Healing In His Wings Int'l Ministry, Inc.

Personal or Impersonal?
How does this affect our relationship with God?
by Pastor Gary Kempton 7/4/2012


• Recently I've heard someone teaching on television that we cannot have a personal relationship with God or Jesus. The reason is because He is the Almighty and Christ is the head of the church so He cannot be a personal Saviour to anyone.
• While it is true that neither God nor Jesus shows favoritism to anyone, even the Jews believe in Him as a personal God (we know that God does protect His people). And even the leaders in the church are directed not to show favoritism to anyone; each person is to be treated equally.
• If we search the dictionary, we see that personal is defined in the first definition would definitely rule out a personal relationship.
• one of the definitions states that it means existing as a self-aware entity (not impersonal). The others are no help.
• However if we look at the thesaurus personal takes on a more distinct meaning. Let's look at some of the words related to 'personal': unique, intimate, close, dear, great, warm to mention a few.
• Let's look at impersonal just to see if God is like that.
• Impersonal: not influenced by showing or having personal feelings, no personality; Thesaurus: neutral, unbiased, detached, disinterested, distant, remote, unemotional, cold, unconcerned.
• Quite frankly, if I do not have a 'personal' relationship with the Father, that must mean it is impersonal and I would not want to be associated with someone who isn't interested in me and my well-being. Why would I accept someone who does not care?
• The world is full of people like that - people who care for themselves and not others; the world is impersonal.
• If we don't have a personal relationship with God/Jesus, then He would just let us keep doing our thing, or He could have just wiped out mankind for good.
• He could not show us love if He was not a personal god. The word says if we love our children, we must discipline and raise them up right; why should He care if He doesn't have a personal relationship with us?
• In my book, I speak of religion as something that has been played up as such a big thing. Religion and denominations are not a God thing.
• God never called us to be Protestants, Catholics, Lutherans, Baptist, 7th Day Adventists, or such; He also did not call us to be a part of Buddhist, Islam, one of the over 3 million Indian religions or anything like that. No, He called us to have a relationship with Him. Seems hard to have a relationship if it is not personal.
• If I have a relationship with my wife, it is personal, with the attributes of personal. If it was impersonal, then the marriage would not have lasted a day let alone almost thirty years.
• Let's define relationship. Relationship is: the two or more people are connected or the state of being connected; Thesaurus: relation, association, link, bond, interconnection, blood ties, kinship, common ancestry/lineage, love, and partnership.
• Sounds like what God wants with us and what we should want with Him.
• If we look at true religion as defined in the Word, it is to take care of the widows and orphans.
• Church is important. We are not to forsake the assembly of saints - we need to be around people with like beliefs so that we can stay strong. Being in a church does not guarantee our salvation; just as baptism by itself does not. It's only through Jesus that we can have a relationship with God.
• Jesus was a personal person. He got his hands dirty and mingled with all people. He met them where they were at - in the fields, on the seashore, in the synagogue, in the market - wherever they were He went. If we cannot have a personal relationship with Him, how will we truly know what He is like.
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