The Most Essential Part in Your Walk with God

By: Sarah Martin

When we journey through our lives as followers of Jesus, we can sometimes get caught up with doing good deeds and easily make them our first priority. Now don’t get me wrong, being actively involved in activities that bring an increase to the Kingdom is a very important part of our spiritual lives, but it also cannot become the predominant factor in our walk with Christ. Rather, the most essential part of a journey with God is knowing Him (The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).

Knowing God and having that deep relationship with Him is a foundation and gateway for everything else. For instance, I’m pretty sure at some point in every person’s life they seek to find their true identity. When we get to personally know God on a deeper level, we also begin to understand our true selves. Why? Well, it states in the bible “Then God said,’ “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…”” (Genesis 1:26). Similarly, in Genesis 1:27 it also says, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”. God made us and knew us since the dawn of time. He wrote our life story from the beginning to the end with every moment and detail accounted for. He created us in “His likeness”. So what better way to discover our own identity than by knowing the author and creator Himself.

For Christians, we are also in search of God’s personal will, call, plan, and purpose for our lives. It says in Proverbs 3:6, “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight”. When you take the time to acknowledge the Lord and draw near to Him (James 4:8), God will draw near to you (James 4:8), and you become more aware of His voice and sensitive to the Holy Spirit. You also end up being more intuitive to His leading, direction, and in the ways you should go.

In the beginning of this message, I mentioned that we should put knowing God and establishing an intimate relationship with Him first before doing Kingdom work and everything else. The more time we spend with God, a few more things, other than what I mentioned previously, occur. We also become like Him, and the fruits in our lives become more evident in our lives. For example, the more we know God’s love, the more we know how to show it to others. By taking time to develop a close relationship with Jesus, we learn and grow spiritually.

There is also an outpouring. When you take time with God, He can pour out more into you and then you can pour out even more into your giftings and into others. That is where works done by faith begin to occur naturally, because there is an outpouring and then an overflow. Let’s take a look at Exodus 33:12-13 where it discusses Moses and the Glory of the Lord. “...You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you and continue to find favor with you….”. Moses wanted to know God so that he may learn and grow, but so he could also find favor with the Lord in everything he does. The same goes for us, when we make our primary focus on having a relationship with the Father, His favor will also become more apparent in our own lives.

I want to wrap things up with John 17:3, “Eternal life is to know You, the only true God, and to know Jesus Christ, the one You sent”. You know how I mentioned earlier that knowing God is also a gateway, well it is, it’s one that gives way to eternal life in heaven. When we take that step of faith and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we have taken the first step into the journey of knowing God, His Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Through our walk with Christ, we are to do works with faith, but we also have to be careful and not be as the Church in Ephesus who did many good deeds and were faithful in their works, but they forgot their first love (Revelation 2:4), which was held against them. So I encourage all who are reading, to not just have a surface knowledge of who God, The Son, and The Holy Spirit are, to not just do Kingdom work, but take time to establish a deep relationship with the Father in heaven, and everything else will come naturally.