Over many years of ministry and through publishing several books, I’ve become aware of the potential to offend some folks by claiming a certain familiarity with God.

I do teach, speak and write as if I know Him — who He is, what He wants, what He is saying. I know it stretches boundaries of belief for some, who cannot imagine such familiarity except in those who are more spiritually important and powerful than me, a simple layman and redeemed child of God. I am not remotely close to the likes of Peter, John, James, or Paul. I get it. It’s a stretch for some. But it is my genuine experience of God.

My main goal is not to convert skeptics. I’m writing to those like myself who have discovered in the Bible a persistent, incredible invitation to intimacy with God. Who are looking for confirmation in a modern witness. Christians revere Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter, Paul and James. We treasure the witness they left us from having walked with Jesus, or with those who did.

Was intimacy with God just for the Apostles?

Was everything the Bible folks experienced only for a special crew?

And if it IS for today, how does one find that intimate familiarity with God?

If you’re one of those, I’m cheering you on. YES, it is real for today! This invitation comes from the God who created you for this very relationship, who has not changed, and who, after man sinned and gave God every reason to change His mind, instead offered the life of His Son to redeem us into this very relationship.

Intimacy with God begins simply by believing, and receiving the Spirit through whom intimacy with the Father and the Son comes. Each one of that “special crew” worked hard explaining that they were not a special privileged few. They were, as Paul wrote, simply firstfruits — just the first ones:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.

In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will — to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment — to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation.

When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

Ephesians 1:2-14

Paul praises the Father, who chose us and predestined us to become his children through Christ. Paul speaks of God’s glorious grace… freely given to all who accept the invitation to become his children.

What was shrouded in mystery is now revealed to God’s redeemed children.

I have heard preachers say, “God did not hide this truth FROM us, He hid it FOR us.”

Paul acknowledged that what he shares with us was a great mystery before: Who is God, and what is He after? But now, through Christ and His Spirit, the mystery is made plain. The veil separating us from our Holy God creator has been torn down. And the Tabernacle at which men once worshiped in Jerusalem has a new address: your heart.

The reason Christ died for your sin was to cleanse and qualify you for a life shared with God. Nowhere does Jesus, or any Biblical writer, insist that this life only begins in heaven. While heaven is the ultimate place of continuum for this life, the Bible writers spent much more time describing how this life with God was to be entered into and shared while we yet live on earth.

The Trinity are all involved in this shared life.

Paul opens his Ephesian letter with a wonderfully concise overview of the roles of the Trinity — Father, Son and Spirit — working together to bring you into their fellowship. God created you to be like him. And being like him requires a relationship that is up close and personal. It is in the context of committed, intimate relationship that God reveals Himself to His children. Like every good earthly father, training a child up “in the way he should go” happens through presence. Father and child together, day by day, season after season. There is no shortcut for parents to turn out healthy mature children, no substitute for the personal interaction between parent and child through the circumstances of life.

Familiarity with God makes sense when you understand God’s intentions.

The primary task and privilege of every Christian is getting to know God.

Knowing God begins with studying His Word to soak up what He reveals about His motives, and learning about His plans. He never intended nor desired to be a distant deity in the heavens, smiling benevolently down on His creation.

I challenge those who believe it is only appropriate to know God from a distance, read the Bible. All of it. In those pages you will find a God who persists in addressing us in the most intimate terms. He calls us his children. Even friends He in whom He confides, as I described in Chapter Three of They Will All Know Me.

My sheep know my voice, he insists. I am in you and you are in me, He proclaims. I know you by name, and you are mine, He says. Come to me, He says to the weary one, and I will give you rest.

These are but a tiny sampling of God’s own words and choices. I don’t offer lots of scripture quotes here because I hope you will go discover the hundreds more like them for yourself.

You will learn that our creative God is fired up by joy. It is His joy to be in the midst of His creation. Like every true gardener, his heart is satisfied by the hands-on relationship he has with the living things He plants, cares for and brings to full beauty.

So who I am to speak of what God has said to me? His child. His true daughter, redeemed by my savior and heavenly brother, Jesus Christ. One made holy enough to live close to God by the Holy Spirit, sent from the Father to disciple me in Learning To Be God’s Child, 101.

The first step to intimacy with God is believing God himself desires this and approves of it.