Obedience and Intimacy

Who is God? Do I know Him? How would my life be different if I didn’t know Him? Let me reword that question. Is it evident by my lifestyle that I know God? Do I want to know God and know Him more?
As human beings and as inhabitants of earth, God has given each of us a taste of Himself, who He is, and what He is like. Romans 1: 18-20 makes this very clear. God has revealed Himself to all people through His creation. While everyone has received a taste of God it should also be said that some of us, through no merit of our own have had a larger helping doled out to us. This doesn’t mean that someone who has received a lot of biblical teaching about God is better than a person untouched by Christian influence. It doesn’t even necessarily mean that a person saturated by Christian influence is better off than another person. If it means anything it’s that a person who has been given more is responsible for more.
What have I done with the taste I‘ve been given? Did it invoke awe, reverence, adoration, gratitude, love, humility, praise, worship, a thirst for more? God, our Father, wants to give more; a second helping, and thirds, and fourths, fifths… . Besides creation, God reveals Himself through His Word, the Scriptures, through His Son Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:1-3), and through the Holy Spirit (John16:12-15).
God’s primary objective in revealing Himself to us is to cultivate intimacy with me, His child. It always comes down to love. As a Christian my first priority must be intimacy with God. My relationship with God must take precedence over all things. It must take priority over evangelism, over teaching Sunday school, over being a nice guy, over leading worship, over serving on the church board, over volunteering at the downtown mission, over being a missionary in Africa.
How do I get closer to God? You know all the stuff. Read your Bible. Pray. Volunteer in church. Yeah, yeah, and I suppose that the list could go on and on. How about this one? Listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit and obeying everything, no matter what. That’s pretty easy to say and even easier to write. The way I see it, this is the most important thing a person can do to grow closer and closer to God in the love relationship that He wants with you and that you never even dreamt was possible. The Holy Spirit must be listened for and obeyed. Period.. It doesn’t matter at all how small or insignificant it might seem. He must be obeyed. It doesn’t matter how huge or impossible it might seem. He must be obeyed. If there is anything that is urgent in life, this is it. This, by the way, comes from a procrastinator. How does one learn to listen for and obey the Holy Spirit? The best way I know of is practice.
Start with the small and insignificant. The fact is that it is neither small nor insignificant. Each step of obedience is necessary. In a staircase each step relies on the step before it and after it. In a chain each link is vital. If we’ve obeyed the Holy Spirit in the first thing He has required of us, He is free to go on with the next step in His agenda. That’s one of the keys: His agenda, not mine. Can I trust God to carry on with His agenda?
For most of us this is a heavy stone that has dropped on our foot and may seriously effect our lifestyle. Watch your other foot, here comes another one. God’s Word, the Bible needs to be obeyed just as the Holy Spirit needs to be obeyed. The Bible is no less God’s Word to me than the voice of the Holy Spirit. Do you want to be close to God? How can you be close to someone if you’re not following them? If there is sin in your life, the Bible is telling you to do something and you’re not doing it, or the Holy Spirit told you something and you ignored Him, and you’re wondering why God seems distant. I know in my life it usually isn’t that hard to figure out.