"Our Relationship with God" RESCUE RADIO with Marjorie Cole

0:00 Music. Rescue Radio, because there's a war for your soul. Yes, Father God, indeed there is a war for our souls, and we thank you that you have won that war. The battle has been won, and we thank you, Lord, for tucking each one today into the safety of the revelation of that truth and promise.

0:43 We bind every spirit of anxiety and fear and discouragement, doubt, double-mindedness and confusion that would try to snatch away the revelation of your love and truth to us today. Give us eyes to see. Give us ears to hear. Give us a heart to receive that revelation and be encouraged in the truth of who you are. I thank you, Jesus, that you demonstrated your Father's love for us and that you came. And on our behalf, you laid down your life that we might be set free. You paid the price, the ultimate price, for our freedom and salvation. And yet, Father, there seem to be so many that disregard it, do not treasure it, or consider it as the ultimate. Act of love. So we pray, Father, for those people that their eyes would be opened, that the great awakening would happen, and that their great harvest would come in for the glory of God and in the name of Jesus Christ.

1:34 We also thank you for giving us power over all the power of the enemy, power to bind and loose and believe. Believe in you, believe in your word, your promises, your coming again, not to go to the right or to the left or be discouraged, Father God. We thank We bind the powers of darkness that you've given us authority over to bind them from snatching, scattering, discouraging us. We rebuke them and send them back to the pit. Father, we ask that you release those who are bound in the grip of the terrible one today from that grip, that they will come into the revelation of your truth and surrender to you completely so that they can be free. And finally, we thank you for the promise of divine protection. That no weapon formed against us will prosper. No words said, deed done, action taken, will be able to be used by the enemy to bring forth any shame, trouble, or reproach that you release and protect those who are bound, who are being destroyed by the enemy, that you bring them back to freedom and goodness, Father God, hope and love in Jesus' name. Amen.

2:30 Amen. Amen. Well, we're talking today about our relationship with God, which is one of the probably the most basic relationships. That we have. Yeah, it is. And I was just thinking about Abraham, and it talks about in James 2, it talks about he showed his faith by his works, by what he did. And verse 23 of James 2, it says, And the scripture was fulfilled, which says, Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness, and he was called the friend of God. The friend of God I know we talked a little bit about some of this stuff last week but we're kind of going to go on because there's so much to knowing and having a relationship with God and in Romans there's another, aspect of God's relationship with us and his role as the deliverer in Romans 11, 26 and so all Israel will be saved as it is written the deliverer will come out of Zion, and he will turn away the ungodliness from Jacob, for this is my covenant with them, that I will take away their sin.

3:44 Now, that covenant has been extended to whosoever will believe and follow Jesus. So, Jesus was the restorer of the covenant and the power behind the covenant. So, we're in covenant with God in that relationship. But what actually does determine my relationship with God? Well, I have an answer for that. Yes, and what would that be? What determines our relationship with God is our concept of who He is. Yeah. What is our idea about God and our idea about God, and it's basically our idea about ourselves, but our concept of God determines what our relationship with Him will be.

4:32 Right, and that relationship and concept is filtered through our own lenses of experience and ideas, worldviews, and all kinds of programming that we have been submitted to or subjected to. So, yes, so the questions that are out there, and the biggest question, I think, when Satan is trying to frame and defile and separate us from the love of God through confusion and doubt is, is he good? Is he cruel? Is he kind? Is he sovereign? How, and here's the biggest issue that comes out all the time, just if God is so good, then why? And so Satan is using God's sovereignty, his omnipotence, his all-knowing, all-powerful attributes to lay charges at his feet that if God were there, if God was so good, so powerful, why if he's so good, does he let all these bad things happen to us?

5:26 And this becomes the merry-go-round, the religious merry-go-round, I think, that a lot of people are riding on these days, and it's time to make a decision, get off the merry-go-round and take a stand. Well, oftentimes God is the last one to get the credit for something good, and he's the first one we want to blame. Yeah, exactly. For something that's gone wrong. And we don't understand the concept that there's an enemy here in this world. Satan is in this world. God is sovereign over him. So we're in this warfare. We're in this struggle. At the same time, we have to come to a place where we receive a revelation of him as to who he is.

6:11 Well, you know, you're right, absolutely. If we don't put the devil in the equation, God plus me equals all the trouble I see out there. If you don't put the enemy in there, you will never solve the problem for wickedness and evil and the presence of evil in the world. But if our relationship, you know, if our concept of God is wrong, and you can really only grasp that from the Bible and rightly dividing the Word of God, because a lot of the Word of God is used to misguide people, and through the revelation, like you said, of the Holy Spirit. So our concept, our relationship with God, which is what He wants, He doesn't just want us to know about Him or to, you know, be awestruck with all of His wonderful things He's done.

6:54 He wants us to be in a relationship with Him. But if our concept of Him is wrong or skewed, you know, then our relationship will never be right. Because if we feel abandoned, betrayed, unloved, if we become angry and unforgiving, if we feel like, and so many do, that we are on our own. And, you know, there was an interesting thing when Esau, you know. Traded his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew because he thought he was going to die anyway. So he, you know, gave Jacob, his brother, who was the younger, gave him the birthright to be the oldest. God comments on that later in Hebrews, and he said he despised his birthright, and which allows, when we despise our birthright, which is being born as sons and daughters of the Most High God, when we treat that lightly and trade it for a bowl of soup, so to speak, what's the price of your soul? What are you willing to give in exchange for your soul?

7:54 When we exchange that for a meager pittance, we despise the most incredible thing we have, the most precious thing we have is our identity and our being sons and daughters of the Most High. And so when that happened with Esau, he says in Hebrews, it's a root of bitterness springs up and causes many to be defiled. So the poison of bitterness defiles many of our relationships, human relationships on earth, because we have despised our birthright with God in heaven. I'm talking about our birthright. How do we gain our, as a child. Growing up, how do we gain our concept of God? How has God determined that that would happen?

8:39 That is to be the job of parents. Well, yeah. The parents. But if the parents don't know who they are, it's pretty hard. If the parents don't know who they are and are not able to decipher or realize who their children are and who God is, Then we're just kind of left to chance and just floundering and just kind of interpreting God through our life experiences. Well, you know, the thing is, too, and part of that is, you know, understanding the relationship God has with us is the same as a parent would have with his child, although we are flawed and inferior, and so it's very unfair in a way to compare our relationship with His with us, but that, you know, we think about things like improving our relationship, becoming better, more lovable, more deserving, that we grow in our love for Him, for each other.

9:40 That promotes a concept of trying harder to be good or get God to love us, And that becomes based then on our worthiness, our behavior, or accomplishments. And that makes God not a God of love then. He cannot be a God of love if it's the conditional. Because by definition, love is unconditional. But in our human definition, love is always based on performance, believing, I mean, receiving, and being worthy. And so this just feeds right into Satan, just this feeds right into his plot and plan that we have to earn our salvation. We have to earn God's love, which then it actually is the actually contrary to the truth of God.

10:27 We cannot, God cannot love us anymore. We cannot do anything to get him to like us anymore. He already loves us, likes us, and we're his. Well, how many people spend a good share of their lives to try to make themselves lovable? So people will like me, or so God will like me. We talk about Romans 5, verse 6, For when we were still without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly, for those who were really against him. And then verses 7 and 8, for scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.

11:10 But God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. So he loves us, and he died for us in our state of rebellion. Lostness, just really out of touch with God, enslaved. But then he commends his love. He says, you don't have to make yourself lovable. I love you the way you are, despite all the evil that's been going on in your life. Well, sin does not change our identity. it just changes our location because you know you can be held captive in a concentration camp and you're still the daughter of your father and your mother whether that man or woman is great or not you know but your position is being enslaved so we're not depraved as paul talks that the difference between depraved and enslaved but the thing is going back to your original statement there why don't people get it is because they don't know they need it they people don't know the most important thing they need is a deep and holy and powerful and ongoing, lively, dynamic relationship with God.

12:22 They think that everything is as it appears. Everything that happens is either my fault or your fault or somebody else's fault, and it's our job to try to be perfect, to fix it, to stay safe, to be righteous. But understanding our relationship with God is not that hard. It's really, for those of you who are parents, it's very second first nature, whatever, that how do you want to be understood by your children? What would you do for your children if they were in trouble? Would you truly, I mean, as some parents, and we can't compare those vile people who are filled with demons and whatnot, but the people who love their children bring forth their children for the purposes of bringing forth children to love and to have as they're in a relationship with them, how do we then go forward in not transferring that same intention, motivation, life, energy to our relationship with God as our Father?

13:25 Because He is our Father, and we are fathers and mothers. So if you want your children to be afraid of you and always have to be perfect for you to get to like them, you're going to be frustrated with them because they're never going to realize that you just love them for who they are. And this is kind of, I think, God's position. So we're always testing God, not believing Him, taking the devil's solutions to our problems, and therefore we go off the track. Well, yeah, off the track starts with parents that aren't really being godly parents, fathers that aren't being godly fathers. God is intended. You know, there's that chain of command. There's God the Father, the Son, you know, and the Holy Spirit really working with them, and then the Father, the Mother, the children.

14:12 So there's a hierarchy there of— Order. An order, and when that order is messed, and the order gets really messed up when it comes to parents. Fathers being not fathers or fathers being non-existent in their relationship with their kids. Yeah, but the thing is, going back to being Father God, being understood. The enemy really has tried to redefine him to us through the circumstances, even through the interpretations of the Old Testament, the wars, the bloodshed, the sacrifices, the deluge, all the things, predicaments that God was put in as a father, as you as a father might be put in, to rescue your children, to restore them, to teach them, train them, and raise them up in righteousness.

15:03 And at the same time, all these obstacles and resistances and other influences are in their life, You are trying to continue to promote your love for them. And so, again, our problem is we don't know we need a father. We don't know we're in a snake pit. We don't believe the spiritual warfare is real. And so, therefore, we're very turned upside down for the most part in our concept of God and in our pursuit of God. Well, the Old Testament word for God was considered too holy to even pronounce. And then, so God is, I mean, he's perfectly holy. There's no question about that.

15:44 But Jesus came to reveal this holy God as Father. And he said to pray, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. So what a father means is a progenitor. In other words, it's someone who gives life, gives you life. He's your source of life. God is our source of life. He's our protector. He's here to protect us. He's not here to destroy us. And he's here to provide for us. So a father is to be a progenitor, a protector, and a provider. And so this is the concept Jesus came to bring.

16:25 Clarify. Clarify this. So when we kind of look at that, Father is basically our source of who we are. Where did we come from? We came from Him. Well, right, and that's the problem. Most of us have not been introduced to that concept until much later in our lives because we're thrown into the textbooks of evolution and evolving and all of these kinds of things so that we're just here existing for no purpose or no reason and we don't come from anywhere. And so this is going back to Esau. So he despised his birthright and it opened the door to bitterness. We have got the same problem going on. Now we blame God for almost everything because, you know, for example, when something goes wrong, I mean, is it funny that we don't give God any credit?

17:16 We don't usually thank him or rejoice or look forward and pray and ask for help. But when something goes wrong, the first one we shake our fist at is God. Why me, God? Where were you? Why did you not stop this? So inside, there is a knowing of the power of God, and yet, at the same time, Satan twists that to become more of a rebellion or a bitterness against God. So many people are bitter against God. That's their real problem, but it manifests as bitterness towards others, towards, you know, injustice, not fair, attitude, buried anger. Bitterness is swallowed anger, so it's been seething for a long time inside, and that creates inflammation, by the way, in your body.

18:00 But so this bitterness, it comes from not acknowledging who we really are as sons and daughters created by the Most High God deliberately and for His purpose. And so Satan wants to turn us away from that, keep us from knowing that, and to block our relationship with God by making God to blame for the bad things that happen, when in fact... Satan is the author of all of that confusion. And when people curse God and take the name of the Lord in vain, you know, cursing God, when do they do that? When things are bad, things don't go the way that we think they should go, and then we take his name in vain. That's one of the ways we take his name in vain. We use it as a curse word.

18:46 We just, in a sense, when we're saying, you know, Jesus Christ or God damn as something like that, we are basically saying we're blaming him for what's going on. But the truth is, if you look at it, just stop going with your feelings and go with what the Lord is showing you. Jesus in the Gospel, he says, God sends the rain on the just and the unjust. God gives breath, even to those who are using that breath, to curse his name. God gives food and shelter to the people who are actually working contrary to his purposes.

19:32 Satan is rewarding and blessing people for rejecting God, but at the same time, if God would take away their breath, they'd be done. So God is very long-suffering, not willing that any should perish, and he is impartial. At this point, There are consequences to our sin, but most of those consequences, if not indeed all of them, are coming out of demonic judgments because the enemy himself is setting us up to believe the lie, use his solution to the problem. And then when we take his solution, he punishes us because we are disobeying the law of love. And so he justifies punishing us before the Father because he says, well, look, God, they're not listening to you.

20:13 And so therefore I have a right to bring this punishment upon them. So all of this judgment that we're going through right now, a lot of it is not yet even God stepping into the arena to do these things. All those terrible acts of God, the earthquakes, the this, the that. Most of that is a result of rebellion, disobedience, and God's attempt to correct the direction. For example, in the Tower of Babel, when they were all of one accord, building this high ziggurat to re-communicate, reconnect with the fallen angels who were in the second heaven. And they were just going at it, great guns, and everything was going good. And God came down, looked at us, says, hey, there's nothing that's going to stop them.

20:56 We're going to have to stop this ourselves. And so what he did is he didn't hurt anybody, didn't throw a brick at anybody. He didn't kill or strike down dead anybody. What he simply did was confuse their languages, which really didn't hurt anybody at all. Perfect solution. but it stopped the project. And so that became the beginning of the nations of the earth. And interesting enough, all nations, it doesn't matter the color of your skin, all have the same blood, the human DNA blood that came from the original creation of Adam and Eve, and then through Noah as well. So all these things are even being now proven that we are of one race, basically, and yet Satan has divided us over colors and creeds and ethnicities and all kinds of things just to create the division, just to create the crazy circus that makes God look bad.

21:48 So, we cannot base our... Concept and relationship with God based on the perceptions of what we see going on around us, because the only way is to—and another problem with that is in the Old Testament, and even now, people are worshiping God out of fear. Fear becomes their idol. They've got to take care of themselves. They can't trust in God. They have to be their own gods. And so— Yeah, and part of it is that, you know, what can we do to pacify God? We want to make God like us. The idea is that God is against us. That's right. God is against us, and we've got to do something. You know, we have to walk through coals of fire, crawl over broken glass, or come up with some kind of action, religion.

22:34 Well, what they did was they had another God. They came up with idols. To appease him. And so what happens is then, if you have that concept of God that's wrong, that God is angry and against us, what happens is that people build idols to try to classify their God that's against them. And the Bible says that God is for us. He said, Romans chapter 8, he says, verse 31 and 32, what shall we say then to these things, All these things that, what are these things that God has, he's predestined us, he's called us, he's justified us, he's glorified us in verse 30 for those who have come to faith in him.

23:21 What should we say then to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, all. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Yeah. So the problem has become, you know, all of these confusions and questions and the theological debates to cloud and confuse and exhaust the pursuit of truth. So we have many people just give up. They get weary of this whole thing. They don't even want anything to do with it. They're just going to go out and mind their business. And then we have the verses in the Bible that says God sends peace and creates calamity.

24:01 He has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and he hardens whom he will harden. So people, when they don't understand the rules of consent or the rule of control, whom you yield yourself, servant to obey, that's who's slave you become. We are first off tempted. You know, we're put in this position. We're in the snake pit now. We were in the paradise before, and now the same rule applies. Whom you yield yourself, servant to obey, his slave you become. Romans 6.16. And because we have a free will, we obviously can go back and forth between, I trust God, I'm going to do it myself. But so when God is the ultimate, buck stops here, God, so that he's going to take responsibility and fix everything.

24:43 But when people don't understand the rules, they get. They think God has to be one or the other. They don't realize that truth is a coin and has two sides, heads and tails. He can bring peace, but he can also bring calamity. It depends on the time, the situation, what's going on in the hearts of the people, what needs to be addressed. Just like a father, you being a parent, you're not loving and kind and sweet and giving them ice cream combs 24-7 every day all the time. There are times when you have to stand up and say, no, you're not going to do that anymore. You can't wear that. You can't go there. Whatever all these things, especially when they're in that childhood stage. And so therefore, you know, you will look like a mean parent, you know, and the enemy, of course, will fill the child with all those ideas of you being unfair.

25:32 You don't like me. Yeah. And whatnot. You're against me. But actually, and parents then are afraid to set up those kinds of expectations and boundaries and whatever you want to call them. So then, again, you have this wild, rebellious child who doesn't have any respect for their father. But the thing is, their relationship with their father was built on lies. And the father was working to do what he was supposed to do, supposedly, and sometimes not. I'd say most of the time the fathers don't know what they're doing. But this is not the case with our Father in heaven. He does know what he is doing. But if the bitter division and confusion that Satan has thrown into the mix, if things are taken out of context, if you read in the Old Testament about the deluge and you don't know the behind the scenes and the reasons was that the DNA had already been crossed and switched and hybridized and ruined and it was no longer able to bring forth humankind and Noah was the last one with good DNA and his bloodline, then you will realize that God had to take some extreme action.

26:38 Otherwise, there couldn't have been the Savior. If all the DNA of all the human beings was modified, destroyed, corrupted by the fallen angels and the interbreeding between the fallen angels and human women, if there was no DNA pure yet destroyed, There would be no Savior. And if there'd be no Savior, then sin's claim would stand. Satan's claim on the human race, the soul that sin shall die, would have stood because there had been no intervention. The only intervention that could come had to come through human DNA. That's what God said in Genesis when he said, I will see to the woman.

27:21 So the thing is, there's a bigger picture than just what first meets the eye. And then the Bible also says, don't strive about words to no profit. Many times these arguments and debates we discuss and we're embroiled are spearheaded really by doctrines of demons in 2 Timothy 4. That's what it's telling us. And in these last days, there's going to be more layers of confusion than ever before. I mean, it's just like everything is getting more convoluted. And so the only way you can stay anchored is to stay anchored in the Word of God, in the Holy Spirit, and seek to understand the deep and powerful relationship that not only you have with God, but that He wants to have with you.

28:03 Look at the men and women of the Bible, like, for example, Daniel. And he's a good example, Joseph, you know. These men stayed true to God, true, true, true to God, and they grew in their relationship with God. They understood God's purposes and plans for them. And then, because of that, because they understood and followed God, he was able to complete their destinies. He used these men to do great things. Jeremiah, you know, these men that followed God, John the Baptist, they followed God, they completed their destiny. And that is really the ultimate reason we're here. And the reason that we will end up being able to celebrate some days because God was able to use us to bring forth his redemption.

28:48 You know, we're all part of that. And we're called to be his representatives on earth, ambassadors for Christ. We're called to represent him. So listen, so look at it this way. The Father sent the Son, Jesus, to be fully God yet fully human, to represent, to really be a living, breathing, human, perfectly human, but a perfectly flawless life to represent who he really is. So we are here, we are flawed, but we're here to, as much as possible.

29:31 Represent who God is really like. He said, you're the light, he said, Jesus said to his disciples, you're the salt of the earth, you're the light of the world. So when they be, Paul said, imitate me, Paul told Timothy, or the Corinthians, follow me as I follow Christ. If you want to know how to follow Christ, if you don't want to know what it's like, take a look at my life and follow what I'm doing. Well, you know, the fact is, you know, the ultimate bottom line is God is love. We all know that. And even, you know, and so, but many of the things that people have done in the name of God, think of it, they've burned people at the stakes, they've butchered people, they murdered and martyred and all kinds of things. in the name of God.

30:19 But even today, we have this God and that God, and we're all doing this in the name of our God. But the thing is that the true God says, His commandment is that we were to love one another. And He tells us to forgive one another. And why would He tell us to forgive or love if He's not doing it Himself? If He would be not doing it Himself, He would be a hypocrite to his own word. And so we understand that there's a time, you know, suffering. But even Paul, and he greeted in every epistle, he says, grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's always grace, peace, mercy. So God wants us to have a relationship that is filled with his peace.

31:00 And you know, believe it or not, that doesn't come from running all over the world trying to figure out what's the truth. The truth is already in us because God put the truth in your spirit, and it's right there. It just has to be uncovered, discovered, revealed. It's because if God wouldn't have put that, he says he lights every man that comes into the world. If he didn't do that, then he wouldn't have a right to require of us any kind of judgment or any kind of acceptance of him. And the lights are different. God also judges based on, I believe, the amount of light he's given us and how we followed him. But, you know, to stop and think, God did not need anything more.

31:43 He had heaven, he had everything he needed or wanted, and yet, He chose to enter into, to create humankind, to have a relationship, to have a family. So God really did want one more thing. He wanted us. And so we have to recognize this is a, you know, if you stop and think, if you do any research on the chances that you got here as you, in the competition that you were going, that was against you in that first moments of the sperm and the egg coming together, The chances of you being brought together and being the one is absolutely, you're the winner. I mean, you won just by being conceived and born and getting through the birth canal, I mean, without being aborted.

32:31 You're already more than a conqueror. And so this gives us privilege then to pursue with everything in us, everything God has put in you, your gifts, your talents, discerning of spirits, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, love, peace, giving, pursuing God with everything that you've got, and that is really the best way to live. And how we get into this bright relationship with God is through faith in Jesus Christ. And Jesus said, repent and believe in the gospel. He said, the good news, repent, change your mind, change your direction, and believe the good news. And he's called us, this is how we connect with God, is through faith.

33:15 There's only one name under heaven where we must be saved, and that's through Jesus Christ. So we connect with him through faith in Jesus Christ. Then we read his word, we follow his word, we live in communication with him through the power of the Holy Spirit. And this is it right now, is that we are guided by God, guided by his word, guided by the Holy Spirit, which brings us into a right understanding of who he is and how we can actually. Like the old song says, we can walk with him and we can talk with him. He speaks to us, we listen to him, and he is guiding us.

33:59 But it comes through that connection between us and this almighty God, this loving Heavenly Father, is through our trust, our trust in him. And Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who has died on the cross, he's risen from the dead, and he's our Savior. Chosen us. He's returning soon. Yeah, and you know, not only that, but as we accept him, we become part of his bigger plan, which is the reconciliation and deliverance and healing and salvation of whosoever will. So it's an incredible plan. It's not just God doing all this. He's inviting us to work with Him, to subdue the pain and the injustices of the earth, to stand in having done all, to stand in the victory that He has already won.

34:46 So it's not just about you. It's about Him inviting you, you accepting us, accepting the invitation to participate with Him, join with Him in this battle to redeem, rescue, reclaim the humankind for Jesus Christ. And so, Father, we thank you for this opportunity to not only be reconciled to you ourselves, but also to be used by you to work with you in this joint effort to reconcile whosoever will in this world, to preach the gospel, to bring the good news, to heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead and cast out demons, and not to grow weary in well-doing, and not to fall short of the calling and the opportunities that you have set before us, even this day, to be encouraged, to know the truth. In Jesus' name.

35:35 Well, you've written a book, Marjorie, called Doing Relationships God's Way. That's right. And I know there's much in there about our relationship with God. What can you tell us about that book? Read it. Get it and read it. Yeah, you can get it on Amazon.com, Our Relationship with God, because everything in your life comes out of and is based in our concepts, our relationships with God, with ourselves, with each other. And that one also discusses our relationship with difficult people. We'll get to that. I think we're going to continue this series and going on. But we're just skimming the surface of what's in there.

36:18 So, again, doing relationships God's way, Amazon.com, or you can get it at liferecovery.com. And so God bless you and have a wonderful, powerful week walking in the purposes and plans of God for your life. Amen. Bye. Music.