What does it take to find God and start a relationship with Him? Wait for a spiritual experience? Devote yourself to unselfish religious deeds? Become a better person so that God will accept you? None of these, God has made it very clear in the Bible how we can know Him.
1st principle: God loves you. You can find God and begin to experience His love for you.
God created you. Not only that, he loves you so much that He wants you to know Him and spend eternity with Him, Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16).
Jesus who is God in human form, came so that each of us could know and understand God in a personal way. Jesus can bring kindness, truth and purpose to our lives.
2nd Principle: All of us sin and our sin has separated us from God
We sense that separation, that distance from God because of our sin. The Bible tells us that “All of us like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way.”(Isaiah 53:6)
Deep down, our attitude may be one of active rebellion or passive indifference toward God and His ways, but it’s all evidence of what the Bible calls sin.
The result of sin in our lives is death -spiritual separation from God. Although we may try to get close to God through our own effort, we inevitably fail.
There is a distance gap between us and God. While we try to reach God by doing good for others, religious rituals, or try to be a good person. The problem is that none of these efforts actually never coverup or sin or remove it,
Our sin is known to God and stands as a barrier between us and God. The Bible tells us that the penalty for sin is death (Romans 6:23). We would be eternally separated from God.
We can have a relationship with God because of what He did for us.
3rd principle: Jesus paid the penalty fir our sin for us. He now offers us complete forgiveness and a close relationship with Him.
Jesus took all of our sins, suffered and paid from them with His life at the cross. Jesus died for us, He died in our place. And He did it out of His tremendous love for us.
He saved us, not because of righteous things we have done, but because of His mercy. Because of Jesus’s death at the cross, our sins don’t have to separate us from God any longer.
Jesus not only died for our sins, He came back to life, so His spirit (the Holy Spirit) could come live on the inside of us.
This was final proof that everything Jesus said about Himself was true. To know His is to know God; to love Him is to love God. “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
Jesus said He could answer prayer, forgive sin, judge the world, and give us eternal life. His countless miracles supported His Words.
Jesus was clear, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one can come to the Father except through me” (John:14:6).
Instructions of trying to reach God, He tells us how we can begin a relationship with Him right now. Jesus, says, “Come to me, if anyone thirsts, let him come and drink…out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:37-39).
It was Jesus’s love for us that caused Him to endure the cross. And no He invites us to come to Him, that we might begin a personal relationship with God.
Just knowing what Jesus has done for us and what He is offering us is not enough. To have a relationship with God, we need to welcome Him into our life.
4th principle: We must individually accept Jesus as Savior and Lord
The Bible says, “But as many as receive Him, to those who believe in His name, He gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
We accept Jesus by faith. Jesus said, “by grace you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” ( Ephesians 2:8).
Accepting Jesus means believing that Jesus is the Son ofGod, then inviting Hum to guide and direct our lives. Jesus said, “I come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
As Jesus’s invitation to us He said, “I’m standing at the door and I’m knocking. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in” (Revelation 3:20).
From Pity to Praise 