Getting To Know God Better 13

"Knowing and loving God was always meant to be a desirable and wonderful experience. Getting to know God better an even more pleasant and grand experience. Religion has made getting to know God cumbersome and difficult, full of complexities and ambiguity. What a shame.

The Apostles, the men and women of God, priests, pastors, rabbis were entrusted to tell the gospel; share with others God's wonders and love and forgiveness and power and blessings. In that sharing men, women and children would come to a saving knowledge of Jesus and find peace in their heart and solace in their soul. God would commune with them in the cool of the day and console them at night. God would listen attentively to their request, and pain and cries and troubles and then carry them through it all with the gentleness of a mother and her baby.

Your view of God would be built on a relationship that started with trust and love and interaction and continued as you presented yourself before God as a student, a father or mother, sister or brother, teen or child, a person interested in the ways of the creator, carefully desiring and moving forward with the intent to follow the footsteps of Jesus and the leadings of the Holy Spirit. Each person content with their portion and willing to walk another mile if necessary, not needing all the answers except that God was with them and they knew it.

What have we done with the simplicity of loving God and finding His favor?
What has become of the inner understanding that God is in it all with you?
What has deteriorated the trust that comes with salvation?
What artist has painted God in your heart as an austere old man waiting for you to screw up so he could pounce on you and crush you and reduce you?
What got in the way between you and God so that you don't even try anymore to bridge the gap?

I think it is religion. If your religious experience has not steered you to a direct and personal relationship with God, what has it steered you to do? Are you missing out on a real and wonderful, beyond your wildest expectations experience with God in order to placate your denominations religious requirements?

I think you can have both, but in no way would I nurture any relationship that did not free me to be at peace with God, all the time. Please read the first three paragraphs a few times before making a decision."