Relationship with God His way | Gina Elmes | 3rd July 2022

Today Ps Gina speaks about God being the greatest teacher, especially of abstract subjects which appear in many places in scripture. The Bible is full of stories, events and parables which are regular stories with spiritual meanings.

Gina uses the story in Ezekiel 4:12 to illustrate this. Being ‘defiled by sin’ is perhaps an abstract phrase but God gets the prophet Ezekiel to go to a public place and bake a loaf of bread using human excrement as the fire. After a conversation with God, Ezekiel uses cow dung instead (v15). So the bread is made and God gets the people to eat it so they understand how awful it is eating defiled bread. What a terrific visual story illustration this is! God wanted the people to know what He was experiencing when he saw one of his own filled with a life of stinking sin. The whole Bible basically is about God's favourite subject. We are his favourite subject but more specifically, it's about us because of a relationship with His Son Jesus.

From Genesis to Revelation, the idea of relationship with God can be an abstract thought to people, even to us as Christians. How can we have a relationship with an invisible God whom we cannot see or hear? There are three basic things we find in all books and information on relationships, an initial ‘hello’, time to be together and good communication.

Ps Gina teaches about the altars used in the Old Testament for sacrifice and how an altar is really a place of communion or connection with God. In the New Covenant, Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. 

When we come to God and make Him part of our lives we are no longer defiled - scripture in 2 Corinthians 2:15 speaks of our lives being a Christ-like fragrance rising to God. When we spend time with God, He smells the sweet fragrance of Jesus burning on the altar of our life of our hearts. 

This is awesome Bible teaching!!