Hi! 'Mguldner'
I guess yuh already know that there are two probable views from which to answer your question: theological and personal. I suspect you wish to hear from personal experience. So, I'll throw in my own about how I dealt with this issue.
I was born into a less than model home; both my mother and father were exceedingly ill equipped to function as loving caring parents. Well, to be entirely honest: I recognized long afterwards that my parents were mentally ill ... or as my Christian knowing would say: "bound by powers of darkness".
What else could explain my having to heap books atop my bedroom door to hopefully awaken me before my father would fulfill his near daily promise to shoot me dead in the dark of night? What else can explain the scars which are still visible on my hands after my mother thought it best to hold them inside the coal furnace for some childhood wrong I had done?
So, enough said about that.
Well, maybe not so quick; a word of explanation:
My father had tumbled down an underground mine shaft while working and he never fully recovered. Shortly afterwards, he mind began to push itself into a never-never land. The accident greatly affected my mother and she too gradually fell under his insane spell. (I was about 4 years old at the time).
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Throughout my growing up years, I never knew parental hugs and affection. I never questioned anything at the time because I believed that every neighboring family endured the same fractured intimacy as our own; I believed that the devilish cloud which I lived beneath was quite normal.
Yet, I still felt an emotional attachment to my parents. Even during the later years when I was living independently, I would occasionally return home and shake my father’s hand with polite greeting and nod a kind recognition glance to my mother. I thought that this minimalist crude family behavior was the norm.
When I was first introduced to the gospel, I thought that God desired a relationship which was similar to what I had with my parents. I thought that all that was needed was to remain piously polite and courteous because of Who He was.
I made sure to remember and greet Him when awakening in the morning and before attending night a prayerful sentence 'er two. On some especially good days, I would feel it necessary to intentionally read the Psalms knowing full well that it would bring me to open tears. I thought that was what God wanted from me as something of a 'special gift'; just like I would occasionally bring home a gift for my parents.
As you can well imagine, such minimal understanding about God and His love didn't help my Christian experience progress so well. Actually, regardless how much I wanted to follow Jesus, things and events in my life began to drop off a cliff rather quickly after my 'getting saved'.
The basic problem I came to realize many years later was my inability to carry on any kind of genuine relationship with anyone … much less God. All I knew was how to conduct an polite and courteous attachment with people. That’s why I rarely returned home to visit my parents; attachments are formed more out of duty and obligation than anything else. And, one can rapidly become very tired of keeping up with dry attachments.
During some of the most morbid behavior of my father, I remember my mother (at that time) insisting that I had to love my father because of who he was and not for what he was doing. And, that’s how I learned to think of my heavenly Father too.
As unbelievable as it might seem to some “normal” Christians, I more than once found myself driving my car to a building with intent to commit a burglary while at the same time tearfully looking out the windshield and saying: “God, I’m miserable both with You and without You! But even though I cannot follow You nor serve You, I will praise you because you are God …. the all-powerful … the almighty. If I don’t praise You, the very stones will rise up and praise you! ” And I would then continue on and commit the break and enter crime.
I guess I might have been asking God to please try and love me for who I was to Him … one of His creatures … and not for what I was doing. So it was that, during the initial years of my Salvation journey, I was only capable of loving God for WHO He was and nothing more.
To put the mess into a capsule: a genuine love relationship demands something much more than the recognition of being “attached” to someone. A loving relationship requires trust in one another and I remained lost to that possibility for many years.
I was born with a hare lip and cleft palate. My father had warned me more than once that when a calf is born deformed, you kill both the calf and the cow.
I had no inkling how to trust a God Who had so cruelly marked my face with a birth deformity. In my heart and mind, God had behaved in the same manner as my mother. One day she would happily shine my shoes before my attending school and the next day would have her grabbing my hands and placing them into the raging heat of the coal furnace … only to return an hour later sobbing and wrapping my blistered flesh in bandages.
Even while imprisoned many times and for multiple years, I remained thinking that my heavenly Father behaved similar to my earthly parents. I believed that God had placed me in prison to punish me and that I was not permitted to speak to Him directly until the duration of my punishment had expired. (That’s exactly how my earthly parents behaved). In my mind, I was being put in a corner for punishment like a child and was not entitled to speak to my heavenly Father. The only saving grace (so to speak) was that I was allowed to read about Him in the Bible and maybe pray in some stumbling manner during this time of punishment.
One day I was sitting on my prison bed and becoming increasingly agitated by the prospect of returning to prison time and time again. Jail had become a revolving door. For the very first time, I began to feel a suffocating loss of hope.
Suddenly, an image of a man playing Russian Roulette appeared in the air before me. A voice asked: “What do you think this man’s last words were?”
I answered, “Wow! I’ve got such bad luck!”
Again the same image appeared. But this occasion the voice said: “What do you think his last words should have been?”
I had to think about that for a minute or so before volunteering: “What a stupid man I am!”
Then the voice said: “As long as you insist on blaming your parents your upbringing your cleft palate and whatever else for your failures, nothing will change. You have to begin to take responsibility for your actions before anything can change”.
It was only then that I realized that my entire life was a narrative of victimization and self-pity. I had not perceived it that way before.
Now I had something to work with; to wrestle to the ground and deal with. I was no longer having to bat in the air (as Apostle Paul might say).
The second thing I learned was that God was not punishing me. I wasn’t in prison because God had somehow arranged to put me there to draw His last ounce of vengeance. No, on the contrary! My own behavior had put me in prison.
But the most important thing I learned was that God is ONLY and perfectly Good. This meant that It wasn’t God who marked me with the deformity. So, this knowledge placed me in a much better place to begin to trust Him and the learning to build a relationship with Him. I was like Jonah and angry with God for far too long and for all the wrong reasons.
During that time I also came to understand that the dark powers which were influencing me were not instigated by God. One night I was sitting there in my prison cell and my mind captured the image of a child hiding fearfully under a bed. A voice said: “And this is when the spirit of fear entered”.
So, 'Mguldner', that’s how I learned to move beyond the minimal of attachment to God towards being able to start and build a meaningful relationship with Him.
I’ve met a lot of Christians who claim to have a 'personal relationship' with Jesus but, when they spoke to me about it, they didn't seem to have more than what I had with my disjointed parents … an attachment … as a creature to its Creator. Sometimes I suspect that there are some people who have a closer affinity with their family dog than with God and yet they still insist to name Him as their Heavenly Father.
Here's an illustration of what I mean:
There are several roaming squirrels in my neighborhood. Sometime ago, a friend dropped in from the United States and he had brought with him several large bags of Pistachio nuts because he had known that I really like them a lot. Unfortunately, they were very stale and inedible. So, when my friend returned to the USA, I decided to feed the pistachios to the squirrels and threw an entire bag of them out into the yard.
The next day, the neighbor commented that there seemed to be an unusual amount of squirrels on the street. So, I told her about the Pistachio Lottery that the squirrels had won. Later, I imagined the squirrels looking up at the sky with puzzled faces asking if it was going to again rain pistachios today. But secretly, I was hoping for the imagined possibility that maybe some weird squirrel might have enough sense to look into the sky and thank God for His provisions.
So, that's an illustration of how the first several years of my Christian journey had me behaving like the squirrels; thinking that eternal life is similar to winning a divine lottery 'er sumthin' like that. But with that kind of shallow knowing or even wanting to know God, there isn't much of a chance of nurturing a genuine relationship.
During this half-hazard relationship phase, I bumped into a lot of Christians who boasted of how they seemed to talk to Jesus like He was some kinna' dear friend. I could never really fathom that concept. Most times, I shrugged it off as some pious exaggeration. There were some female Christians I met who seemed to be overly passionate about their supposed relationship with Jesus and I almost began to wish that Jesus was a woman instead of a man so I could perhaps too grasp Him emotionally.
Then one day I received a letter in the mail from a Christian pastor who was living in Europe. I still have that letter today ... I cherish it! He boldly claimed that God had told him to write me the words therein. To be honest, I began to read it with much skepticism ... "Oh no! Not another Christian weirdo!", I whispered to myself.
The letter began by telling me about how God desired me. Not that he merely loved me ... no, much more than that! ... that God earnestly DESIRED me; CHERISHED me. That I was a treasure to Him!
The words of the letter jumped off the letter page and immediately into my heart. They rang so true and carried such marvelous healing.
For the very first time in my entire life, I began to comprehend the profound meaning of love ... and how it was that this love was how God Himself thought about and towards me. I could hardly take the full measure of the letter's words into myself; love was something far greater than an emotion ... it was a yearning DESIRE ... God had a consuming urge to possess me ... to hold my hand ... to sit me on His lap and whisper about the Name that He gave me and which He alone knows.
During the reading of the letter, I saw an image of a man and his wife appear before my eyes and I heard them call each other by their intimate 'names' which they alone knew affectionately among themselves.
And that's how my coming to a relationship with God began to unfold to me.
Later, I began to understand some other matters about how God's desire to relate to us. He is Spirit. Because of that, he wishes to unite with our our own human spirit. It isn't our earthly body that God clings to; it's our spiritual body. By 'spiritual body', I mean the invisible part of us ... our soul and heart and mind ... that which comprises our "hidden man of the heart" ... our 'spiritual existence and being'.
That's why I have repeatedly mentioned here in different Threads about our having a spiritual body; because that is what God desires and yearns jealously over. But I'll spare you the repeat of those ideas/thoughts at this point.
So, 'Mguldner' after that long story, what thoughts do I hope to have given you?
Well, about a relationship born of desire. I would almost say a compelling desire; an all consuming affection ... a love which causes one's heart to palpitate ... something so tremendously overwhelming that it stills every fear except that of being alone. That's how God desires us! That's how He so eagerly seeks and yearns for us.
When I discovered that about God, it was not difficult to throw myself into his open arms and enjoy myself with Him. He is indeed a wonderful loving parent!
EDITED BELOW: (Added)
Oh, I would like to leave you with this one final thought:
Sometime ago, I was asked to create a Flash presentation for an Audio Teaching. As I was reading the teaching transcript, I was struck to the core by these words which I then included in the Presentation:
"The only thing that God's power cannot command is love. And that is the very thing that God desires; that a person comes to Him out of love for Him."
The Flash Presentation can be viewed here:
SOUND ON please
http://www.tolovejesus.com/index.php/flash-presentations/how-is-god-great-flash
