God Wants to be Close to You

Growing up I liked playing around outside. I'm sure you guys are the same. But what if you're playing outside & suddenly it starts to rain! Maybe you play some more or maybe you run home but either way your shoes are soaking wet & super dirty with mud all over them by the time you get home! Now there's no way that my mom or even your mom would be ok with you just running straight into the house with such messy, dirty shoes on! No way, I bet she'd say something like this to you, "Off with those dirty shoes before you can come into my house!"

Of course your mom would tell you to take off those dirty shoes & leave them outside of the house. But get this, at the end of the day the choice is yours whether you'll take off your dirty shoes or not, but you know that if you don't take off the dirty shoes so that you're clean, well then you're not getting inside the house close to where your mom is.

And this picture is something of what it looks like with our lives & God. You see, God wants us to be close to Him...think of that like stepping foot inside of the house. God wants that, He wants a close relationship with each & every one of you. But there's something that's stopping us from getting close to God, something just like these dirty shoes stopping you from getting into the house. That something is our sin; it's the wrong things that we do & say & the wrong way we live that goes against what God says. It's dirty & that's not ok with God & it's just like these dirty shoes. You've got to be clean to go inside & you need to live a clean life in order to get close to God. God wants to be close to you, but you need to live a clean life.

And you might think, I want to be close to God! But how do I live a clean life? I'll tell you what the Bible says, it's our memory verse for today from Psalm 119:9, it says...

"How can a young person stay pure? By obeying your Word."

You see, that's the key to it all right there - you stay pure & clean by obeying God's Word. By living right & doing right every day. When you decide to live your life like that, it's like you're deciding to leave your dirty shoes at the door & now you can get closer to God. And there's nothing better than that. It doesn't mean that you can never do wrong things & get dirty again, we all do, but it means that each time you mess up & get dirty again...then you ask God to forgive you & He does. It's like you've taken off the dirty shoes again. It comes down to you wanting to live a clean life every single day so that every day you can be close to God. It's as simple as that! And that's what God wants for you, too. God wants to be close to you, but you need to live a clean life.