REALITY‭ ‬2:‭ ‬God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal‬‬

God created humanity for a love relationship with Him.  More than anything else, God wants us to love Him with our total being (see Mark 12:30).  He is the One who pursues the love relationship with us.  We do not naturally seek God on our own initiative.  Everything we are experiencing from God comes in response to His invitation.  In fact, He reached out to us dramatically by sending His Son Jesus (see John 3:16).  God clearly demonstrated how valuable the love relationship is to Him when He permitted Jesus to die an excruciating death on a cross in order to make a relationship with us possible (see Romans 5:8).

This intimate love relationship with God is both extremely personal and practical.  This is probably the most important factor in knowing and doing the will of God.  If your love relationship with God is not as it should be, nothing else will be in order.

God took the lead in inviting Moses into a personal and dynamic relationship with Him.  Moses had led the sheep he was tending to “Horeb, the mountain of God” (Exodus 3:1).  Moses may have come to the mountain for a time of worship, but God interrupted Moses’ plans by encountering him at the burning bush.  God told Moses that He would go with Moses into Egypt.  Many texts throughout Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy illustrate how God pursued a continuing love relationship with Moses.  Here is one example:

The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain and stay there so that I may give you the stone tablets with the law and commands I have written for their instruction”… When Moses went up the mountain, the cloud covered it.  The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai…Moses entered the cloud as he went up the mountain, and he remained on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights.  (Exodus 24:12, 15-16, 18)

Time and time again God invited Moses to talk with Him and to be with Him.  God initiated and maintained a growing relationship with Moses.  This fellowship was based on love, and God daily fulfilled His purposes through Moses. The relationship with God was extremely practical as God guided and provided for His people under Moses’ leadership.  (For other examples of the love relationship, you may want to read Exodus 33:7-34:10 or Numbers 12:6-8.)