A person would have to be God to satisfy us! And how could he help? We’re flesh and blood. God, if he exists, is some distant, unknowable Spirit. The thought of a friendship with God is ridiculous.

Or is it? In the vast regions of the unknown almost anything could exist – even a God ready to surprise us by breaking into our lives. If there really is an Intelligence behind creation, why were we made with deep desires that could never be satisfied? Is God playing cruel games, or were those desires for the perfect partner planted within because he wants to meet those needs by becoming your closest friend? Could it be that God seems cold and impersonal only because you hardly know him? If God does not have feelings or cannot love or speak, that would make us more capable than our Creator. That’s unthinkable. If we have these abilities, our Maker can do all that and more. God is warm.

But God is a killjoy, spoiling our fun! Or is it sin that ends up killing joy – promising so much and then giving bad feelings later, hangover, the downer, the unwanted baby, the sex disease, the rejection, the shame, the pain, the guilt? Speak to people who have been hurt by someone’s sin – the victims of theft, violence, addiction, divorce, hate, selfishness. And what about those who find they cannot stop doing bad things that they once liked doing but now hate? Ask any of these people whether God’s ways kill joy or make joy.

But God is dull and boring! Are you sure? The God who can do anything – things so wonderful that we cannot even think of them? Wouldn’t it be a never-ending adventure – a life full of surprises – to be in love with the one Person who can always exceed your wildest dreams?

This exciting Person, whose never-ending friendship and limitless power are able to fill the unfillable hole within us, is the perfect partner you ache for.

But I need someone I can touch. God knows your every need.

The greatest romance

You are passionately loved. To other people you might be just one of thousands, but not to the One who made you. In the eyes of the one Person who really matters, you are special. You mean so much to him that what God wants with you is like a perfect marriage.

Believing in someone does not make you married. Neither does believing in God give us the right to live with God. It is not enough to walk down a church. True marriage is believing in someone so completely that you give all that you are, and all that you have, to that person for life. Your Maker is eager to do that for you, but for marriage to work, both partners must do this.

If a street kid married a millionaire, she would get his riches and he would get her debts. He would take on her shame and she would gain his honor. For this to happen, she must turn from other men and join herself and her few possessions to this man in marriage. Everything he owns would become hers, if she lets everything of hers become his.

Similarly, if we give to God everything we have – our time, abilities, friendships, and everything we own – he will flood us with a generosity that only God can show. We hand over to Jesus the shameful things we have done, giving up even our favorite sin. It becomes his. That’s what killed him. In return, Jesus’ sinless perfection becomes ours, so that we can enjoy the closest friendship with the Holy God.

By becoming one with God, we give God the right to do whatever he likes with everything we own, but the Owner of the universe makes his riches available to us. We trade our abilities, for his unlimited power; our attempts to run our lives, for his unlimited wisdom. We give him our time on earth and he gives us eternity.

In every way you gain from God’s offer and he loses. But God is in love with you. He wants this holy union more than you can imagine. Do not make him sad by holding back.

A marriage made in heaven

The following is like a wedding in which you give yourself to the Lord, and so make him your God. In turn, the King of kings makes you worthy to become spiritually one with him, and he promises to give himself completely to you. If the following describes your feelings, you can make it your prayer by reading it to God.

Dear God,

It hurts to admit how bad I’ve been. Even though I have caused you sorrow, you sent your Son who gave his life and defeated death so that you could treat me as if I had never done a wrong thing in my life.

You have given yourself totally for me and I long to return your great love, by pleasing you with all I have. I take you to be my God from this day on. I will love, honor and obey you. I yield to your loving protection and guidance. I surrender my sins to you, giving up even those sins I like. And in return I receive your pardon (forgiveness) and purity and your power to live a life worthy of you.

Thank you that we have now begun a friendship so close and so powerful that not even death can break it.

The Lord of heaven and earth knows your secret thoughts. If you prayed the full prayer honestly, you have entered a new spiritual world. That’s hard to believe. Everything seems the same. But not from heaven’s view. Your life-changing ‘marriage’ has begun.

The proof lies not in your feelings (such as whether you feel guilty or happy), but in the honesty of the Holy God. He has given his word (in the Bible) that whoever turns from sin and looks to Jesus to be made clean, has a totally new future. God is no liar!

If this is the first time you have sincerely offered such a prayer, you need further support immediately. E-mail me now. Just a few words from you allows me to pray for you, and to send you more information.

Click the icon, or E-mail by the method of your choice to love@net-burst.net

The perfect partner

In old-fashioned romance, young lovers would let go of reality and let their dreams run wild. Not surprisingly, though they were often not religious people, they found themselves using religious words to describe their hopes and feelings:

* She idolizes him

* He adores her (adore is another word for worship)

* You’re divine

* He’s heavenly

* He worships the ground she walks on

* A marriage made in heaven

As these people discovered, hidden below the surface of our mind is the awareness that religion and the greatest love we could wish for, somehow belong together.

The ache deep within you will remain until you enjoy a thrilling and fulfilling oneness with the One who made you. God is the perfect partner you yearn for. Yet his very perfection makes him unapproachable. The Almighty is frighteningly pure, totally good, completely without fault. We are not. God is so perfect, he is like blinding light. We are like darkness compared to him. And darkness is destroyed in the presence of light.

Back to reality

We come crashing back to reality. There is an answer, but to appreciate how wonderful the answer is, we must consider the size of the problem. Facing the problem is so unpleasant that we want to block it out, like people in a dark prison suddenly seeing bright sunlight. Yet facing truth will free you like nothing else can.

If we went into a hospital and met a doctor sterilized for surgery, he could not touch us. We may seem clean, but not by the standards he must keep. We are like that in the presence of the holy Lord. We may be as good as the next person, but by the unreachable perfection of his standards we are moral lepers – spiritually diseased. God must keep his distance.

That seems an over-reaction. Being surrounded by imperfection all our lives has clouded our ability to see ourselves clearly. Deep down we suspect the worst but we run from it like people refusing cancer checks, even though early treatment brings life, not death.

Part of us feels good when we hear of a terrible crime that we would never do. And we take secret pleasure at discovering the moral failures of people who had seemed to be good. It is not unkindness that drives us to feel this way, so much as a desperate attempt to drown the screams of our own dirty conscience. We try to fill our lives with endless activity so that we do not have to think of it, yet deep down we know we stand guilty in the presence of a holy God. Even when we think we have pushed it out of our minds, it controls us more than we realize. One way to ease guilt feelings is to find fault with anyone who might give the appearance of living a better life than us. So we find fault, seldom realizing why we do it. Some of us get so desperate as to even try accusing God of doing wrong. If only we could muddy his name, we could feel better about our own failures.

We reject God’s laws, hurt each other, and then have the cheek to blame God for the mess. ‘Why do the innocent suffer?’ we complain, conveniently forgetting the times our anger, greed and lies have hurt the innocent. Of course, there is an amount of hurt we say is not so bad, and the hurt we have caused just happens to be the sort of thing we say is not too bad. It is like failing a test at school and then moving the pass mark to make our own score look good. A holy God could play no part in such dishonesty.

If God is a God of love, why does he allow all the evil in this world? For anyone not blinded by his/her own hypocrisy, the reason is obvious. God longs to destroy all evil, and the time is fast approaching when he will (2 Peter 3:9-13). But how, without being totally unfair, could he do this without destroying you and me?

(Don’t worry! This story has a happy ending! There are rich rewards for those with the courage to face facts we inwardly know to be true. God can make us more beautiful than we dare dream. So we have no need to act like burn patients smashing mirrors.)

Becoming beautiful

Should we change and never so much as think another wrong thought, it wouldn’t help. If having sex made you sick with AIDS, deciding to never again have sex will not heal you. Having sin in our past is like having AIDS in our blood. No-one can change the past.

Some things would be wrong for God to do. Consider a man in court found guilty of dangerous driving. The judge happens to be his close friend. Would it be right for the judge to say his guilty friend is innocent? Or could he fine the offender less because he is his friend? Only a worthless judge could permit law-breaking or show favoritism.

And God is our Judge, because there is no such freak as a self-made person. None of us decided to be born, or can even design our children’s fingerprints. God made the brains we think with. The Lord is maker – and therefore owner – of everything we have ever used or abused. We owe him everything. Like it or not, that means we must answer to God for our every action. Our selfishness has hurt people. It would be an outrage for the Supreme Judge to ignore our wrongdoing. We’re the ones who bellow at God when we see other people do wrong and go unpunished. So although God loves you more than words can describe, he must declare you guilty. And justice demands the penalty be paid.

That leaves just two alternatives. Either you pay the penalty, or someone pays it for you.

It would be folly for me to consider taking your punishment. I have my own wickedness to answer for. But the Son of God, two thousand years ago, left his heavenly judgment seat and came to earth. He became the only human who has lived a perfect life. In the brightness of his purity, our best attempts at doing good look like mud. So when Christ willingly suffered the pain and shame of a criminal’s death, something of earth-shaking importance was happening. The innocent Son of God was taking upon himself full blame for your sin.

Physical torment was almost swallowed by spiritual agony. On the cross the only person who has enjoyed eternal oneness with God cried, ‘My God, why have you abandoned me?’ Father God had to desert his beloved Son, treating him as the worst person on earth, until the horrific penalty was paid in full. After suffering the full penalty of our wickedness, Christ broke through to life again, blasting a path for us to follow.

You are the focus of this heart-stopping display of love, the greatest love the universe has known. Will you continue to reject it?

Enjoy the greatest love affair

By dying in our place Jesus has made it legal for anyone, though guilty, to go completely free. But there is something you must do before you can walk free.

To be friends with the Lord of the universe; to have God’s power flowing through you; to reach the heights you were made for, requires a response from you. To explain, let’s return to the dangerous driver.

A judge would have to fine his friend for breaking the law. It is quite legal, however, to offer a friend money to pay the fine. It is then up to the offender whether he accepts the judge’s gift.

It would break Jesus’ heart if you ignore his offer to suffer for you. That means you must pay the penalty yourself. That’s the last thing he wants. God is anxious to save you from the horrors of hell and give you a fulfilling, life-changing partnership with him. But you must accept the gift. That involves admitting that you need the gift – that only Jesus’ sacrifice can remove your guilt.

There is one more consideration. What if the dangerous driver has no regrets? If he plans to continue breaking road rules, he is a danger to others. It would be wrong to let him go free.

Similarly, it would be wrong for God to forgive us until our attitude to sin has changed.

I tremble at the thought of the countless thousands of people who have tragically missed this point. A second picture will confirm its importance.

You are trapped in a sea of sin. Bottomless waters lap towering cliffs. No one can tread water forever. The depths terrify you, except for one spot. You have found a place where the deadly waters seem nice. How can anyone take seriously your cries for help if you are splashing around enjoying yourself? And what is the point of saving someone who is hell-bent on diving back into the deadly sea after every rescue attempt? No one with a suicidal commitment to a sin can be saved.

This doesn’t mean you must start living a sinless life to enjoy forgiveness. We are in sin’s death grip. Only Jesus can break it. But do you want him to? Do you want to be rid forever of your favorite sin?

God honors us by respecting our wishes. If we don’t want him to be our God – letting him be in total control of our lives – it saddens and horrifies him, but in his gentleness he will let us go our own way. No one has suffered the pain of rejected love like God.

You can never be forced to love someone. Nor can you be forced to desire purity of heart. The Giver has done all he can. It’s over to you.

To ignore our Creator is the height of selfishness. He is the Source of every good thing we ever enjoyed. (Even sin’s fizzle of pleasure, that slippery shadow of the real thing grabbed while opposing him, is possible only because of our God-given ability to experience pleasure.) Every wonderful thing we take for granted comes from him. He even holds our atoms together. He looks after even those who ignore him, giving them time after time to respond to his astounding love. They don’t want God to interfere, but he does anyhow – showering them with a thousand soft, warm, beautiful, delicious, refreshing, thrilling and uplifting gifts. At death, however, those who on earth wanted to be free from God are finally given their wish. That’s the final horror. To be cut off forever from the Source of all love, beauty, fulfillment and joy is something too terrifying to think about.

If you want to be finished with ungodly ‘pleasures’, however, and you rely on the fact that Jesus died for your sins, you allow God to do what he longs to do – pay your debt to justice and credit to your account the moral perfection of Christ. That makes you so pure in God’s eyes that you need no longer be kept out of his presence. You can then begin an endless friendship with the most wonderful Person in the universe.

Would you now like to pray to give your life to God? Yes

Do you feel it is too soon to give your life to God? If so, choose one of the following:

• What’s in it for me?

• I want to think about it some more

More Help . . .

Spiritual Survival

• Developing Your Love Affair With God

Other Deeply Moving Pages About God’s Love

• Love Beyond Your Wildest Dreams

Becoming a Winner

• Glorious victory over degrading habits

I’d love to hear from you: love@net-burst.net