Hello
There are many who build Line upon Line, Precept upon Precept about God and our relationship with Him. Sadly, those who build Line upon Line and Precept upon Precept, we are told, will fall backwards and die the second death.
What God looks for and requires most of all, from us, is that we have a contrite heart where the foreskin of our heart has been circumcised.
God has also said that the people who inhabit His fertile soil, i.e., take root in His prepared field, will be blessed by Him at the time of the Final judgement. What this means is that we willingly enter into a relationship with God which is a heart-to-heart relationship based on LOVE that grows out of where we send our roots to draw our nourishment from.
There are examples on this forum where people attempt to "control" their relationship with God on their terms because there is no ongoing belief that God walks with them continually and so their Christian Life is based more on their fear than their love for God and His relationship presence with them.
We can argue back and forth on how we achieve this relationship with God. It is not a head relationship, but it is more of a heart relationship where we are drawn into continually living in God's presence on a daily basis. Do we always maintain living in God's presence? NO, we can fall away, but when we do God accepts our return when we humble ourselves and repent of our "sin" and will heal us so that we can continue to live our lives in His presence.
How we arrive at this place of being in a heart-to-heart relationship with God will be different for each and every one of us, because we are all so very different, but Satan attempts to get us to compare our respective stories of how we came into our relationship with God and to judge which stories are more "believable" for us to accept, to undermine all of our relationships with God.
We are all on this journey of being drawn by God into our relationship with Him and as such we are all at different stages in our respective journeys. No one story of our respective journeys of coming into relation with God is any better than another story. What we need to celebrate is that God is drawn each and every one of us into His loving embrace and to accept that through the diversity of our stories in our walk with God, that we have a greater strength in Him and His Love for us all.
Shalom
There are many who build Line upon Line, Precept upon Precept about God and our relationship with Him. Sadly, those who build Line upon Line and Precept upon Precept, we are told, will fall backwards and die the second death.
What God looks for and requires most of all, from us, is that we have a contrite heart where the foreskin of our heart has been circumcised.
God has also said that the people who inhabit His fertile soil, i.e., take root in His prepared field, will be blessed by Him at the time of the Final judgement. What this means is that we willingly enter into a relationship with God which is a heart-to-heart relationship based on LOVE that grows out of where we send our roots to draw our nourishment from.
There are examples on this forum where people attempt to "control" their relationship with God on their terms because there is no ongoing belief that God walks with them continually and so their Christian Life is based more on their fear than their love for God and His relationship presence with them.
We can argue back and forth on how we achieve this relationship with God. It is not a head relationship, but it is more of a heart relationship where we are drawn into continually living in God's presence on a daily basis. Do we always maintain living in God's presence? NO, we can fall away, but when we do God accepts our return when we humble ourselves and repent of our "sin" and will heal us so that we can continue to live our lives in His presence.
How we arrive at this place of being in a heart-to-heart relationship with God will be different for each and every one of us, because we are all so very different, but Satan attempts to get us to compare our respective stories of how we came into our relationship with God and to judge which stories are more "believable" for us to accept, to undermine all of our relationships with God.
We are all on this journey of being drawn by God into our relationship with Him and as such we are all at different stages in our respective journeys. No one story of our respective journeys of coming into relation with God is any better than another story. What we need to celebrate is that God is drawn each and every one of us into His loving embrace and to accept that through the diversity of our stories in our walk with God, that we have a greater strength in Him and His Love for us all.
Shalom