How can I feel closer to God?
Mark 14:36, Revelation 3:20
One of God’s central purposes in our fervent prayer lives is intimacy with him. God wants a love relationship with us, and prayer is a part of his wooing process while we are still aliens and strangers in this world of sin. Apart from Christ, we were infinitely far from God. Even worse, we didn’t want to be near God and were not seeking him in any way. On the contrary, Romans 3:10-11 says, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.” But as Augustine said in his classic book, Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and the heart of man is restless till it finds its rest in you.” Prayer is a significant remedy to the disease of our restless alienation and distance from God. By prayer, God draws us ever closer to him toward intimate fellowship.
Prayer is a significant remedy to the disease of our restless alienation and distance from God.
Jesus showed the way. He sought God every day very early in the morning in lonely places (Mark 1:35). He readily lifted his heart and hands to God in prayer at significant moments, as when he fed the five thousand or raised Lazarus from the dead. And in the garden of Gethsemane, when his soul was overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, he fell on his face and prayed, “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me.” The word “Abba” is Aramaic for “Daddy,” and it shows stunning intimacy with God. In using this term, he showed us how he wants us to draw close to God as well. Romans 8:15 says the Spirit of Christ within the heart of every true Christian also cries, “Abba, Father.” It is the Spirit’s work to give us foretastes of heaven, since he is the deposit guaranteeing our full inheritance (Ephesians 1:14). And our inheritance is God, for he said to Abraham, “Fear not, I am your very great inheritance” (Genesis 15:1). And he will say to us in heaven, “Now the dwelling of God is with man, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Revelation 21:3). So, the Spirit gives us a sense of heavenly intimacy in prayer, a foretaste of closeness.
Revelation 3:20 also teaches this. Jesus speaks to the lukewarm church of Laodicea to call them into passionate fellowship with him. Tragically he is on the outside and knocking to get in. But he makes a tremendous promise to all his people. If any one of us should hear his voice while he is knocking and open the door, he will come in and eat with that person and he with him. He promises to enter… to come within the deepest part of our souls. This is a promise of intimate fellowship, for the image of eating clearly depicts a close relationship. Jesus said to his apostles the night before he died for their sins, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). His statement is extremely intense in the original language, a word doubled in the Greek as if to say, “With the greatest passion I have yearned for this meal.”
Tragically, there is none of us on earth who can match his passion, to have the same desire for fellowship with him as he desires to have with us. Therefore, Revelation 3:20 is a constantly upward call of God toward greater and greater intimacy with Christ. Within the verse itself, Jesus felt the necessity to be redundant: “I will eat with him, and he with me.” Why say it twice, if not to show the intensity of his desire to feast with us?!
So, prayer is the way by which we can spiritually feast with God and with Christ. We can invite him into our minds and hearts deeper and deeper. We can present our hunger to him to let him satisfy it with all that he is. We can eat with him, and he can eat with us. And though it is a tiny fraction of the full inheritance of feasting we will have in heaven, it is worth pursuing now, daily, through Christ, by his Spirit.