The God Questions: #3

What does it take to have a deep, personal relationship with Jesus Christ?

To have a deep, personal relationship with Jesus it takes seeking Him with all your heart. It takes focus. It takes a good sense of priorities. It takes commitment and it takes development of good habits. It takes a deep love for Him and appreciation for Him. It takes a desire to grow deeper in intimacy with Him. It takes knowledge and faith that one can know Him as much or more than any other person. It takes time to connect. It takes courage to open up your heart to Him to show Him ourselves with utter transparency, hiding nothing. It takes seeking Him when we are depleted, in pain, in our worst and not forgetting about Him when things are good, but thanking Him for every blessing. It means having a sweet spot for the Lord in one’s heart, enjoying worshiping Him. It takes thinking of Him affectionately and lovingly. It takes curiosity and willingness to discover more about Him. It takes a burning desire to seek Him in His word. It takes desire to worship Him for long periods of time. It takes courage to love Him with our ALL. We cannot be afraid of loving Him with a wild, radical, even dangerous kind of love. It takes obsession, a pure single-minded focus on Him. It takes deep thought and reflection on the lessons He is teaching us every day. It means not wasting anything, but using every experience as an excuse to bring us closer to Him. It takes a love for others, but an even deeper love for Him. It takes an appreciation for the sinful woman with the alabaster jar who poured her love out on Him in the Bible. It takes a heart like Mary of Bethany sitting at His feet absorbing everything you can from Him. It takes seeing Him as the Bread of Life and drawing His energy out of Him on the days when we are depleted of all energy and think we cannot go on. It takes loving His character and personality and seeing His character forming more and more in ourselves as we surrender more and more. It takes a wild reckless love for Him and for others, the type of love that holds nothing back, but lives, loves and laughs fully. It takes a sense of adventure, a feeling of being on an exciting journey with the Lord, the most exciting thing being the Lord Himself. It takes an ever deepening intimacy between us, an easy kind of love that knows the other deeply and words sometimes don’t even need to be spoken. It takes a willingness to lay down one’s will for the Lord and let His will be done in our lives, to forget about our own wants, needs and desires. We deny ourselves so He can be gratified. We recognize He is worthy of all that we have to give. We recognize we are in a sacred romance with Him, our deepest love of our hearts and souls. Yes, we love others but we love the Lord more. Some songs remind us of this beautiful romance and act as a door to the secret garden of intimacy between us and the Lord. It takes appreciation for the One who knows us better than any other, knows every secret and every second of our past, present and future. We love others deeply, but none so deeply as the Lord. He has written His signature on our hearts as they belong to Him, crafted by Him, for Him.

In short, this is the verse of what it takes to develop a deep, personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ:

Deuteronomy 6:5
“You shall love the Lord your God with ALL your heart, with ALL your soul, and with ALL your strength.”