The matter of God’s relationship with man is deep and mysterious. The grafting of the divine life and the human life into one portrays the most intimate of relationships.
In human society the relationship between husband and wife is the closest. But the grafting together of two lives is still closer. When a branch is grafted to a tree, these two from that point on share a common life. That such a picture could illustrate God’s relationship with man is beyond human thought. Our thought is that God is high and lofty. He is to be revered as the Creator and worshipped as the Lord of all. On our side, we feel far off, small, and low; surely God and we can have nothing in common.
But God had the intention to become one life with us. To accomplish this, He made preparations. Man’s creation was part of this preparation. He designed man so that His life could be joined with man’s life. He created man in His image and after His likeness. He breathed the breath of life into him, thus creating a spirit in him.
This spirit is the organ for receiving God. It gives us a spiritual sense. “God is Spirit; and those who worship Him must worship in spirit” (John 4:24). For us to contact anything, we must use the proper organ. We have our five sense organs by which we can know the physical, material world. For seeing we must use our eyes. If we are blind, however beautiful a scene is before us, we shall not be able to realize it. To perceive scent, we must use our nose. If we have a cold and a stuffy nose, we shall not be aware of a sweet fragrance, even though others insist they can smell it. Similarly, our spirit is the organ by which we can contact God. Those who say there is no God are not using their spirit. Because they do not use the proper organ, to them God does not exist. They are not using the spiritual sense by which they could substantiate Him.
Such is the wonderful way in which we were made. We have God’s image, His likeness, and a spirit with which to contact Him. Thus God prepared man to be joined to Himself.
God also had to prepare Himself for this union. Finally He was ready. He had passed through creation, incarnation, the thirty-three years of human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. Now He descended as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit.
Both parties are now ready. All that remains to be done is for us to turn back to Him and repent. He is waiting for us to call on Him. “O Lord, I believe in You. I want You. Without You life is vanity. Without You I am empty.” When we pray this way, this marvelous Spirit will gladly enter our spirit and make us one with Him. We are like a radio with a receiver inside. When we turn on the radio and adjust the dial, we receive the sound waves and can hear the radio program. The sound waves are in the air, but we do not hear them until we tune in to them. Our spirit is the receiver; rather than exercise our mind or our emotions, we can exercise our spirit and contact God.
All of us at one time or another have sensed that there must be a God. Deep within we have had an assurance that there is a Lord in this universe. We may not have expressed it in words, but we have had such a sense. The source of this sense is our spirit; to impart such a feeling is one of its functions. We may not have heeded it. We may have been busy with our plans for the future. We may have given ourselves to a career or made schemes to make money. Things about God, we may have told ourselves, are too abstract and incomprehensible; let’s be practical.
You may be a student, working hard on your lessons. But one day you push the books aside. Why am I studying? What is the meaning of life? What does the future hold for me? These questions come not from your mind but from the deepest part of your being. You reject them, refusing to be superstitious. You turn back to your books, resolving anew to finish your schooling, to get a degree, and then go abroad for even further study. Then you will be able to marry a well educated person. You keep your mind and your hands busy.
This is the story of all of us. Finally a day came when we refused to pay attention to the dictates of our mind. We had a longing to walk according to our spirit. In spirit we repented, we believed, and we called on the name of the Lord. Then this all-inclusive life-giving Spirit entered into us, making the two spirits one and the two lives one. This Spirit is life. When He moves in us, our spirit becomes life. This divine life unites with our created life, making both one.
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