Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from “Life in Devotion” by Ana Avíla, releasing next month from B&H Publishing.
Reading about the need for relationships can be discouraging. We might have tried to believe that “we don’t need anyone to be happy” as a way to protect ourselves from the pain people have caused us. Too many of us have been hurt by those who were supposed to love us. And, if we’re honest, we will recognize that we have also wounded the image bearers of God with whom we share life. That is the sad dilemma of every human being. We long to be known and loved, to know and love, but we’re very bad at it.
Not everything is lost, though. The God who has always been loving wants to teach us how to love and be loved. And the way He does that is by bringing us into a deep relationship with Him, a relationship of love and joy through which we are transformed and able to love others as we’ve been loved.
When we understand that the most important relationship we have is our relationship with our Creator, everything else starts to fall into place. This, of course, doesn’t mean that once we acknowledge God, all our human interactions will be perfect or even pleasant; it means that we experience God’s eternal fountain of love. This love satisfies us and enables us to give others the love we have received. We will be free to open up and free to forgive. We might still get hurt, but we won’t be deserted. “For my father and my mother have forsaken me,” writes the Psalmist, “but the Lord will take me in” (Psalm 27:10). The apostle praises like this: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
Our relationship with God is so fundamental and so beautiful that Jesus calls it eternal life: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). True eternal life, the abundant life we were made for, is to know God, not in the sense of merely knowing things about Him, but in the sense of being close to Him, understanding Him, and trusting Him. Most importantly, this includes being known and embraced by Him.
This is not what usually comes to mind when we talk about eternal life. We tend to understand the concept as “the afterlife,” where death and suffering will be no more, where we will inhabit a beautiful place in perfect joy. The Bible, of course, teaches about a day when all our tears will be wiped away, and when “neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
But the God of the Bible’s main concern is not to bring us to a place where we can live comfortably, free of the challenges of the broken life we’ve all experienced. That will be amazing, but there is something even better: the God of the Bible wants to bring us to Himself, because only in Him can find “fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).
He loves us so much that He is righteously angered when we exchange this incomparable delight with anything else, like a father would be horrified when his child goes away with a stranger who offers her a lollipop instead of running back home to safety. This is why the prophet admonished: “There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land” (Hosea 4:1). The people of God dismissed His love and suffered the consequences. We all do, and our Father is not indifferent about it.
Those of us who have been brought up in cultures that are heavily influenced by Christianity might be used to hearing that God is our Father. This truth should amaze us, but too often we take it for granted or ignore its implications. In one sense, God being our Father simply means we come from Him: He made us, and we belong to Him as creatures. If we think about it this way, every human could say God is his or her Father (Malachi 2:10).
But through all of Scripture, we have both hints and very obvious statements that God wants us to go deeper. It is not enough to simply say, “Hey, thank you for making me! Now I’m going to go ahead and live as if you don’t exist, unless I’m in deep trouble.” Through the prophet Jeremiah, for example, God promised a day when the exiled people of Israel would turn to Him and be restored: “I said, how I would set you among my sons, and give you a pleasant land, a heritage most beautiful of all nations. And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me” (Jeremiah 3:19). This shows us a glimpse of the deeper sense in which God wants to parent humans: He wants to provide for them, and He wants His children to obey Him.
The Bible is clear that not everyone will have this kind of relationship with God, because not everyone wants it (John 1:12; Galatians 4: 6-7; 1 John 3:1-7). Still, we’re all invited to come. That’s what Christianity is about: broken people who are welcomed to join the family of God. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” writes the apostle, “who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1: 3-6).
We were not made only to have relationships with other human beings, as wonderful as that can be. God made us to be in a relationship with Him; He wants to bring us into the loving relationship of the Trinity. The Bible does not teach about a God who set the universe in motion and then let go to see what would happen. He is a God who sustains. He is a God who guides, cares, consoles, and protects. He is near, and He listens to the cry of the weak. He not only loves, but He is love.
It is true that, in this life, we can’t see God directly and enjoy our relationship with Him in the complete freedom we’ll have one day. We are right to long for the day when we’ll be able to see Him face to face, just as He is (1 John 3:2; 4:20; 1 Corinthians 13:12). But we’d be wrong to stop there. God is our Father now. God sustains us now. He guides, cares, consoles, and protects us now. God listens to us now. He loves us. We might “see in a mirror dimly,” but we can see. And we can be delighted and transformed by that sight. That’s what it means to live a life in devotion.
Ana Ávila was a longtime editor at Coalición por el Evangelio (the Spanish-speaking sister of The Gospel Coalition). She holds a degree in clinical biochemistry and is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. She lives in Guatemala with her husband, a church planter, and their children.
Related posts:
Ministering Assurance to the Chronic Doubter 
New resource helps parents of teens tackle ‘discipleship deficit’ at home 
FIRST-PERSON: The curious case of Demas 
FIRST-PERSON: Is God at home in you? 
Survey: 2/3 of churchgoers invited someone to church 
FIRST-PERSON: Sunlight & shadows 
Women’s discipleship underscored at NOBTS event 
FIRST-PERSON: Missionary heroes
