The foundation of our relationship with God is faith. Without faith, we cannot have any relationship with God and the more faith that we have, the more real that God is in our everyday life. This is also the key to every significant relationship we have.
Every relationship is built on increasing levels of faith or trust.
When you begin a committed relationship, you think you know everything about your partner, and you trust them with everything about you. You will talk a lot and share a lot, but really, you only share a very small part of yourself. It is not that you are hiding anything necessarily, but there is much more of you than the short amount of time will allow. As you each share of your life, perspectives, and memories, you also participate in accepting each other. It is foundational to a relationship that you accept each other even in areas where you may disagree.
When you begin your relationship, you think you have a great deal of trust, but it is only the beginning. It is only after you have traveled through time, that you really learn to trust each other. When a couple gets together and decides to engage in a long term relationship, they are thinking about how their partner will help them fulfil their dreams. As the relationship grows, they start to look at their relationship as the center and see where their relationship will take their dreams.
You would never enter a relationship without first without a strong level of trust, but there is much more
As you learn more about each other, you have to re-engage your acceptance and trust. Over time, you will find you disagree on big and small things. As time goes and you grow in your partnership, there will come times when you have very different in your perspectives or ideas or approaches. As this happens, you must find a deeper way of accepting each other that includes letting go of a part of yourself and embracing a new identity that matches your committed relationship. This is actually growth, and it can be very hard.
You will learn also, over time, that there is more to your relationship than you originally thought there was. As you get to know them more you become aware of history and dreams that you did not know of before. Some will be great, and some will reveal things you did not expect about your partner.
There are also joys and benefits that you did not expect but really enjoy. I know a woman who loves that her husband takes care of everything. She never like that part of adult life. She hated working out problems with the car, insurance, government, taxes, etc. and he loves to do that. This was an unexpected perk in their relationship.
As you learn how your life will be affected by your partner’s decisions, you decide whether to trust them and go with it. Going deeper in a relationship requires more and more trust. That is not a blind trust, but it does mean working out a way to get to a single solution. When authority is involved, like a parent/child relationship, the solution is worked out differently than in a peer-to-peer relationship.
As you grow, you share increasing amounts of yourself, trusting your partner to continue to accept you. In addition to sharing perspectives and decisions, you will find yourself sharing more of yourself with each other over time. As you learn more about each other, you will have to decide to trust each other in spite of the fact that you now know more and more imperfections.
You enter your relationship with God by putting your trust in Him.
It starts with faith. You must believe that He is there. You cannot have a relationship with God until you believe that He exists. Hebrews 11:6 says, “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
Likewise, the same verse says you will never seek that relationship until you truly believe that He will reward you for doing so. Even if you really know He exists, you will not commit yourself to Him until you realize that He is on your side and wants you to seek Him.
There is only one way that someone like us can enter the presence of a holy God. We may try to be good, but we are not even close in our best efforts to earn access to the presence of God. The good news is that He provided a way through His only Son to provide a way for us. Since we did not earn it, it is called grace. We have to accept it and that is done by faith or trusting in Him completely and only. The way the Scriptures describes it, you are saved by grace through faith. Ephesians 2:8 says, ” For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God”
Your relationship with God grows as your trust grows resulting in obedience.
You become closer to God as you trust him more. We grow closer to Him as we realize who He is. He loves us more than we love ourselves. He knows more about our life and our best future than we do. As you learn that things will turn out when you trust Him, then you start trusting Him more and with more. I remember asking God for a certain career when I was younger. I sought it and prayed for it. However, when I look back to what God actually gave me instead, I think I was crazy to have asked for what I did. It is a fine career, but it really does not match my personality and what I love doing day to day. He seems to know what I enjoy doing and directs me away from what I ask for and into what I love.
Your trust is evident by your obedience to him. The beginning of trusting God is to do what he says to do. For example, we read in the Scriptures that we should not gossip and we should be kind. While this is not physically painful, it is difficult. Conversations go silent and you have to be creative about finding something to say. Some people will drift away from you because they do not have anything to say that is kind or not gossip.
However, if we do not hesitate to do what he says, even when it is uncomfortable, that demonstrates and increases our trust. Once a child jumps into his father’s arms and sees that it is safe, there is no stopping him. This becomes a great source of joy until his father gets in a good conversation and forgets to look.
Your trust continues to grow as you learn to hear his voice and respond in your daily life. The curious twist in our relationship with God is that He does not speak as everyone else does. We can obey Him without hearing Him to a point by reading the Bible and doing what it says. Much of what He wants from us is spelled out. However, we must eventually learn to hear His voice so that He can give us daily direction. This is done with humility, or it is done wrong.
As your relationship grows, God also increases His trust in you.
God does not just trust us because He knows the future. As we put our faith in Him, He puts His faith in us. As we show Him that we are solid in our commitment and unwavering in our obedience, He trusts us with more.
Jesus said He will test our faithfulness. Luke 16:10 says, “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” Each one of us is required to show faith over time before we are given what we truly want. We must grow in our faith to grow in our relationship with God.
God tested Abraham’s trust in Him long after their relationship had matured. Hebrews 11:17-19 says, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” In a very real way, Abraham saw his son come back from the dead because Abraham had determined to do as God commanded.
Joseph, Moses, and others also earned God’s trust before they were given great leadership. Remember, that Joseph endured years and years being distrusted by his family, sold into slavery and later thrown into prison before God raised him up to the highest position in the land under pharaoh. Before Moses was given the authority to lead God’s people, he spent 40 years in the desert learning how to lean on God He was a shepherd with no name and no future when God called him back into service. He then became one of the greatest leaders of the world.
The foundation of our relationship with God is the invisible, but very evident quality of faith in a God who cannot be seen but is very evident. If you are starting your journey, read the book of John in the New Testament and be ready to do anything that God is leading you to do. If you have started your journey, but you feel like you are stuck, spend some time thinking about where you are holding back and let go. Do exactly what you hear him telling you to do.