Sons and Daughters

(beginning of Chapter One - I welcome feedback)

“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.” John 1:12-13

“For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.”
Ephesians 2:18

I have heard it said that religion is man’s attempt to reach God. I’ve experienced religion and its many forms; it’s strict protocols and procedures that promised I could earn acceptance from a Holy God. Different streams of Christianity develop their own list (mostly unspoken) of regulations. It doesn’t take long to adapt to a local body’s specific way of practicing spirituality. If you don’t figure it out on your own, someone will be quick to point it out to you. For a while I believed that if I read my Bible and prayed every morning God would like me more and good things would happen for me. After several decades of believing that, I added the belief that nearness to God can be measured by a person’s display of charisma or physical manifestation. There was one man in our church who prayed such good prayers. He would stand with his face towards heaven and eyes open as if viewing the very throne of God. Without any microphone his voice would fill the room, above the music of the worship team or the crying of any babies. He was so eloquent and the presence of God could be felt as he prayed. Surely he must have such a close relationship with God. Then there was the woman who rocked back and forth in her seat, hands shaking and eyes squeezed shut with intensity. “She must be having a vision” I would think and wish that I was spiritual enough to experience God like that. Imagine my astonishment and disappointment when I began to know them outside of the worship service. They were human beings like me; broken, insecure, and trapped in the cycle of performing for their God’s affection. I thought that because I had become charismatic I was free from the religious spirit, but it turned out I just traded brands of legalism.

The Pharisees perfected this lifestyle of legalism turning the Torah, what God required of them, into Halacha, volumes of rabbinic teaching and religious tradition that served as Jewish law. Not only were they good at following the rules they were rulebook craftsmen, inventing all kinds of good works that would make them acceptable to God. (Sound familiar?) It was this kind of religion that led Jesus to ask them, “Why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition?” (Matthew 15:3).

However, I have good news for those of you who, like me, are not necessarily good at following rules. Actually this is good news for everyone, because none of us could ever follow the rules well enough. The Bible never describes God’s desire for a group of good moral people who know how to follow the rules. The Scripture from cover to cover describes God’s desire for a family. For sons and daughters so passionately in love with him that they look for ways to please him. God’s invitation is not for us to become robots that perfectly carry out his every dictate but for us to become a part of his family, one with him, filled with his fullness, partakers of the divine nature of God.

That is the way it all began in the garden. There was nothing separating Adam and Eve from their creator and they walked in perfect communion with him. Created in God’s very image, brought to life by the very breath of God, and given the purpose and destiny of ruling God’s creation, they were whole, unbroken, holy and pure before their maker. Not only that but the relationship between Adam and Eve was pure and whole with no shame or selfish ambition. They were in perfect unity with one another, created from one flesh and united into one flesh through marriage. When Adam and Eve decided to rebel against God not only did their relationship with God break, but their relationship with one another. Eve was no longer Adam’s helper, but his servant.

Our understanding of what it is to have a relationship with God is limited by our human experience of relationship. We see God through the lenses of the brokenness and pain we have too often experienced. It is difficult not to do this when a relationship with God is not physical like with another human being; we cannot see him with our eyes, touch him with our hands, or hear him with our ears. All we know is what we have experienced before with flesh and blood people. After being born again by the Spirit we must somehow learn to maneuver in this new realm of the spirit if we are to experience the relationship with God that he desires.

The problem is that our modern intellectual minds relegate that which we cannot see, hear, touch, taste or smell to some inferior, questionable realm of experience. Can we really believe that it is God speaking to us? Can we expect to experience him and how do we know these experiences are not creations of our own imaginations? A relationship with God is reliant on faith that the still small voice or that which seems coincidental is truly God reaching out for relationship with us. This truth is hard to believe for those who are so constantly surrounded by the mundane, insignificant and realistic. How is it that an all-powerful, infinite Creator would want to have a relationship with an individual, insignificant human being? And what kind of relationship does God desire to have with us?