c. God wants to have a personal relationship with you!


Throughout God’s Word, God is depicted as a God who wants a relationship with His people.  He is the one pursuing that relationship Just like a young man desperately in love with the girl of his dreams will do anything he can to spend time with that lovely girl, God pursues us, hoping He can spend time with us.  Read the following texts, and discover God’s hunger to get to know His bride:

Deut 7:7-8 “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the LORD loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” NKJV

If God was not pursuing a relationship with Israel, I have no idea why He would have freed them from the house of bondage in Egypt.  God loves His people, and this is the major reason why He freed the Israelites from that terrible yoke in Egypt.  Today as well, God loves us and wants to free us from any bondages in our life.  All we need to do is agree to enter into a relationship with our Heavenly Father.  I can guarantee you that it works.  I have experienced this first hand in my life.  God is faithful!

Prov 8:17 “I love those who love me, And those who seek me diligently will find me.” NKJV

What a powerful promise from a God who wants to have a relationship with you and me.

Zeph 3:17 The LORD your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.” NKJV

We are never alone!  God wants to have intimacy with us.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  NIV

and

Rom 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  NKJV

and

John 15:13-17 “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.  You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.  No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.  You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.  These things I command you, that you love one another.” NKJV

The greatest proof that God wants to have intimacy with us is found in these texts!  God came Himself down from heaven to re-establish that relationship with us.  Sin had brought a horrible separation between us and God (Isaiah 59:2 “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear"). 

We chose a path of self-destruction, but God cares so much for us that He made it possible for us to get to know Him again as our Father and Redeemer.

Please note that Jesus’ command to all of His followers is to demonstrate that kind of love, God’s love, to the world, by loving one another.  Again relationship is stressed here.

Rom 8:35-39 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  36 As it is written: "For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." 37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” NKJV

Can anything separate us from God’s love?  God’s Word is clear with that: NOTHING can separate us from God’s love.  The devil will try to deceive you.  You may even tend to deceive yourself and think God does not care for you.  These are lies!  God is a God of relationship and Heb 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” NIV God will never change!  He loved you yesterday!  He loves you today and He will still love you tomorrow!

1 John 4:8-11 “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” NKJV

and

1 John 4:19 “We love Him because He first loved us.”  NKJV

Those who do not love do not know God.  Those who cannot appreciate relationships do not know God, as He is a God of relationships!  Please note that these Bible texts clearly tells us that we are not the ones who first loved God, but it is clearly God who first loved us and pursues intimacy with us.  Knowing this, how can we do anything but “love one another” as Jesus commanded us?

John 1:12-13 “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.” NIV

Because of Him reaching out to us, we have the right to become children of God!  How?  By accepting in faith His offer of having an intimate relationship with our Redeemer! 

These are just a few Bible texts stressing the fact that God wants a relationship with you and me.  He wants it so much that He was willing to die for it.  Are you willing to die to have an intimate relationship with Him?

The sad fact is that today, we who identify ourselves as Seventh-day Adventists, apply the church of Laodicea from the book of Revelation as being the end time church.  In other words we identify ourselves with a church who is lukewarm and does not know the Lord!  What are our Lord’s words for people who do not even care to have a relationship with God?

Rev 3:15-16 “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot.  I could wish you were cold or hot.  So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth.” NKJV

My friend, you have a choice to make.  You can accept God’s invitation to have a close relationship with Him and enjoy that relationship beyond the world’s imagination, or you can just continue to wander about and stay the way you are, in a lukewarm comfortable environment and just proclaim you have the truth.  But that kind of truth will not set you free!  That kind of truth will not obtain you salvation! Acts 4:12 “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." NIV

The choice is yours my friend.  Will you accept His invitation? Matt 11:28-29 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  Will you come to Him and experience the Sabbath in the person of Jesus Christ?  He will give you rest my friend.  He did it for me.  He will do it for you as well.

Click here to go to: d. The promised guide to truth

Let us go back to the question we asked in chapter 1: Is there something that can assure you to recognize God when you meet Him in the streets?

Is it guaranteed we can recognize God by keeping the Sabbath?

Well, the priest, Pharisees and doctors of the law were faithfully keeping the Sabbath, but they were unable to recognize God’s visitation when Jesus appeared on our planet. In fact, they claimed that God was the devil himself! Matt 9:34 “But the Pharisees said, "He casts out demons by the ruler of the demons." “ 

Sabbath keeping does not guarantee to recognize God at work in our world.

Well, can we recognize God by attending church?

Luke 13:26-27 “"Then you will say, 'We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.'  "But he will reply, 'I don't know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!' NIV

 These people mentioned in this verse were attending church.  They were eating and drinking with our Lord, but Jesus will not recognize them, as they never really recognized Him. Going to church is no guarantee to recognize our Lord at work.