How The Bible Progresses Our Personal Relationship With Jesus
Personal Relationship With Jesus
When Jesus first came into my life at age thirty, He stepped into the heart of a woman broken and damaged. Life, personal choices, and sin had ravaged my heart and I desperately needed and wanted a life change. After trying to do life on my own and make my own way, I discovered my way turned out anything but desirable. So, I finally turned my attention to the One who had patiently waited on me to figure out how desperately I needed Him.
In the moment I said, “Yes” to Jesus and His Holy Spirit came to live in my heart, He put in my heart a knowledge that my hope was in Jesus. So I went to church and read my Bible because both talked about Jesus.
I could not have anticipated the journey Jesus started me on twenty-seven years ago. It has not been all easy, but it has been rich and rewarding. The greatest and unexpected reward of my journey with Jesus has been the developing of a personal relationship with Jesus through His word.
Earlier in the year, I shared my word for the year that Jesus gave me for 2022, Abide Intimately.
What I can tell you after twenty-seven years of personal relationship with Jesus is that we cannot abide intimately with Jesus apart from getting into God’s Word.
Recently I spoke at a women’s retreat. I based much of my messages on Isaiah 55. After studying Isaiah 55 and researching information from several commentaries, I summarized Isaiah 55 as, YHWH’s invitation to the entire world. My commentary from my Jewish Study Bible said that the Jewish people understood Isaiah 55 as God’s invitation to Himself and to His word.
Come to Me
Incline your ear, and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live;
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you--The sure mercies of David.
Isaiah 55:3
If I had to point to specific words that encapsulate God’s message in Isaiah 55, it is definitely the three bolded words in verse 3, “Come to Me.” Basically, I understand Isaiah 55 as the John 3:16 of the Old Testament.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
John 3:16
Come to Me is an invitation into relationship. God set-up humanity’s existence from the beginning based on personal relationship. He walked with Adam and Eve in the garden at the onset of creation and since man chose to walk away from Him, He continually extended and still extends to mankind as a whole and to each person individually an invitation to personal relationship.
Before I emphasize the importance of reading, studying, learning, and knowing the Bible, I need to know that I communicated Jesus’ priority of relationship with us. If we miss this element of His priority, and we only hear “you need to read, study, learn, and know the Bible,” we really missed the whole point. So just in case you missed it, the whole point is that we know Him, that I know Him, and that you know Him.
How The Bible Progresses Our Personal Relationship With Jesus
After understanding the priority of relationship, we then must understand that the Bible is not just an old book with antiquated stories of long ago. The Bible is the very breath, nature, character, and person of God that He has given us in tangible form to know Him.
If you need any further explanation, read my past blog: The Authority Of God’s Word Is The Reason For The Hope That Is In Me.
Why is the Bible so important to our abiding?
The Bible provides us the way to get to know and relate to God. It is how we learn who God is, what He says, what He likes and doesn’t like. His word tells us His story. It tells us how He related to others who went before us and how we can connect and relate to Him now. Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us one of the main reasons we need to know what God says.
For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,"
says the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher. than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9
Our God exceeds all human imagination!
His thoughts and His ways are beyond human comprehension! And the Bible tells us that over and over again.
Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!
Romans 11:33
But as it is written: Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart
of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.
1 Corinthians 2:9
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all
that we can ask or think, according to the power that works in us.
Ephesians 3:20
The reality is we don’t even have to have these specific Bible verses that tell us how beyond us our God is. If we simply read the Bible, we repeatedly recognize that humanly we cannot fathom or wrap our minds around how God thinks and acts. If God thinks and acts so over the top drastically different from us, how do we think we can truly know God apart from getting to know Him through His word?
If we rely on other people to tell us who He is and what He says, how do we really know Him for ourselves? And if we only allow other people (pastors, teachers, friends, parents, siblings…) to tell us who God is, how do we know that their understanding is true and right.
Protection From Lies And Deception
Looking at this from the perspective of the times in which we live, the Bible tells us the last days will be characterized by deception. Whether we believe we are living in the end times or not, we can still acknowledge that we need protection from deception. The Bible gives us the true knowledge, character, nature, ways, thoughts, and words of God that we can be firmly rooted in truth when presented with lies and deception.
Ultimately, it boils down to the fact that we need God’s Word to know the Truth. I am not talking about reading, studying, and learning the Bible for more biblical knowledge but to know Truth, the Person. As we seek to grow and deepen your relationship with Jesus, we must know that progressing in a true relationship with Jesus will be limited and stilted without us growing in the knowledge of God’s Word.
So once again, dear Sister in Christ, if you are not abiding in the truth of God’s Word daily and continually, I encourage you to begin practicing that discipline and ask God to stir within your heart an unquenchable passion for His word. He will not withhold that true desire to know Him deeper from you.
