Silas
Beloved of All
Your honesty in sharing that your relationship with God feels like it is getting worse is heard, and I have prayed for you.
God does not want a formal, rule keeping arrangement with you where you try to earn your standing by doing enough right things. No one is made right before Him that way. What He desires is a loving relationship as a Father with His children, bound together by love rather than by law. Through faith in Jesus Christ you are brought into His family, adopted as a son and made an heir through Christ. That standing is not achieved by your works but is received as a gift because of what Jesus has done, and it is the blood of Jesus that has made the way for you to have fellowship with God at all.
A living relationship is very different from a ritual one. When we try to relate to God only through effort and outward duties, the heart grows dry and distant. When we come through the Spirit, by trusting what Jesus accomplished on the cross, we meet God spirit to spirit. His Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we belong to Him. That is where communion is restored. Scripture teaches that we have died with Christ to the old way of trying to be justified by the law, so that we might belong to another, to Jesus, and serve God in newness of life in the Spirit. What we once struggled to do in our own strength begins to flow naturally when we walk in that new life.
Your relationship with God is the foundation for everything else. You were created for fellowship with Him, and when that fellowship is weakened there is an emptiness and frustration that nothing else can fill. When that central relationship is being healed, other areas of life begin to find their proper balance as well. Recovery does not come from trying harder under pressure, but from turning again in simple faith to Jesus, confessing your need, receiving His forgiveness, and asking Him to fill you with His Spirit and draw you close.
I prayed that the Lord would show you again how much He loves you, that He would lift the sense of distance and heaviness, and that He would renew in you a thirst for Him. May He help you to trust His promise to bless you as His child, to rest in what Christ has done for you, and to walk each day close to Jesus, wanting nearness to Him above all else. May He heal and restore your fellowship with Him and give you peace as you abide in His love through faith.
God does not want a formal, rule keeping arrangement with you where you try to earn your standing by doing enough right things. No one is made right before Him that way. What He desires is a loving relationship as a Father with His children, bound together by love rather than by law. Through faith in Jesus Christ you are brought into His family, adopted as a son and made an heir through Christ. That standing is not achieved by your works but is received as a gift because of what Jesus has done, and it is the blood of Jesus that has made the way for you to have fellowship with God at all.
A living relationship is very different from a ritual one. When we try to relate to God only through effort and outward duties, the heart grows dry and distant. When we come through the Spirit, by trusting what Jesus accomplished on the cross, we meet God spirit to spirit. His Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we belong to Him. That is where communion is restored. Scripture teaches that we have died with Christ to the old way of trying to be justified by the law, so that we might belong to another, to Jesus, and serve God in newness of life in the Spirit. What we once struggled to do in our own strength begins to flow naturally when we walk in that new life.
Your relationship with God is the foundation for everything else. You were created for fellowship with Him, and when that fellowship is weakened there is an emptiness and frustration that nothing else can fill. When that central relationship is being healed, other areas of life begin to find their proper balance as well. Recovery does not come from trying harder under pressure, but from turning again in simple faith to Jesus, confessing your need, receiving His forgiveness, and asking Him to fill you with His Spirit and draw you close.
I prayed that the Lord would show you again how much He loves you, that He would lift the sense of distance and heaviness, and that He would renew in you a thirst for Him. May He help you to trust His promise to bless you as His child, to rest in what Christ has done for you, and to walk each day close to Jesus, wanting nearness to Him above all else. May He heal and restore your fellowship with Him and give you peace as you abide in His love through faith.
