Many believers prefer to hold God at a distance. They really don’t want to get too close and they certainly don’t want intimacy with Him. They have little desire for a direct, personal relationship with the Almighty. They want to keep something between the Lord and themselves: denomination, church, doctrine, tradition, a pastor, bad habit, ANYTHING instead of a personal, one-on-one encounter with God.
I imagine some of these people are afraid of what a one-on-one relationship with God might mean for their lives or how it might affect their plans for themselves. Some actually prefer a God who is distant, rigid and puritanical; One who is too busy to be interested in the details of their personal life, or a God that has any genuine interest in them as an individual. It’s more comforting to think they can get “lost in the crowd.”
Many people are legalists. They typically prefer laws, rules and regulations over the grace of God which they don’t understand. Laws provide a means by which they can measure their appearance against others.
Besides, following rules doesn’t require getting to know God on a personal basis.
Even many who recognize that their salvation is based on grace and faith in Christ, frequently aren’t interested in drawing any closer to God than they think they have to. I can’t count the times I’ve heard, “Praise the Lord, I’m saved by the blood of Jesus! What more do I need?”
Saved, yes. But, as I’ve said before, salvation is not the finish line. It is the starting block.
To accurately reflect the image of Christ in your life, to achieve the fullness of your divine destiny in this world, to advance God’s will and His Kingdom, you need a great deal more. You need grace. You need transformation. You need the Holy Spirit.
Grace is very personal. It restores your divine familial relationship with God. By grace, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit inhabit your being. Under grace, there is no place to pretend you can hide. Everything comes down to you and God. God knows you intimately, and you know He knows you intimately.
Adopting an attitude or position that holds God at bay fails to recognize that salvation is the beginning of the journey with Him, not the finish line. This means moving beyond just settling for an association with a church or denomination and into actively, conscientiously, cultivating a direct, dynamic, intimate relationship with God.
