will we have a connection and bond with God on many things?
Too often I tell people about the essential value to their faith and relationship with Jesus of the Togethers of Scripture and they don’t try to understand. So, when I read in the Bible that Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” I can experientially and emotionally relate to our Lord’s frustration and disappointment that so many did not listen to what he had to say. In heaven, Jesus and I will have a closer relationship because we can walk and talk about our common sadness about superficial interest of many people.
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God is the greatest thing about Heaven. Thus, the level of our relationship with Him will determine just how wonderful heaven will be for us. A person’s relationship with God in heaven can be positively enhanced if we experience in part now what has been God’s character and experience in our sin-contaminated world. Common experience with Him will lead to empathy and a closer bond. Would you like to greatly enhance your personal relationship with your Creator? Would you like to walk and talk with Him in heaven where he can tell you things He has done and you can relate and truly value them through having in some way “been there and done that” also?
Even though heaven will be perfect and fantastic for all of us, it does not seem it will be the same for each of us. Our relationships with God will differ depending on how much we can “connect” with Him. Empathy with God depends on common experiences. Thus, we can each increase our relationship with God for all eternity by interacting with each other similarly to how God has been active with us in our sinful culture. Each such experience will be one more “bonding experience”.
But, does God want us to know Him with empathy? Does He want more than for us to merely know about Him? One place in Scripture where we see the lack of empathetic closeness is when the three disciples could not stay awake while Jesus was praying just before being betrayed and put to death on the cross. Any disciple truly knowing what Jesus was going through because they had been through something a little like it would have been able to stay awake. Jesus wanted that, so we know that God definitely wants us to understand Him, not just understand about Him.
Most of us know how a relationship jumps in emotional closeness when we share an important experience. Two women find out that they have both survived breast cancer and immediately feel a connection with each other. Two men go ice fishing together and battle off freezing weather for five hours and later have an instant comradery whenever they run into each other. Two Christian friends at work help an unbelieving friend understand and accept Christ as his Savior and they share a special kind of closeness.
However, that last example crosses into another dimension like a science fiction time warp. What they experienced in introducing someone to Christ, God has experienced millions of times. God has not overcome cancer nor gone ice fishing. But, He has stuck with many people until they believed. Therefore, that same special bond, that close connection that people feel with one another from a shared experience is available between God and the two workplace witnesses.
Others who have never patiently conversed with someone until they believe will never have that emotional connection in their personal relationship with God. And, they will not be able in heaven to walk along a path and talk with God about the thoughts and feelings of enduringly leading someone to Christ. They can praise God that He has forbearingly brought someone to Himself through his Son, but they will never be able to feel that relational closeness that comes from actual shared experience.
Every Together, all 65 of them, offer Christians the chance to have moments of closeness in their relationship with God. God has done all 65. When we do them, we build connections of common experience and greater empathy with God.
So, each of us must make a serious decision. Do we want to be able throughout eternity to have more heart-to-heart conversations with God about what He did in our sin-contaminated world? If so, we better get busy doing the Togethers more and more by yielding to the Holy Spirit and increasingly be molded into the image of Jesus Christ. We cannot do any of this in heaven - not without the environment of sin that makes the Togethers difficult. God worked in this sinful world. Therefore, if we want to have connections and conversations with God about what He did that required great mercy and grace because of sin, we have only a few years to gain them. Then, later after death, we can have marvelous conversations with our God about what He did, and be able to say, “I can somewhat relate, because Christ in and through me did something similar.”
Even though heaven will be perfect and fantastic for all of us, it does not seem it will be the same for each of us. Our relationships with God will differ depending on how much we can “connect” with Him. Empathy with God depends on common experiences. Thus, we can each increase our relationship with God for all eternity by interacting with each other similarly to how God has been active with us in our sinful culture. Each such experience will be one more “bonding experience”.
But, does God want us to know Him with empathy? Does He want more than for us to merely know about Him? One place in Scripture where we see the lack of empathetic closeness is when the three disciples could not stay awake while Jesus was praying just before being betrayed and put to death on the cross. Any disciple truly knowing what Jesus was going through because they had been through something a little like it would have been able to stay awake. Jesus wanted that, so we know that God definitely wants us to understand Him, not just understand about Him.
Most of us know how a relationship jumps in emotional closeness when we share an important experience. Two women find out that they have both survived breast cancer and immediately feel a connection with each other. Two men go ice fishing together and battle off freezing weather for five hours and later have an instant comradery whenever they run into each other. Two Christian friends at work help an unbelieving friend understand and accept Christ as his Savior and they share a special kind of closeness.
However, that last example crosses into another dimension like a science fiction time warp. What they experienced in introducing someone to Christ, God has experienced millions of times. God has not overcome cancer nor gone ice fishing. But, He has stuck with many people until they believed. Therefore, that same special bond, that close connection that people feel with one another from a shared experience is available between God and the two workplace witnesses.
Others who have never patiently conversed with someone until they believe will never have that emotional connection in their personal relationship with God. And, they will not be able in heaven to walk along a path and talk with God about the thoughts and feelings of enduringly leading someone to Christ. They can praise God that He has forbearingly brought someone to Himself through his Son, but they will never be able to feel that relational closeness that comes from actual shared experience.
Every Together, all 65 of them, offer Christians the chance to have moments of closeness in their relationship with God. God has done all 65. When we do them, we build connections of common experience and greater empathy with God.
So, each of us must make a serious decision. Do we want to be able throughout eternity to have more heart-to-heart conversations with God about what He did in our sin-contaminated world? If so, we better get busy doing the Togethers more and more by yielding to the Holy Spirit and increasingly be molded into the image of Jesus Christ. We cannot do any of this in heaven - not without the environment of sin that makes the Togethers difficult. God worked in this sinful world. Therefore, if we want to have connections and conversations with God about what He did that required great mercy and grace because of sin, we have only a few years to gain them. Then, later after death, we can have marvelous conversations with our God about what He did, and be able to say, “I can somewhat relate, because Christ in and through me did something similar.”