10_01 Your Relationship with Jesus

This tenth Chapter of the educational seminar series, Prophecies of Jesus, begins with a most basic discussion (#10_01) about Your Relationship with Jesus. A forever friendship with Jesus, our Father in heaven, and Holy Spirit, is best spoken about in the wonderful song:
Getting to know you, getting to feel free and easy,
Getting to know you, getting to feel you know me…
– that is the essence of friendship.
Think through the counsel in this document.

Scripture: John 17:3

Title: Your Relationship with Jesus

Many people, even Seventh-day Adventist Christians, are afraid of last-day events and “bury their heads in the sand” as it were, fearing to even study them. That need not be. The great day of God is to be a time of deliverance for God’s people. The Bible refers to this event as the “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13). The whole world may be in convulsion just before that great event, but the Christian is to be full of assurance at that time, because of his relationship with God. The most important thing each of us can do, as we prepare for the climactic events unfolding before our very eyes today, is to develop a deep, abiding relationship with Jesus Christ.

It is that abiding relationship that I want to explore with you today. How do we abide in Him? How can we build that relationship? You have accepted Jesus as your Saviour. I hope you have also accepted Him as your Lord, even as your King. This is an on-going process of overcoming sin begun by making your Covenant with Him in baptism. This is the first step you must take: You have declared to Him that you do not want to sin, any sin, any more, and have asked Him to help you to overcome. On His part of the Covenant, He has promised to be your God, and make you His child. He has given you His Holy Spirit to dwell with you, in you, as Christ’s representative and your teacher of righteousness. As you make conscious decisions to submit to His will, Jesus overcomes your sinful, fallen human nature, and thus you keep His Commandments through submission to Him. This we must do, till He comes in the clouds of heaven, or until we fall asleep in Jesus,
and He resurrects us to eternal life!

But there is more to our relationship with Him. We submit to His will, and keep His Commandments, because we are every day learning to love Him more and more, both for what He has done for us upon that cruel cross, and for what He is accomplishing in us and through us every day!

Yet there is still more to be enjoyed in this relationship. The second step is, you want to get better acquainted with Him, whom to know is eternal life! John 17:3 – “And this is eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent.”

The great news is, Jesus also wants to get better acquainted with you! You see, that’s how wonderful God is. He not only desires you to come to Him, but He wants to come to you. He not only wants you to learn about Him, but He wants to learn
about you. He is the God of relationships.

Developing a relationship with Jesus is done in the same way as developing a deep relationship with a human being. It means taking time together, listening to your friend, talking together. As a Christian desiring a deeper relationship with Jesus,
you will need to allow sufficient time to spend with your best Friend.

The often neglected ingredient to this relationship is to listen to the God-head, all three of Them. It is difficult, even for Them, to form a deep relationship with us if we are always talking!

God speaks to us through His Word, the Holy Scriptures. That’s why Christians need to set aside time each day for the study of God’s Word. Develop a study program of your own choice; not just to get knowledge, but rather to learn more about your God. Don’t study just to discover a text that you can use to prove a point to someone, but instead always ask the question: “What is God saying to me in this passage?” Listen quietly for the voice of God. Don’t just read – listen as you read. Hear His voice.

The best anyone, in my experience, has described it, is mental telepathy. Is that too “science fiction” for you to accept?

Think about it. Don’t you send your prayers direct to the throne of God by mental telepathy? You do not, most of the time, speak out your requests or joys to God, but you inherently know that They can hear your thoughts. (See Mt.6:6-8) Is it so inconceivable that you might hear Their thoughts back to you? Listen: and you will
find that thoughts, and especially relevant texts of Scripture, will enter your mind! Holy Spirit often leads you, as you study, from text to text to help you present truth to others. This is marvelous in my eyes! And when you are struggling with untruth clothed in religious garb, He can bring to your mind the answer that will free you from error!

To illustrate, one time I was taught, in a small group, that saints that had passed away after the beginning of the Judgment hour in 1844, would be “regenerated” – meaning that people living on the earth at the time for the Second Coming of
Jesus, would suddenly realize that they were that other person, “regenerated” in them! This was to explain to us (note: a false theory!) how these people, who were true saints, shall be alive to see Jesus come. Good people told me that this was heresy: yet they could not tell me what was wrong about it. I went home and agonized about it in silent prayer, and even then (I was only a short time an Adventist) I had learned to listen for God’s answer.

Strongly impressed on my mind, immediately, was the text, “The dead know not any thing!”
I could not see any connection between that text and my question! I continued to pray. Again the thought was impressed on my mind, so loudly (without any sound) that it almost shocked me!
So I took my Bible and looked up the text to see if that answer made sense of my problem. I found it by using my Cruden’s Concordance, looking up the key word in the text, “dead.” It’s in Ecclesiastes 9, v. 5. As often happens, I was taught, the context, the verses in the immediate vicinity of the text in question (I try to read about the size of an average chapter around the text because of this) the context revealed the connection. Verse 6: “…neither have they any more a portion for ever [till resurrection] in any thing that is done under the sun!”

The Bible teaches that death is a sleep (read John, chapter 11) and the heresy was that what was termed “regeneration” was simply “re-incarnation” hidden behind a new term! Each person will be judged by his own life, and will not “become” someone who lived in the past. We sleep till Jesus “wakes” us in resurrection, and not before. But note: we only sleep! When we awake, it will be to continue life in eternal life, as Jesus has promised those who are His at His Coming (or, sadly,
eternal death after having been judged, if we did not make God our Saviour.)

And so, it was heresy that I had been taught, and I thereafter sought to expose it for what it was! God had spoken, telepathically if you will, and I heard Him. Now, I ever seek to communicate with them, in prayer, listening as well as talking to Them! Won’t you seek to do that too?

I also found that Holy Spirit does other things to communicate truth to us. Have you ever had a text seem to stand out on the page when you have had a Bible question you have pondered, and that text “loudly” reveals the answer? Truly
Communicating with God can be exciting!

We do, of course, need to talk to God. They have invited us to come right into Their very presence, by faith, and talk to Them. See Hebrews 10:19-22. What a wonderful God! True prayer, however, is not formal words, but a message to Them directly from our heart. We need to speak to God as we would to our best and closest friend, confiding to Them all that troubles us, all that we hope for, how we feel about Them and what They mean to us, our joys, our desire to work with Them for others; everything to do with our life with Them. We can and must
communicate with the infinite God of the universe!

May I suggest that you get better acquainted with Jesus by reading about His life here on earth from the gospels, followed by reading Desire of Ages. Then, perhaps, read the exciting story of the beginning of Christianity in the book of Acts, followed by reading Great Controversy, and move on to the writings of John and Paul. Then study a pamphlet Bible study series that gets you into the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, and follow that up with Daniel and the Revelation, by Uriah Smith.

The third step you need to take for this relationship is to make time to spend with Them. In our busy schedules today, it is too easy to skip our special time with God. Yet, if we do not take this time, like any relationship, it will begin to slip away from us.Since this is the most important relationship in our lives (our eternal life depends on it!) we must make time every day for it.

A SPECIAL DAY FOR BUILDING THE RELATIONSHIP

While a half hour or more each day is essential to build a relationship with our God, They have indicated that we also need to devote one whole day each week exclusively to that relationship.
In the beginning of human history, before sin entered this world, God set aside a specific day of the week which would be dedicated exclusively to fellowship between God and the men and women They had created. Notice the record of the day after They had created Adam and Eve:
And on the seventh day, God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: Because that in it He had rested from all His work
Which God created and made. Genesis 2:2,3.

God had spent six days creating the vast world that Adam and Eve now inhabited. In the cool of that Friday evening, God came down to Adam and Eve and introduced them to the Sabbath – the memorial of all His creative activity. (In the whole Bible, the “day” begins with the evening {at sunset} and continues with the rest of the day {daylight hours} called the “morning,” which ends at sunset. Genesis l, verse 5 states it this way: “The evening and the morning were the first day.” Leviticus 23, verse 32, states clearly, “…from even unto even shall you celebrate your Sabbath”).
God did not give Adam and Eve the Sabbath because they needed to rest; they hadn’t even worked yet! Nor did God give the Sabbath because He needed to rest. God gave the Sabbath at this critical time in Eden so that the beings whom He had created could spend this time with Him, celebrating what He had done, with Him! Can you imagine Jesus showing them around Creation, telling them that He created those things for them to enjoy? In this way, every week, God and man could become better acquainted and get to really know each other.

Note that God’s purpose in giving the Sabbath was not for sleep (though we may enjoy and even need part of it for that) but it was for the development of a deep and abiding relationship between God and mankind. Our God is a God of relationships.
They really want to know us. Each one of us: even an infinite number of us! So, He has set aside one day each week for the purpose of getting to know the beings He had created. [re-read this sentence!]

After God had brought the Israelite nation out of the house of bondage in the land of Egypt, and saved them from the Egyptians, He brought them to Himself, and gave them instructions – torah – translated “the law” in our Bibles. The term refers to all of God’s instructions whether moral, civil, social, or religious – even laws of health! Most basic to His instructions, and specially to do with our relationship with Him, He offered a Covenant to each of us, that contained various requirements that would be crucial for maintaining the special relationship He seeks with the beings He has created.
“And He declared unto you His Covenant, which He commanded you to perform, even ten Commandments; and He wrote them upon two tables of stone.”
(Deuteronomy 4, verse 13).

Yet, in their fallen humanity, they could not keep the sacred law; they needed, as we do, a divine relationship to enable them to live a life in harmony with the Ten Commandments. So, in the very heart of the Commandments, He put the Sabbath
Commandment. God knew that only by keeping the fourth Commandment and thereby developing a deep, spiritual relationship with Them, would it be possible for us to keep the other nine Commandments.

Many people today feel that they do not need to keep the Sabbath Commandment. They call it “the Jewish Sabbath,” even though the origin of the Sabbath is at Creation, not Sinai. But God has not left this choice to us. They decided that we need this special time with Them. Do we know better than God does?

These last days of human history demand the deepest relationship with God that mankind has ever experienced. They need to warn us of the terrific danger that we will be deceived by the “beast” and his “image” and by Satan Himself, into losing the gift of God, which is eternal life.

The wages of sin (breaking the Commandments) is death; but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6, verse 23).

Satan caused the leadership of the church of the Dark Ages to think to change the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, so that people would lose that deep relationship with their Creator.
Then they withheld the Bible from the people as well. The real relationship with God was almost lost. But, at the darkest hour, God brought the Reformation, and took the “man of sin” “out of the way” (2 Thessalonians 2:3 and 7). This “man of sin” is the head of the “beast” power. Its “mortal wound was healed:” and today, “all the world wonders after the beast!” Rev.13:3.

We have arrived at the end of time. It is important that the great Sabbath truth once again be restored to God’s people. This is not the legalistic keeping of a day, such as the Jewish Pharisees taught, but rather the keeping of a special day each
week in order to maintain a spiritual relationship with our God.

This is a bulwark against the “beast” power, who is about to gain full control of the world as the leader of the New World Order. The only ones who will stand on the Lord’s side in that crisis hour are those who have a deep, obedient relationship with Jesus.

Such a relationship can be gained only by daily Bible study and prayer, and by weekly Sabbath keeping. This is why the Sabbath is one of the crucial issues in last-day events!
The “remnant” people of God, “which keep the Commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (see Revelation 12:17) will be ready to stand at the Second Coming of Jesus, only because they have taken adequate time to build this solid relationship. They not only have daily time with God, but they also keep God’s Sabbath for the purpose of intensifying that relationship. Theirs is not a legalistic obedience, springing out of obligation, but a loving experience developed out of their ever deepening, abiding relationship!

Many people, even many who are keeping the Sabbath, but legalistically, will be swept away by the deceptions of the last days. Jesus Himself tells us, “For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall show signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect” (Mark 13, v. 22). I like Mark’s gospel, because he writes certain slightly different wordings of statements by Jesus that are very
helpful to our study of the Bible. Note the next verse carefully. Jesus states, “But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things.” How can we be kept from being deceived by the deceptions of the last days? Jesus has foretold us all things that we need to know. If we will study His testimony in the prophetic books of the Bible, Holy Spirit will teach us what prophecy reveals!

That is part of our protection. The testimony of Jesus is defined by Revelation 19, verse 10. “…for the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.” Not only do we get to know Jesus by Bible study, but we learn from prophecy what He knows about the future for our protection from deception! Holy Spirit, who is the “Spirit of prophecy,” teaches us the truths of His prophecies [in the Bible] by His prescription for correct, Spirit-led Bible study. What is that prescription? Where is it found? Isaiah 28:9-13. His leading is the only way to correctly unfold prophecy!

History is racing toward the climax of the ages – the Second Coming of Jesus! Are you ready? If you develop and deepen your relationship with God through regular Bible study, prayer, and weekly Sabbath keeping, and Sabbath Bible Study with other believers, (especially Sabbath School for adults) then you too will rejoice in the blessed hope of the glorious and soon appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Our father in heaven, Holy Spirit, and Jesus, our High Priest and Saviour, thank You that You want us to be your sons and daughters, side by side with our “brother” Jesus. It is a great privilege to be a part of the Family of God, and we are learning to live that truth day by day!
Please speak to us. We are constantly trying to hear You, and wanting to hear Your voice. Thank you for returning to us your written Word, to help open our conversation with You! Help us to apply what we have learned today, and re-study it often so as to keep improving our Relationship with Jesus and with You Father, through communication by Holy Spirit. Amen.

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