Vulnerable with God

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God wants you to be real with him” 

That is a word I got from someone several years ago after a very difficult period of time. For someone who liked to fade into the background and pretend that everything was okay when it really wasn’t, this was a bit difficult to swallow. I was used to the idea that God wanted my obedience but I didn’t think that he really wanted to be close to me. 

In the garden, God walked with Adam and Eve. He talked with them and they knew him on an intimate level. They were naked and felt no shame. After the fall, man began building walls around their hearts by using their own efforts to attempt to reach God. 

What did God do? He built bridges to reach the heart of man, namely through the person of Jesus who came to show the world that God still longed for that same intimacy that He had in the garden and to bridge that chasm between God and man which seemed insurpassible. 

In some ways, we still try to build Towers of Babel to God, thinking that somehow our effort will allow us to get closer to him. But as Revelation 3:20 says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”

The truth is that when we think we can somehow be good enough to reach God, we actually are just the older brother sitting outside of the Fathers house. But when we humble ourselves to move towards him, he actually runs towards us as prodigals and pulls us into a huge bear hug! 

So how do we become intimate with God as our Daddy? I think it’s just like any relationship that grows in intimacy. We must begin to vulnerable with him. He is vulnerable with us when he reveals to us who he is and we must learn to steward that revelation, and therefore his heart, well. We must take our thoughts captive so that they line up with His thoughts. Everyone knows an older couple or two best friends who can finish one another’s sentences. My goal is to so know the heart of God that I can like that with Him! We also need to truly believe that he chases us more passionately than we could ever pursue him and if we would just open up to him, he intensely longs to fill us and flow through us. 

Finally as we grow in relationship we begin to look more and more like him. We are made in his image after all! Because He is Creator, we are creative, because he is love, we love, because he is holy, we are holy, we behold his character so that we can become like him. 

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