The great thing about wanting to know God is that He wanted to know you first. God wants to have, what is often called, a personal relationship with you. We often think of God as distant and impersonal. The truth is that God gives great attention to us and even to the little things of our lives. Having a personal relationship with God means that we can turn to God for anything, and he promises to always provide and care for us. This is just scratching the surface of what it means, but it is a good place to start.

The problem is that there is one thing that stands in the way of having this relationship with God. God is what the Bible calls holy or righteous (1 Peter 1:15-16) the Bible tells us that we have all sinned. This is very easy to establish if we take a quick look at the Ten Commandments. Let’s take a look at just four: don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t take God’s name in vain, and don’t commit adultery. Most of us try to do our best to always tell the truth. However, if we think back we can probably think of a time when we told a lie even if we thought it was a white lie. Taking something that does not belong to you no matter the value is also in violation of God’s law. Using God’s name or the name of Jesus Christ as a curse word breaks our third commandment. Finally sleeping with someone other than your spouse breaks God’s law. The trouble is that Christ said that looking at a woman with lust is the same as adultery (Matthew 5:27-28). Looking at someone with lust breaks that last law. Take a moment and look at each of these. How many have you broken? One, two, three, or are you with most of us who have broken all four. This is only four of the Ten Commandments.

Ask yourself this question. If you died today and stood before God, and he judged you based on the Ten Commandments, would you be innocent or guilty? If you answer the question based on how you stood up to these four commandments does that change anything? Let’s take a closer look. We can categorize ourselves based on our answers to the four commandments. People who lie we call liars. People who steal we call thieves. If someone broke all four we could call them a lying, thieving, adulterer, who uses God’s name in vain. If that describes you do you think you will be innocent or guilty? It is easy to look at this and understand that it does not look good for us if this is the only part of the equation. You may be thinking that there is more that can be considered when looking at his problem. You may be thinking that you have done lots of good things, or maybe that there are lots of people that are worse than you. Both of these are probably true. The problem is that neither of them changes the fact that if you have broken God’s law. Unfortunately, you are guilty.

The good thing is that although we are guilty God still desires to have a relationship with us. Because God is holy he cannot just forget or overlook our sin. God, however, did provide a way to overcome the problem. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death (Romans 3:23). This death that we have earned with our sin is an eternal death suffering in hell. God cannot declare righteous anyone who sins without death (Hebrews 9:22). This all has been pretty dark and horrible so let’s look at something a little more pleasant. God overcame our need to die by sending his own son, Jesus Christ, to die for us. In essence, he died the death that we deserved to die (1 Peter 3:18). Although we are guilty Jesus Christ died and paid the penalty for us.

The only thing we have left to consider is how do we gain the benefits of the payment that Christ made? Fortunately for us, God did not make us earn it (Ephesians 2:8-9). This is a really good thing. God made it very simple. He asks us to repent and believe (Romans 10:9-10). God asks that we simply acknowledge our sin. He also asks that we trust the only thing that can take away our guilt, the death of Jesus Christ for us. You probably know it is easy to trust other things to deal with the problem of sin and gain us a relationship with God. The easiest is religion. It is easy to think that going to church or doing things like that will help. The problem is that although they are good we are still guilty. We need that guilt forgiven. God has provided one way to deal with the problem of our guilt. That is the death of Christ. If we simply put our trust fully in the death Christ died God promises that we will receive the benefits of a relationship with him and all the blessings that are part of that. This is a little complicated to most of us, so let’s try and simplify it. Consider it as if you have a debt you can’t pay. If someone gave you a check that covered the entire debt you could do one of two things. You could try and earn the money to pay the debt yourself, which is futile, or you could trust that the check is good. If you trust the check is good you only have one thing to do; sign your name on the back and gain the benefits. It is the same way with us and God. In Christ God has a check that will pay for all of the debt owed because of the violations of his law.

If you want to have this relationship with God and know that you have been forgiven for all of your sins you can do so right now. Pray and tell God that you don’t trust anything you have done to make you look any better to him, but acknowledge that you are guilty and that you need his forgiveness. Tell God that you want to be forgiven of all your sins and that you trust Jesus Christ has paid for all of your sins. If you do this God will declare you righteous since you have basically traded places with Jesus Christ. You will have the holiness of Christ in God’s eyes. There is then nothing to prevent you from having a relationship with God and enjoying the wonderful benefits of it.

Would you like to learn more about how you can have a relationship with God? We would love to help! If you would like to meet with someone in person to discuss this more you can tell us here or call us. We would feel privileged to answer your questions, or talk to you about this vital subject.