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Connecting with God

I’m often amused by the delightful differences between children. Things that are terrifying to one are exhilarating to another. Things that are fun for one may be boring to her friends. Some kids are verbal. Others are all action. Some chatter incessantly. Others will barely speak when spoken to.

One little boy I know had a tendency to get stuck. In fact, his first word was “stuck.” I suppose this was because he heard it so often when his parents repeatedly responded to his cries for help with the question, “Are you stuck?” It didn’t take long for him to learn that when he needed help he just had to yell “Stuck!” and an adult would come running to rescue him.

While he had the uncanny ability to get himself into predicaments, he was powerless to get out of them. When he wedged himself into some tight spot or climbed into a hole he couldn’t climb out of he was quite helpless. At first, he would be seized by panic and cry. Later, when he realized that someone would always come to help him out, he would simply announce his plight and wait for the helping hand to show up.

I see a link here between this little boy’s propensity for getting stuck and our human condition as we try to connect with God. Several different ways of reaching God are proposed: Rigid law-keeping, good works, helping the poor, faithful practice of spiritual disciplines like prayer and fasting. There are lots of them.

Two problems surface fairly promptly. Firstly, most people doubt that their efforts are really good enough. They try hard to keep the religious rules, but wonder if their failures cancel out their successes. They do good works, but question whether they’ve done enough. They’re generous, but have no confidence because they’re not sure if they were big-hearted enough. Secondly, even if they do have sufficient self-discipline in their attempts to reach God that they have confidence in their efforts, too often they have no sense of having achieved their goal. Much like the rich young man who told Jesus he had kept the law since he was a child, he was still looking for the way to have eternal life.

In 1 John 4:10, we read: “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.” This reminds us that successful connecting with God does not hinge on us and our love for God, but rather His divine character and His love for us - love that both precedes and exceeds our love for Him. What’s more, God’s love took action. Because He loved us he sent His Son to deal with our sins by paying the price they required. Sin is always paid for by death. When Jesus died on the cross, he covered our debt completely and made it possible for us to have a relationship with God.

When it comes to connecting with God, there’s a world of difference between us trying to reach for Him and Him reaching us.

Ron Hughes
© June 2008