I have been a christian for more than 5 years and spend time to pray or listen to sermons very day. But I cannot feel very close relationship with God. But for some of my friends, I knew them not such long tome, but I have a even closer relationship with them. Why is it like that? How can I build closer relationship with God?
Thanks for your question, it made me think about my faith again. I felt the relationship between God and me is about faith and love. God is very different from human being, God is the creator, and human beings are creatures. God is the God who speaks. So the basic of the relationship with God is the faith. Without faith, there will no relationship, it’s like the trust among human beings.
When you talk about the levels of the relationship with others, what’s your standards? Your feeling? Your emotion? What you saw? What you got? What you gave? The Bible says God is spirit, we should worship Him by spirit and truth. The relationship between God and me is spiritual, not physical, what I should check is the status of my soul, such as the peace and grace inside, the thirst and hungry inside, my value, my world view and my life view and so on. Through the Bible, I learn what God is like, it will not be objectified by ourselves, it only can be our Lord we should worship and know more deeply and love with His love to us. When we follow Jesus’ example, we will truly know God and experience God is with us.
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Pray frequently.
Read the Bible daily, and skip the sermons … at least don’t listen to those as much as you read your Bible.
Reading the Bible myself let me know what is really in it. When listening to sermons, unless I can read the scripture being quoted (assuming there ARE scripture quotes) I have to wonder if it really is a message from God. But the more I read the Bible, the more I can tell when I actually do listen to a sermon whether or not it is a Biblical teaching, and therefore in line with God.
Doing it by sermons and people’s opinions messed me up for decades.
Our relationship with God has been broken by sin. While God is perfect without sin, we are sinners. It is difficult for us to recover our relationship with God because of our sins. However, our sins have been forgiven by Jesus Christ, and the relationship between God and man has been restored. We must remember and thank for this. As we acknowledge our sins, we have a way of salvation that can feel the love and restore our relationship with God. I pray that your life and heart will be deeply appreciated and restored.
Do the know the parable of scattering the seed. God’s word is the truth. But we have different soil. So the fruit is different.
I think first we can examine our heart, is it a rocky soil, or we worried too much, or the seed just along the road, didn’t come our heart.
If we have scars, worries or we are too rational. The word can’t bear fruit.
So this is the first step, even tough the seed was plant into good soil, by perseverance, fruits come.