What Do I Have to Do?
____________________
God can be known personally. He has made a way for you to come into a relationship—even a friendship— with him. Let me lay out what you need to do to know him.
You need to make a U-turn with your life. The first thing you need to do to really know God is to do something the Bible calls "repent." Don’t be put off by that word. It’s essential to understand and then to respond.
To repent means to change your direction. It speaks of a change of mind and heart resulting in a change in the direction of your life. You are sorry for your sin, and you choose to walk toward God instead of away from him. It means turning your back on any sin that would hold you from him. It is essential.
The Bible says:
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30-31, niv)
This is not a burden, but a blessing: "Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord" (Acts 3:19, niv).
Then you must believe and receive. In order to know God in a personal way, you must believe in him. The word believe in Scripture speaks of putting your complete trust and faith in someone. It means to cling to something. Let’s say that you slipped over the side of a cliff but somehow managed to grab hold of a branch growing out of the side. Do you think you would hold on tightly to it? Of course you would, because your very life depended on it.
In the same way, we need to hold on to Jesus, putting our complete faith and trust in him as our Savior, Lord, and friend. Jesus said, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16, nkjv).
Second, you must receive him into your life. Boiled down, Christianity is far more than merely keeping a creed or even living by certain rules and stan~dards. It is having Jesus Christ himself come into your heart and life.
The Bible says: "Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12, niv).
Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me" (Rev. 3:20, nkjv).
Imagine that you were at home having dinner and you saw me knocking on your front door. Let’s assume that you had a door with a window so you could clearly see me and I could clearly see you. You look up from your meal and say, "Hey look—there’s that Greg Laurie guy standing at our front door knocking. I wonder what he wants."
Your wife says, "I don’t know, but I don’t really want to talk to him right now. Just ignore him." Meanwhile, as I am knocking, I can plainly see you, and I know that you can hear me. For you not to open that door is as clear a rejection as you could possibly make.
In the same way, Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, is personally knocking on the door of your heart. For you not to open that door and ask him in is in essence to deliberately shut that door in his face. To not say yes is to say no. To be undecided is to be decided.
How to Know God
