Eng – �@ – A – 001 – 1/3  Group (A)　Relationship with God  (1)  What is God

Jesus said to him, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. (Mathew 22:37-38)
Even if someone is introduced to me and says that he is a wonderful person worthy to be loved, we cannot love him deeply without knowing that person personally.　
�A
"And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. (John17:3)
To know God is not just loving God. To receive eternal life (salvation) depends on knowing God. Therefore, to know God is one of the most important things.
�B
A)What is a wrong relationship with God? (To believe in God is not a religion)                                                      
When some people hear about God, the word “religion” pop-up to their heads, but this is wrong, for example, all the people around the world have parents, and to believe in their existence is not religion at all, is pretty obvious, in the same way if there is the God who forgives our sins and how much He loves us,  to believe in God is not the matter of  religion, but is to accept the reality and to have a relationship with Him.
�C
To believe in Jesus is not a matter of religion because to have a religion and to have a relationship with God are concepts completely different, the proper definition of the word “religion” is: The human effort to get close to God with their own strength, and try to be justified in his own way. So when we want to please someone, the best way to do it is by asking that person what kind of things do they like, but if we just give them what we think is the best for them, maybe after a while we can realize that this person from the beginning didn’t like our presents.
�D
 So in this example we can see very clearly about the idea of religion, because people may think they are pleasing God with their own idea or with their own strength but sometimes they could be doing the opposite.  So if we don’t have communication or relationship with God, we might do something wrong.  (abbreviation)
�E
the common consequence of not having relationship with God is that people hide problems or struggles inside,
and can hardly control their anger, yet they believe that they can justify themselves by doing something. That is a religeous idea. There are different definitions of religeon. But in this series of study, when we use this word religeon, please keep it in mind that it is a negative meaning, because we do not practice religeon but relationship with God.
�F
Also another definition of religeon is a way to justify yourself or to cover your own shamne in your own way or    
 your own strength.
What many people are doing in order to get to know God is actually religeous acts. There might be some good acts but in most cases, it is human efforts not based upon God. Religion can be called an action to believe in human legends and build up faith upon that oundation. God gave us the Bible so that we may not make such mistakes. We should have the Bible as a foundation of our faith.
�H
Even though you are christian if we try to add something outside of the word of God by yourself, it becomes a religion instead of building up a relationship with God. For example, the Mormons, who have their own book “Mormon’s book” written by the founder of that religion and even they consider it more important for them than the Bible., therefore they deviated from the truth.  Also one of the main doctrines of the Catholic is that since Mary gave birth to Jesus and that is why Mary is as important as God and that’s completely wrong.
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 B) Why man kind can’t know about God?                                                         
Originally God made men capable to have intimate relationship with Him, but for many reasons it became difficult, so in the course A, the Title is “The relationship with God” and this A Group has Seven courses and through these Seven courses we will see various obstacles which may hinder us from having a relationship with God.
�J
The wrong image about God is not made in one day. The following is some of those wrong concepts about God. 　
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C)Wrong ideas about God                                                                      
1)God doesn’t exist.　　This idea is very popular especially in Japan because of the evolution’s influence, and the basic problem is because those people refuse to believe the absolute power or existence, so there is nothing absolutely good and nothing absolutely bad, so they also refuse the existence of sin in a man’s life.
 �L
2)God is a loving God,so He doesn’t give any punishment to man kind, and He doesn’t send anyone to hell, something that is behind this idea is that people try to hide their sins, this idea results from a childhood experience, the parents weren’t there to correct or discipline their children, so the children grow with the idea that they can do everything they want without a bad consequence or penalty.
�M
 3)God is very strict like a police man.
that is waiting for us to have the first mistake so he can punish us.  The people who is living under this thought live with fear and become religious. When you are raised by strict and demanding father, that often becomes the image of God, because the parents, father or mother are created by God as the representative of God on earth.
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4)God abuses his authority.
The people who believe in this statement think that God enjoys people’s suffering, or come up with the question: If God exists, why the war exists? But God didn’t create war; war is just the result of the evil that is in mankind’s heart, like sins, division, lies, etc. God gave us free will. Therefore those who think that way misunderstand this concept. What they are lamenting is actually the fact that God gave us free will and respect our will.　 (abbreviation)
�O
5)God exists, but very far far away.　This type of person thinks that God is so busy to pay attention to men, also thinks: “Yes! I can understand God but He cannot understand me” this is also the result from a childhood experience when the parents were absent or they were so busy to pay attention to their children.
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D) Who is God?
1) God is like Jesus. 　
God sent Jesus to the earth to show us what God is like. So when we see Jesus, we can understand God’s image, when we see Jesus we can see God, (John 14:7) “If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also.” God is not looking at us from far away. Jesus lived on the earth as a human, so He knows about human suffering, sadness, disease, and abandonment, He experienced thiese situations, so God can understand us and he knows our weakness.
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2) God is the perfect Father (John 10:25) (Mathew 6:9)
God is our Father and He have a Father’s nature, also the book of (Romans 8:16) says: we are children of God.
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3) God is love (1 John 4:7-8,16) (Romans 8:32)
(Romans 8:32) He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? when we have love there is no space for fear, but when we have fear, this fear can distort our God’s image, but we can see the correct image of God through the revelation of the Holy Spirit.
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4) Jesus is Bridegroom and church is a bride (Ephesians 5:32) (Matthew 25:1-13)
The relationship of God and man cannot be described in one phrase or one illustration. God chose to describe the relationship of God with church as bridegroom and bride as well as father and son. This relationship is such an intimate relationship.
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 5) God is Holy (Revelations 4:8)
(Rev4:8) “ Holy, holy,”. God doesn’t sin, and he doesn’t make any mistake, He is totally separated from the things we see in this world, He is perfect and his plans for us are good all the time, so we can rest and have peace with this truth.
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6) God is Just and righteous. 　God does everything right and just, we can rest in this fact, Jesus Christ himself is justice and He can judge with perfect truth, as the Bible says, (Act 10:34) God shows no partiality. God is just.
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7) God never changes.   Even the generations change, the history change, He never changes, (Hebrew 13:8) Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.