Many people have relationships with the Church, with the priests, and with religious practices, but they have no relationship with God nor a life with Him!! So then, what is:
Life with God?

They pray, yet they have no relationship with God!… As the Lord said about them: “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me” (Mk 7:6)… Their prayer is mere words and expressions, without love, without faith, without emotion, and without a real relationship with God… It is a prayer without connection!!!

It is also possible that a person may fast… and in his fasting he is concerned with foods, but has no relationship with God!!!
I mean that all he knows about fasting is the time of abstinence from eating—how long it should be, and how it increases—and the type of food, and how it changes into plant-based food… And that is everything, with no relationship with God!… and no life with Him!… So what then is meant by life with God and relationship with Him?

What is meant is that you feel the presence of God in your life, and you live a life of communion with Him, in true love for Him…
You feel that everything you do, you do through Him and for His sake, and that He participates with you in the work, and sees you as you work, and is before you in every step you take… And He becomes your aim, and your means, and you feel that there is a personal relationship between you and Him. And if you do not find one, begin forming this relationship… Look at Elijah the Prophet, for example, as he says:

“As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand” (1 Kgs 18:15).

He feels that he stands before God all the days of his life, and that God sees him and is witness to everything he does… Are we like that? And in every work we do, is God before us and in our mind during the work?… Or at least is God, His words, and His commandments before us?… Or are we on one path and God on another, with no relationship? When do we think to live with God? When do we begin? Behold David the Prophet and King, in all his greatness, sets aside this greatness to say: “But it is good for me to draw near to God…” (Ps 73:28).

Let us contemplate on the phrase “to draw near to the Lord.” Let us understand it and live it, and place before us examples of the saints who lived their entire lives clinging to the Lord, never separated from Him for a single moment… nor a blink of an eye… And let us also contemplate the saying of St. Paul the Apostle:

“I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him” (Phil 3:8–9)…
He does not only want to live with Him but also to be found in Him… Here we pause to understand the depth of the phrase “and be found in Him.” Yes, we are found in Him as the branch is in the vine, living by remaining in it, nourished by its sap… According to the phrase spoken by St. Paul the Apostle: “For in Him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:28)… And as the Lord Jesus said to God the Father: “I in them, and You in Me” (Jn 17:23)… This is abiding in God, blessed be His Name.

In light of this, what is your personal relationship with God? What is the place of God in your life? What is the nature of your connection with Him?

Discussions of Relationships

1 — A person thinks he has a relationship with God because he serves.
Here we ask: Is every service a relationship with God? Many serve, yet have no relationship with God, and God has no place in their lives! All they know about service is a set of activities—visitation, lesson preparation, meetings, giving talks… Some even see it as management, organization, and fulfilling the desire to feel self-worth!! We search for God in the service and do not find Him! Sometimes there are conflicts, stumbling blocks, and mistakes, causing some to draw back for the sake of their salvation… Would you draw back too? No, let your service be spiritual.

Serve for your love of God and His Kingdom, and to make people love God with you… For God is the reason for the service, the One who calls to it, and the One working in it. He is the One who speaks on your tongue, and the One who works in the hearts of your listeners. You feel that the service draws you nearer to Him, and draws the served nearer to Him. And this service becomes a gift from God to you, an opportunity given to you for meditation, for prayer, and for deepening in life with God…

Another point we discuss concerning relationship with God:

2 — Good behavior. And is it life with God?
There are those who behave well as a proper social level, living a good life with people, without God having any connection to this behavior… He lives on a social level, not a spiritual level, to please himself, or to please people, or to maintain values he respects or that society respects. And that is all!

We sometimes find values among atheists and non-believers!
And these values do not indicate a relationship with God… Gandhi was among the greatest in holding to upright values, and had in this a very high level that many religious people did not reach. Yet that great leader was not a believer in God as we believe.

Noble morals are one thing, and life with God is another level. And what a difference between noble morals that stand on their own, and noble morals that spring from life with God and the work of His Spirit in us…

There are also those who behave well merely out of concern for their eternal destiny.
All that occupies them is that they do not go to hell. All their hope is paradise, bliss, the kingdom, without their aim in the kingdom being God Himself! Their goal is enjoyment, eternity, and not perishing. And concern for the kingdom is a virtue, no doubt. But on the condition that enjoying God is the aim, or that the meaning of the kingdom is life in eternity with God. And that the meaning of virtue is love for God. I say this because I fear something dangerous:

Many people live a religious life outside of God!
They live in commandments, not in God. Their lives are practices and virtues whose aim is obedience, not love. They may live in very exact Phariseeism, yet without love of God! This is the law that St. Paul the Apostle fought, teaching that without love a person is nothing (1 Cor 13).

Spiritual life means that your spirit is connected with the Spirit of God.
Through this communion between you and the Holy Spirit, your spirit overcomes your body and leads it, and you live a spiritual life that is simply the fruit of the work of God’s Spirit in you, not mere practices. And obedience to commandments becomes the result of your love for God, and thus your love for His commandments, not merely obedience out of fear! Because your love for God can cast out fear (1 Jn 4:18). And thus you live by His love…

Thus, in sound spirituality, your aims and means change:
Your means become total surrender of yourself to the work of God’s Spirit in you, and your human will becomes merely a tool God uses to fulfill His will. And thus you become a partaker of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4), a partner with the Holy Spirit in all you do for yourself and for serving others.

What I fear most is that you live an independent life apart from God!
No matter how virtuous a life it seems… whether you see it that way or others see it. A virtuous life independent of God always becomes a field for self-righteousness and leads to pride, because you do not attribute its goodness to God. Then calling it virtuous is a false name… True virtuous life is life of communion with God…

Where you feel God’s presence, His work in you, and His grace with you, and you say with the Apostle: “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor 15:10), and “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20).

The phrase “Not I” is the beginning of the path which prepares for God’s life in you and His grace working with you. Your means then become human, but the goal becomes none other than God alone, in whom you live and exist and move…

3 — And then your obedience to the commandments becomes a natural expression of your love for God:
For some obey out of fear of punishment, not out of acceptance or conviction. Some obey out of embarrassment or hypocrisy, or obey out of compulsion, or to conform to the environment or please people!

But the spiritual person obeys the commandment because he loves God who gave it, and because it keeps him inside the love of God. He does not live a spiritual life because this life makes him virtuous, but because spiritual life lets him enjoy God more and draws him nearer to Him. Thus spirituality becomes the foundation of his life, inseparable from it…

4 — And from here we look at prayer in its true sense:
The spiritual person prays because prayer satisfies his heart with love, by being in the presence of God and speaking to Him, as David the Prophet says in his Psalms: “In Your name I lift up my hands, and my soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness.”
“How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb to my mouth.”
“Your name is beloved, O Lord, and it is my meditation all the day” (Ps 119).

Here prayer is out of love, unlike the one who recites his Psalms to feel satisfied that he has fulfilled his rule!! So that he does not feel lacking or for his conscience not to rebuke him that he did not fulfill his duty, without any relationship between him and God in these Psalms, which are in reality a song sung in the hearing of God, as David the Prophet said: “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I exist” (Ps 145:1). Therefore he also says: “Sing to the Lord a new song” (Ps 95, 97). Do you then pray your Psalms because they satisfy your spirit with the love of God?…

5 — And in the same way we speak about hymns:
Many repeat hymns without any relationship with God. They are merely tunes, music, and harmonious vocal vibrations… But the spiritual person finds that the hymn lifts his soul upward to meet with God.

The hymn shakes all his spiritual emotions. The hymn to him is not merely melodies, but a spirit fluttering before God, with the strings of its heart trembling before the strings of its voice. It is a soul that sings to God with all its emotions—sadness, joy, zeal, or praise. God is the key of the entire hymn…

Thus prayer and hymns are conversations with God.
They are encounters with God in which the heart speaks, in melody or without melody. The hymn is a prayer, and prayer is a hymn heard by God; it is a heart-song with its own secret tones and musical rhythm, according to the meanings its words carry. In prayer and hymns, a person feels that he stands before God, speaking to Him with understanding, emotion, and faith… and is inwardly moved by his prayers and hymns—whether with the emotions of reverence, love, longing, thanksgiving, and so on…

And with love, prayer becomes a spiritual delight, not merely an obligation. Are you of this feeling? And do you also feel this spiritual delight in all your practices—in reading the Scripture, in meditations, in prostrations and fasts, and also in all your service and meetings? Do you feel God’s presence with you, His love for you, His help and His companionship? And have you tasted how sweet and good the Lord is?

And do you feel that every work you do is God’s work in you, not merely your own will and thinking?

6 — And when you grieve for your fall, is it for a divine reason?
Is your sorrow because you have descended from your place, or because you lost respect for yourself or people’s respect for you? Or because of the results of this fall and the loss it caused you? Or because you feel embarrassed before your father of confession—how will you tell him of this fall? Or for other reasons concerning you or others?

Or do you grieve because you saddened the heart of God with your fall?
Or because you separated yourself from Him by this fall, and were not faithful to Him, and did not preserve your communion with the Spirit of God? David the Prophet links his fall to his relationship with God and says: “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight” (Ps 51). Thus he considered that his sin was directed originally toward God, against His love, against His obedience, and against relationship with Him. And Joseph the Righteous likewise said: “How then can I do this great evil and sin against God?” (Gen 39:9).

So when you sin, do you feel that you are resisting God?
Separating yourself from Him, losing Him, quenching the Spirit, grieving the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed (Eph 4:30)! Crucifying again the Son of God in yourself (Heb 6:6). A striking phrase was said in the story of Samson’s fall. After his hair was cut, he awoke from his sleep and shook himself “but he did not know that the Lord had departed from him” (Judg 16:20).

How dangerous this is—that the Lord departed from him…
A person may drift away from God, and God may still search for him and restore him to a relationship with Him. But here is an astonishing expression:

Truly, how dangerous it is: that the Lord departed from him!
Be careful, my brother, to keep your relationship with God steadfast, with its foundation being love, mutual abiding, and continuous fellowship. And do not do anything by which the Lord would depart from you…

What are the results of your life with God? And what are the results of your distance from Him or His distance from you? This is a long topic which I do not think this page can contain…

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1. Article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, published in Watani newspaper on 3–7–1988

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