Where in the bible is it stated that someone can have a personal relationship with God?
God in His word goes farther than just a relationship with us. We can have a relationship with our dentist; we can have a relationship with our dog; we can have a relationship with the tree in the front yard. God, though, offers us
fellowship with Himself,
intimate communion, such that Paul the apostle was able to write:
Philippians 1:21
21 For to me, to live is Christ...
We come to this fellowship with God (
1 Corinthians 1:9; 2 Corinthians 13:14; 1 John 1:3; Philippians 3:7-11) through the relationship to God opened to us in the Person of Jesus Christ. Through faith in him, the "door of the sheepfold," (
John 10:9) "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (
John 14:6), we are brought into the family of God as adopted children (
Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 1:5, etc.)
Many are content merely to have been adopted, wanting "fire insurance," not God Himself. But the heart of Christianity is not just salvation from hell, but coming to know God personally and intimately, not as the Creator only, a distant and powerful entity, unknowable and closed to us, but as Life itself in every sense. This is what we were made for; to know Christ as our very life.
God does not approach us as other than He is, however. He meets us as God, which means our relationship with Him is always as inferior to Superior, lesser to Greater, servant to Master. This is the big sticking point for a great many people. They might be persuaded to a relationship with God if He lets them alone to do as they like, helping them when they ask for it, serving them as needed, but remaining silent and uninvolved - like a piece of furniture - the rest of the time. Others want a buddy, someone who encourages them, and supports them, and makes them feel good, but not someone whose commands they must obey, who will put boundaries on their thinking and activities. Still others want religion, not God; "spirituality," not a Lord and Master. They wish to see themselves as "deep" and perhaps even a bit mysterious, tapped into a "higher reality" that makes them clearer in their perception of things than the average Joe, more "grounded" or "centered"; they want rituals, and practices, and paraphernalia, not to be a "living sacrifice" unto God (
Romans 12:1).
God, though, is never truly encountered in these approaches to Him. He wants intimate communion with us, but never apart from who He is, never under any other dynamic than as Creator to creature, Lord and Master to servant, Father to child. And so we read in the Bible:
Romans 6:13
13 Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
Romans 6:22
22 But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.
Romans 8:14
14 For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.
James 4:6-10
6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE."
7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom.
10 Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.
1 Peter 5:6
6 Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time,
The key to true fellowship with God is in submission to Him, daily, even moment-by-moment, yielding yourself to Him, to His will and way. And when this is your approach to God, His Spirit works in you in all the ways the Bible says He will, convicting you (
John 16:8), teaching you (
John 14:26), comforting and strengthening you (
Acts 9:31; 2 Corinthians 1:3; Ephesians 3:16; Philippians 2:13; Romans 8:13), disciplining you when necessary (
Hebrews 12:5-11) and transforming you into one in whom Christ is clearly seen (
Galatians 5:22-23; 2 Corinthians 3:18).
Nonetheless, I have come to realize that I don't care about seeking these things from God anymore (or anything else for that matter). In fact, I don't actually care about seeking this "personal relationship" with God at all.
Yes, this is the Big Problem all people lost in sin and darkness have. They want their will and way, not God's. Sadly, the most common way God moves lost people toward Himself is to let them have what they want and to taste, in time, the emptiness, and pain, and bitter death that He has promised always follow on the heels of their sin. (
Romans 6:23; Proverbs 14:12; Galatians 6:7-8) Some survive the terrible "harvest" of their sin, coming to faith in Christ and submission to him before it is too late, often permanently scarred by their Self-will, but most do not.
Matthew 7:13-14
13 "Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.
14 "For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.
Is a personal relationship with God biblical? And is it necessary?
Yes, it is necessary. And it is based entirely upon love for Him. Obeying God for reasons apart from love of Him is useless, as Paul the apostle explained:
1 Corinthians 13:1-3
1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Here Paul explains that no matter what I say, or know, or do, if love - first for God and then for others - is not my motive, then all of these things are spiritually of no profit. Jesus confirms Paul's words here by declaring that the First and Great Commandment is to love God with all of one's being (
Matthew 22:36-38), not to go to church, or to tithe, or to abstain from sin. These things all are to arise naturally from
loving God and if they do not, well, as Paul pointed out, they are useless spiritually.
It is only within this love-relationship context that the Christian life "works" and so it is a non-negotiable in walking properly in fellowship with God.