Relationship with God is nourished by revelation.
I once attended a singles’ soiree in my newly on-fire haze. When the leaders asked those in attendance to share what God was teaching them, I jumped in and passionately shared how God was teaching me to listen to His voice and how the ability to accurately discern God’s voice was extraordinarily life-changing for this Christan-who-had-been-a-Christian-for-umpteen-years. I shared about how He was meeting individual needs, including my own, in miraculous ways on a daily basis.
As I was sharing, a man scrunched up his face and interrupted me with: “You really think God cares about your specific situation on a daily basis? Who do you think you are to warrant such care from a God busy with running the universe? Why do you think He is speaking to YOU?” It stopped me in my tracks—I took one second to examine what he said and then dismissed it with this truth: “He is the God who once spoke so He is the God who continues to speak—to those who listen. If He’s not speaking to YOU, you might want to look into that!”
The leader stepped in with some Christianese about hearing God many ways (aka just the Bile, really) that diffused the situation and I never returned. In that season of personal revival, I didn’t have time for people who fooled around with a God who didn’t care about an individual that He created. Everything the Bible showed me was that the God who created the individual was obsessed with building a relationship with the individual, not a corporate entity or specific few. No naysayer or insecurity was going to keep me from laying hold of this revelation of a God who cared for ME. Individually. Relationally. Specifically. Obsessively.
Every testimony I've ever heard about how God has arrested someone's heart has always begun with this revelation: He is the God who cares about us, individually.
I was taught this from an early age—Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. But it doesn't change you until you believe it for yourself...individually. Until then, God loves generally, sort of sprinkling it out all over the world in an "...all the children of the world" sort of way. It's a simple concept, but it's vital. The revelation of who God can be to us begins with who He is to us individually: present and passionate about each of us.
When you grab hold of this revelation and surrender the insecurities that it inevitably dredges up (e.g. will you be enough for God to take notice of, will He be disappointed in what you bring, did He make a mistake calling you—did He actually mean that other person?), that's when you begin to know your salvation in the way Jesus talks of it:
"Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows." (Luke 12:6-7 NIV)
"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him." (1 John 3:1)
Not only are we loved as children and known intimately, but this is also true: He will never love us more than when He first called us, while we were still in love with the darkness.
Grace loves perfectly from the start.
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