What Is Your Relationship With God?
What is Your Relationship With God?
It has been quite a journey from the years I first moved to California… to discovering what's truly important. As a child, I grew up in a family that was very poor economically; we’d grow up to have so much love that it doesn’t matter now, the humble beginnings we had.
The beating heart of our family was my grandmother, who barely completed third grade. Education, which Grandma insisted we pursue, inspired our lives in every way imaginable.
Joy and love always filled our home, and with so many siblings, we relied on each other a lot. Moving to California at 29 was a major turning point for me. But the biggest change happened in 2021 when I became a believer. Even though I grew up Catholic and attended mass daily as a child, I didn’t truly understand what it meant to be a Christian until I hit rock bottom. My sisters showed me the meaning of a personal relationship with God, and since then, life has been so much better following His plan.
It began with the ultimate question, each sister asked of me:
WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD?
It got me to thinking. I didn’t have a relationship with God. How do you do that? What have I been spending my time on the last 3 decades of my life? I once did a Live TV interview about my talk called THE 5 HATS. I thought it was brilliant, ha ha. Except, looking BACK NOW, the MOST IMPORTANT thing in my life was missing: God.
If I could redo the 5 Hats, I would add what is your relationship with God and all these areas of your life:
Work - for me, work was my addiction.
Family - I put them aside a lot because I thought I was working hard for them.
Friendships - the people I was spending my free time with were not “the company you’d want to keep” in the long term.
Connections - The so-called love connections and relationships I had all failed… I wonder why…
Adventure - I had tons of adventure, none of it was lasting because the people I had adventure with, besides my kids and family, are not around today. I rather have Joy; today Joy is my adventure.
Andy Stanley says: Truly happy people are at peace with God. He adds:
“Peace with God is important, because one of the things the New Testament says is that it paves the way to peace with ourselves and equips us to make peace with others. If you aren’t at peace with yourself, it’s because of something in your past that you regret or feel guilty about. You can’t seem to get away from it. “
Sin separates. I didn’t want to let the wrong thins in my life separate me from the One who loves me; from my family, myself and the Holy Spirit.
To be of God means recognizing that the Almighty is in charge of our lives and that He is with us. Christians believe that they can have a personal connection with God if they believe that Jesus Christ saved them. Accepting what Christ did on the cross, feeling the power of God's grace to change us, and letting the Holy Spirit into our hearts are all parts of being God.
On the other hand, "living of God" refers to the things that people do, think, and feel because they have a relationship with God. You should try to live in a way that shows you follow Jesus' lessons and have the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
As Christians, we are to love our friends as we love ourselves, forgive those who have hurt us, and serve others with a humble and caring heart. It means being kind to those who are weak, fighting for justice, and building a world that looks like God's kingdom.
Christians are told to shine with the love of Christ and share the Gospel with everyone they meet. To live like God, we must share the hope, peace, and forgiveness we find in Jesus Christ with others, both in what we say and how we live.