Hope Lutheran — North Minneapolis, Minnesota: personalrelationship

Window on Christian Education

What does it mean to have a Personal Relationship with Jesus?

by Jim Lilly

As Christians, each of us should have a relationship with God that has a spiritual and supernatural component. It should be a relationship that is close and intimate; whereby we experience the personal indwelling presence of God that sends goose-bumps up our spines. It will produce in us the overwhelming awe of the presence of God that expresses a reality greater than any we can touch, smell, hear, or see, yet at the same time acts to stimulate all of those senses.

Solomon in the Song of Songs, touches a little on this by comparing a personal relationship with God to the intimate relationship between a man and woman. Romantic love is one place where we come in contact with an experience that cannot be measured or even fully described in terms of tangible senses. This is an important comparison, not because it comes close to describing the actual relationship that Christians have with Jesus, rather it draws us to the point of understanding that we cannot describe the personal relationship with God in everyday terms and emotions. We are talking about a different dimension of reality.

Likewise when we speak of eternal life, we are not talking about an eternal extension of our current physical life, but we are talking about entering a new dimension beyond that which we can connect to with our five physical senses. We are speaking of a reality that the non-spiritual person cannot fathom. The Paul of Tarsus spoke of this in 1Corinthians 2:12-15 ^“Now wehave received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, ¹³which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. ¹⁴But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. ¹⁵But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.”

So, when we speak of our relationship with God the Father, with Jesus his son, and with the Holy Spirit, let us be clear that we are not speaking in simple terms that can be simple rendered as a “personal relationship” in comparative terms to any natural human relationship we might have. If you cannot identify your relationship with God in supernatural terms, then I invite you to consider joining the Alpha Courses next autumn as part of the new member class or ask one of the pastors or elders about entering into this relationship. John 3:3 “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’”