Developing a Relationship with God

In this post I will continue sharing some of the viewpoints of Fr. Zacharias
which I, myself, have found uplifting. So, let’s consider the following: developing a relationship with God. On this topic, Father Zacharias writes:

When we follow the Lord, we have only one care: to please Him and thank Him in all we do. But we must first establish a true relationship. We must cultivate the humility of the Publican and the determined repentance of the Prodigal Son. Each man’s relationship with God is unique. For God has created each in such a way that his particular relationship to his creator will fulfill and perfect him. He must therefore make it his only mission and purpose to build a strong relationship with Christ and to be in constant dialogue with Him. All our human relationships will derive strength from this relationship with God, and we will begin to see everything, every element of the created world in the light of this relationship. If we make it our concern to improve our relationship with Christ, deep repentance will spring forth within us. The more we grow in Christ, the more clearly we will know our poverty, and our inspiration will always be renewed. We will fear nothing because nothing will be able to separate us from His love.

In the world to come, we will continue this relationship with our Saviour which we have built up in this life. We will be judged according to our love, according to each word of Christ contained in the Gospel. Just as He asked Peter after His Resurrection, ‘Lovest thou me?’ so in the age to come He will ask each one of us the same question, and we too will reply, ‘Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee.’ But the strength and boldness of our reply will depend entirely on the depth of our relationship with the Person of Christ. Whatever attitude we adopt in this life will continue with us beyond the grave. This is clear from the Gospel account of the judgment of the righteous, who utter the same humble thought which nourished their repentance: ‘Lord, when did we anything good upon earth? To Thee be glory, to us the shame.’ We must learn this humble attitude now, and then we will be able to live eternally with the Lord. Arrogance and self-justification have no place in Him, but they accompany us into eternity, and lead towards eternal separation from Him. (The Engraving of Christ in Man’s Heart, Stavropegic Monastery of St. John the Baptist, Essex 2017, pp.18-9)

So now the question for us to ponder is: how do we put this into action? How do we work to develop our relationship with God? I believe prayer of repentance is of prime importance in achieving this. Let me begin to explain by first offering a definition of prayer. One way we could define prayer is the expression of a relationship between two reason-endowed personal beings. By two reason-endowed personal beings, we mean God and man.

Prayer has a connection with theology because theology describes the relationship between God and man. Man was made “in the image and after the likeness of God” (Gen. 1:26); yet this was distorted by the sin of our first-parents, Adam and Eve. In listening to the serpent,
they were deceived and disobeyed the commandment of God. So they offended God and fell away from the life they knew in paradise. They distorted the original beauty of their resemblance to God and fragmented their relationship with Him. As time progressed and generations of men have come and gone, sin has multiplied, the distortion of our original beauty has been augmented, and the same is true for our relationship with God.

So, then, there are several questions that can be raised: How should this relationship between God and man be expressed? Who is God? And how do we approach Him? What is God’s attitude towards His fallen creature—man? And of what should man’s response consist? St. John the Theologian tells us who God is. He writes: “God is love” (I John 4:8). We know that with God there is “no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). He has not changed His attitude towards us; but we have sinned and have disfigured both our being and our relationship
with God. God continues to be Who He is—Love. His attitude towards us can be briefly expressed in the following words of St. John the Theologian: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (IJohn 4:10).

So, now, how do we respond to this? How do we approach God? If it were another human being we had offended we would approach with shame, a humble attitude, a desire for reconciliation, and a readiness to make some recompense. And if someone we may have happened to offend would continue to love us and do good to us, we would feel all the more embarrassed and humbled. If we now apply this to our relationship with God – Who is not our equal, but infinitely transcends our being and has done so much good for us – what can we say? Is it possible to express in words what shame and humility, what longing for reconciliation and readiness to make recompense should we approach Him with? As Fr. Zacharias said, “We must cultivate the humility of the Publican and the determined repentance of the Prodigal Son.” Then, “deep repentance will spring forth within us.”

So we need to struggle for this and as an example for such all we need to do is turn to the prayers of the Church. What we hear in the services and what we see in our traditional Prayer Book is “the humility of the Publican and the determined repentance of the Prodigal Son” and “deep repentance”. It is in the prayers of our Church that we learn, so-to-speak, the language of prayer – the language with which we approach God, and develop a relationship with Him. In this manner we hope to acquire the attitude of the righteous, “who utter the humble thought which nourished their repentance: ‘Lord, when did we anything good upon earth? To Thee be glory, to us the shame.’ We must learn the humility of this attitude now, and then we will be able to live eternally with the Lord.” Amen.