“We love because He first loved us.”
(1 John 4:19)
Dear Friends –
When you are looking for love and someone takes an interest in you and they make the first move, you can’t help but be flattered and so you reciprocate a desire to get to know them to see if a genuine attraction exists. You meet for coffee and chitchat through the essentials until dates and 
further outings bring forth your common interests and pleasures until it reaches true admiration for one another… or it doesn’t. It takes time to discover the truth of another person and friendships of any kind start small, usually with a common interest, and grow and deepen depending on the amount of time and desire we want to invest in building up that relationship. Everybody wants to be loved and live in a pleasant environment, and while all our daily contacts bring us into casual friendships with neighbors, fellow students or co-workers, we do our best to be civil and polite to all, maintaining the status quo. If we didn’t talk to anybody, smile at a neighbor once in awhile, or offer assistance to a co-worker in dire need we would soon be labeled a numbskull of sorts and hardly anyone would want to be our friend. Obviously our positive response to others is essential for happy life, but not just response, sometimes we must instigate the desire for a relationship.
Taking the initiative to connect with another means something has sparked your attention and so you look for an opening to introduce yourself and wait and watch to see what ignites. These tactics to further human friendships are exactly the methods we need to consider when we think of establishing a relationship with Almighty God… something has sparked our imagination to the wonderment of His Being… but how do you talk to someone who can’t talk back? First, you gather all the information you can acquire about Him and the best place to start for that is with The Bible, and that will take time, don’t give up. The Bible is His words to us 
through many voices from Himself to the prophets in The Old Testament and to those of His Son, Jesus Christ, and all of Christ’s apostles in The New Testament. You get a very definitive picture of just who God is and while it may be awesome in many different ways, the varied intensity of His character is a great conversation starter and so you begin with questions to Him; ideas you can’t quite fathom and as you mull them over in your mind that is the beginning of meditation that God will enter into and guide your thoughts to logical reasoning in time… bits and pieces will come to you, as well as some answers may come to mind with resolve, and naturally new inquisitions will always arise. God is knowable… please believe that… and to cement that foundation of faith in your soul, realize as Creator of our natural world, His generous love for us provided lavishly to our every need displaying not only the complexity of His powers, but primarily His tremendous love that graciously satiates our every material need with such variety! When you can see and appreciate His hand in the natural world, then take it one step further to the supernatural world where He, and He alone, is the only source to provide for your spiritual happiness now and for all eternity.
As your knowledge of God increases, you will be on the path to establish a personal relationship with Him… yes, a personal relationship with Almighty God, your Heavenly Father just as Christ bid we do. Let it
become second nature to included Him in all your thoughts and activities so that by such inclusion there will develop an awareness of your doing His will, and by sharing your life with Him you will be loving Him who loved you first. That’s all He wants of you is for you to recognize and admire Him as your Creator and Heavenly Father; to ask for His Divine Providence for He wants to give to your every need; and most important, return His love by doing only what is good… make Him proud of you. The more you seek to know Him, the more He will reveal Himself; the more you follow His rules which are for your benefit, not His, the more at peace you will find your spirit. God does not disappoint, He is always faithful, and He loves you so very much for you are His child… so love Him back… it’s really not that hard once you get to know Him!
“Oh God, send me Your Spirit
to teach me what I am and what You are.”
Saint John Vianney
Be earnest in your desire to know God with consistent study and prayer. Keep your mind open and listen with your heart for God will “speak” to you in ways you could never imagine for you have asked and He will give. Once you experience the surety of His existence, keep the conversation going for you will find yourself, as you discover Him.
WORDS TO MAKE YOUR OWN
(Biblical history is repeated worldwide every day; the utterances and acts of the ancients are no different from that which the hearts and minds of peoples today speak or do… learn from history. What they said or did in their relationship with God could be precisely the same churnings in your own soul, and what God said or did with them may very well be the exact words you need to hear… make them your own.)
Establishing a personal relationship with Almighty God may be ignited by curiosity, an uncontrollable turmoil that has entered one's life, the tragic news of a fatal disease, or many other sudden drastic changes that need help… miraculous help… and always immediately. Despair is knocking at the door so we turn to God when we have no other options left, and even if we don’t believe in God, we feel maybe now is the time to check Him out and let Him prove He really exists. In a panic mode like a swimmer drowning from a wrecked boat on the sea of life, we look for a life preserver anywhere to cling to, but nothing is in sight; hopeless, we begin to pray to that invisible 
God in the heavens. Almighty God may be the court of last resorts for some, but it doesn’t matter how we get to Him initially, the important requirement is that we do get to Him… that we do pray/talk to Him asking for help, and depending on the sincerity of our plea, God will respond. His response is the beginning of your faith and trust in Him and regardless of how the positive results occur in your life, your continued awareness of the strength, calmness, and cognizance of His Divine Presence accomplishing efforts on your behalf will continue if your interest in Him is genuine and sustained. You will have made a conscious commitment to believe in your Heavenly Father and thus establishing a rebirth for your soul,
you are no longer a child of the world but of the Creator, Almighty God The Father. Such do Christians acknowledge in Baptism as being reborn in the image of God, and thus they aspire to follow in the image of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, who exemplified and spoke of The Father during His time on earth.
Once this commitment to maintain a personal relationship with your Heavenly Father has taken root in your being, hold on to that desire and sustain it by repeating over and over to yourself Saint Paul’s words to a newly formed Christian community:
“What you have done is put aside your old self with its past deeds and put on a new man, one who grows in knowledge as he is formed anew in the image of his Creator.” (Colossians 3:9-11)
Realize that a new way of life must dominate your actions now that Christ is growing within your spirit, and being part of God The Father’s Family, you have become the newest member of His kingdom right here on earth. Hold fast to that privileged kinship by learning and conforming to His Family’s household rules. When Jesus began His public ministry it was necessary that His first words would announce just that:
“The time is accomplished and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the Gospel.” (Mark 1:15)
If you feel you are too insignificant or unworthy for Almighty God to bother establishing a personal relationship with, then study the example of Zacchaeus who was very curious about Jesus, but he was small in size so he had to climb up into a tree to get a good look at Jesus as He came into town. Impressed by the ingenuity of Zacchaeus, Jesus told him to come down from the tree for He wanted to stay at his house, which made others extremely mad that Christ would bother to associate with sinners… but that’s what He did… and does to this day. To mollify the angry heads in the crowd, Christ offered:
“This day is salvation come to this house…the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” (Luke 19:9-10)
You don’t have to climb up a tree to see Jesus, but you do need to lift your spirit upward… to aspire away from earthly things and rather to those of heaven… and let God descend to greet you. The moment you do that, salvation has come to your soul, your house, where Jesus will reside as long as you visit with Him. Let Him answer your questions to build a personal relationship that eventually you truly will cherish… and then you will no longer be lost, because you will have found God.
