Dale:
The first thing we understand is God loves us. Many times when that understanding comes, it helps us to ask the question, why? And then God expresses His love to us more. He loves you and He loves what you do. He's there, He's a part of it. It boils down to, we come to realize that God is in everything, in everybody, He is everywhere. He loves you so much that He sent His Son with a pattern for you to walk in one step at a time. He's saying, come on, take a step. Follow my Son. I taught my Son how to walk. I'll teach you.
Ron:
A lot of people won't open up to the Lord because they are worried about what they're going to have to do or have to measure up to. If I open up to a walk with God or open up to the Lord, I got to quit my drinking and I've got to quit my cussing. I've got to go to church, got all these rules in their mind.
They don't open up because of requirements in their mind. And the truth is, no person on earth can walk with God if it's up to them. You open up to the Lord because someone's told you that He loves you, that He'll accept you, that Jesus Christ died for your sins. He's the one that's going to do the enabling and the creating in your heart. Actually, it better be that because if you try to do it, you're going on the wrong path.
Debbie:
I often think of the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve were in His presence in the garden before they fell. All they had was to know the Lord and talk to Him and walk with Him the cool of the day. They didn't have to do anything. They just loved Him and just walked with Him.
Ron:
I think what happened back in the garden when Adam and Eve fell is something happened in their being, annihilated them from the Lord. Ever since then, the scripture says men have tried to work their way back up to have a relationship with the Lord. There's no working your way back up. There's just a simple opening up and crying out to Him and saying, Lord, I want to have a relationship with You. I don't even know who You are. I don't feel like I'm worthy to have a relationship with You.
I don't know that You exist. I just believe You exist. I want a relationship with You. Lord, meet me. That's all it's required. That's it. If it's more than that we're in trouble because we don't have more than that. He has given us a will, so we have a choice. When you start out in a walk with the Lord, you don't know Him.
You've never met Him. All you know about Him is what people have told you. You have to start from that premise. If you're honest, don't get religious with Him or anything, but you just go, Lord, I don't know who You are. I never met You. I open up. I ask You in my heart, come in my heart, show me, Lord, who You are.
There's some men and women that I like to read about because they lived before the scriptures were written, like Enoch. What's so cool about that to me is that they didn't have any of the trappings, because the scriptures aren't trappings, but our mind makes them that way. Their religious spirit makes them that way.
Enoch walked with God to a point where he was translated, and he didn't have a Bible or scriptures, he just had a relationship. To me, that's where the Lord's taking us, is He's taking us back to a place of pure relationship.
Debbie:
Think about Abraham. He was a friend of God. Think about David. All he did was he worshiped, and he sang psalms, and he talked to the Lord. His whole relationship with the Lord was a personal relationship with Him. And when he blew it in Psalm 51, when he made the mistake that he made, did God reject him? No. They just had such a simple relationship, so intimate. Does that mean you isolate yourself? No. But you learn to relate to other people that know the Lord too, that love the Lord.
Ken:
It has to be real and it has to be simple. And that's exactly what Adam and Eve had. Now, I don't see any place in the Word where they were required to work out anything. They simply had a relationship. God wants that kind of a relationship with us.
Dale:
He's finally getting what He wants, the simplicity of worship to only Him, the simplicity of love only to Him. Just those two simple things. He is getting all of it. It's when we come to that place that I love the Lord with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength, with all my labor, with all my thoughts, with anything I own, all my money, everything I love the Lord with. He had to send His Son to teach us how to do that.
Debbie:
And it doesn't matter who we've been, who we are, or anything. Look at Paul. Paul was killing those that believed in Christ. He felt that he was doing the right thing until he got knocked off his donkey and the Lord met him. The Lord said, I'm the one that you're persecuting, and He revealed Himself to Paul, and when Paul saw Him and knew Him, he was broken, seeing the Lord.
Ken:
When Jesus was in the wilderness, He was tested three times. In the very last thing he said to the enemy, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And the importance of feeding your spirit on the Word of God is really important in this process of walking with Him.
