One of the greatest challenges, I believe, for those that seek God, is to understand how to reach him. In fact, that is the central issue, the one primary question.

Here are some examples of responses that I have heard to this question: How can we reach God? How can we come to him?

1. Well, I believe that if I am a good person, then someday God will judge me and allow me to enter heaven.

In this case, the person is trying to be “good”. Of course, the problem with this way of reaching God is that it is based on our sense of what the word good means, not God’s sense of what good means. God is a perfect God. He is a holy God, completely righteous and without so much as a blemish. So for each of us, even with one blemish, we are no longer holy. We are no longer perfect, so we cannot be with God.

2. We must pray to him five times a day. We must offer money to the poor. We must take a trip to a holy city and walk around a stone several times…

Or said another way, we must do the good works that our religion requires. This is what will allow us to come to God.

In this second case, you have a person who is trying to reach God by their good religious works. They want to not just be a good person, but they want to be a good religious person, doing lot of good religious works. Their religion has said that they need to do X to reach God, so they do X. Their religion has said that they need to do Y to reach God, so they do Y.

But of course, the question in this case is whether or not we have done enough religious works. Have I really followed everything that my religion requires? Is there more that I should do? And the answer is always, invariably, yes. There is more that I could do. There is more that I should do. This person is left with doubt and continues to struggle in their attempt to reach God through their religious works.

3. I believe. I have faith. And because of this, God will allow me to come to him.

In this case, the main question is this: What is it that you believe in? In what are you placing your faith? You say you have faith, but in what?

This is the primary question of our day for those who seek God, and not surprisingly, it was the same question that the people of Biblical times struggled with as well. The Apostle Paul risked his life, over and over, to be able to communicate the answer to his question to people everywhere that he went and even when they had believed what he had said, they continued to struggle.

Case in point: Paul had taken the message of Christ to the Galatian churches, those in Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. Paul spoke of the kingdom of God and our ability to come to God through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Paul told them that they must put their faith in that sacrifice so that they would be purified, that we may be forgiven so that we may be seen by God as clean, holy and perfect in the eyes of God.

Many people in those cities had believed and followed Paul’s teaching, and yet now there Judaizers who were coming to those churches, telling them that they must, essentially, also become Jewish, following all of the the Law given by God to the Israelites.

In short, the Judaizers were saying that these new believers needed to do all of the good religious works to be saved. They needed to follow the Law. They needed to do all of the things that the Law requires. And some of the Galatians were convinced.

Why?

Because there is something within us that wants to tell God how we will reach him. Not listen to God tell us what we must do or how we can know him. No, we want to continue to listen to the lie that Satan told Adam and Eve in the garden, that we can be like him. We can call the shots. We can be our own gods.

So we create our own religions, and we invent our own ways, and we create our own promises. We do everything except what God himself has told us to do.

God has called us to receive the promise that he has given to us. Paul says it this way:

He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

Galatians 3:14

God blessed Abraham with the blessing of knowing him. God would be Abraham’s God, and Abraham would be the first amongst God’s people. God would be Abraham’s inheritance, his great reward and that promise would be given not only to him but also to his seed. Not seeds, but seed, and that promise would culminate in the promise arriving to the point of the Seed of Abraham, namely Jesus, who would fulfill the promise of God, making God known to all people.

God did all of the work. It is his plan, and it is all for his glory. Not ours. Nothing happened in our relationship with God because we made it happen. Believing this would nullify the death of Christ on the cross.

But that is exactly the intent of many people today. They prefer to nullify God’s plan. They prefer to nullify the death of Christ on the cross and instead become their own god. But this is not the plan of the one, true God. No, this plan will pass away along with the people that believe their own lies and pass them along to others. The only plan that will last forever is the promise that was originally given to Abraham and that which has reached us even today. It is the promise of the Spirit that we receive by faith in Christ, our creator, redeemer, and king, the one that has saved us and whom we will serve forever.