God Longs To Engage Us

"Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD (Isaiah 1:18).

What an invitation! The creator God, the Master of the Universe inviting people to interact with him. The God of the Torah is not a God of mystery. He may be invisible, but he desires to engage his creatures. No wonder so many religions have physical representations of their so-called gods. The silence of those gods requires something tangible for people to relate to. The true God needs no such things. Since he is real, we can interact with him. In fact he longs for it. If we look at the experiences of people throughout the Bible, we see men and women, boys and girls who knew God. This knowledge was not merely a psychological one. Whether they heard his voice, received a vision, or as in the case of Jacob wrestled with him, they actually interacted with God.

And yet even many Bible believers think that God doesn’t get personally involved in our lives. If he does, it is so subtle that we hardly notice it. Communication with him is reduced to ritualistic prayers that we expect no direct answer to and objective Bible study that is simply our figuring out of lofty life principles.

But prayer is talking to God. It is talking to a God who hears, who listens, and who responds. The author of the Bible is still alive. We are not left to figure things out on our own. He who inspired these writings, longs to interpret them to us.

The invitation above was to a people rebelling against God. If God so desired to interact with them, how much more does he desire a close intimate relationship with those who love him.