How Do We Build a Relationship with God?

閱讀中文版：如何與神建立關係？

Q: How do we build a relationship with God? And why does this matter?

A: Jesus said the greatest commandment is “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30, cf. Luke 10:27) — love, by its very nature, is a relational word. The commandment itself already assumes something: our relationship with God is not meant to stay fixed where it is; it is meant to be pursued and built deeper. This article is written for those who have already been baptized and become disciples — but who don’t know how to build a deeper relationship with God, or may never have even thought about pursuing it.

I myself have wrestled with this same confusion: thinking that a relationship with God simply meant knowing the content of Scripture, drawing out some beliefs, and then talking to God about daily life in prayer. I myself came to know God through Scripture — and every verse quoted in this article came about that way. But looking back, I realize I also tried other things to deepen this relationship — and this article wants to add that missing piece: what a relationship actually is, and how it comes to be experienced, sharing this with you.

An Analogy

We easily assume that knowing more facts, events, and doctrines about God from Scripture and theology books is equivalent to knowing God more — the more you know, the more detailed, the deeper the relationship. This assumption sounds reasonable, but it actually follows a completely different logic from how we understand relationships between people.

Think about my relationship with my wife — I don’t carry around a pile of facts or accounts about her in my head: her birthday, her favorite color, her upbringing. I know these things, of course, but what actually constitutes our relationship is the stretch of time we’ve walked through together: moments sitting in silence together, a glance, days we struggled through some hardship together. These moments aren’t something I can neatly list out point by point as proof to others that “I know her” — they were lived, not memorized. That’s simply how relationships between people work, and our relationship with God is no different.

And this kind of relationship has another feature: its depth determines whether it can withstand a shock. If I had encountered a major blow in my first year of believing, I might really have felt that God doesn’t exist, or doesn’t love me. But after walking alongside him for decades, I won’t doubt a relationship I’ve trusted for so long just because of one moment of adversity.

This marital analogy isn’t something I invented myself — the prophetic books already use marriage to describe the covenant God established with Israel, and Paul himself, in Ephesians 5:22–33, uses the husband-wife relationship to picture Christ and the church. Scripture itself has already used this analogy.

The Posture of Seeking

Hebrews 11:6 puts it this way:

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. (ESV)

This verse is really an invitation — an invitation for us to trust God, not merely accept a pile of facts. Believing that God exists isn’t simply agreeing to a proposition (like agreeing that “the earth is round”) — it’s trusting a real Person (a Being with personhood, with consciousness, who responds to you — not an abstract concept); believing that he rewards those who seek him isn’t accepting a doctrine either, but believing that this God is worth seeking, worth entrusting yourself to. Put together, both are relational trust, not merely receiving information.

The word “rewards” can easily be heard as “believe in God and you’ll get what you want” — as if it were a transaction: I seek, God gives. But the rest of Hebrews 11 is about the faith of predecessors like Abraham and Moses — they sought God their whole lives, yet “did not receive the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar” (11:13) — meaning many of them died without personally seeing God’s promises fulfilled, yet still chose to believe, still rejoiced. So “reward” doesn’t mean “ask and you shall receive” — it means that God himself, and walking with him, is worth giving everything to pursue — even when you can’t see any concrete return before your eyes.

This kind of trust isn’t passively receiving a packet of information — it’s active, ongoing pursuit. The word “seek” (Greek ἐκζητέω) originally carries the sense of “seeking with effort” — like when you genuinely want to get to know someone, you don’t just wait for the other person to come find you, but actively reach out and try to understand them yourself. Galatians 5:25 uses a similar picture: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit” — the word translated “keep in step” (στοιχέω) is closer to “walking in formation alongside,” like walking with someone where you constantly pay attention to their pace and adjust your own rhythm — not walking one step, stopping to wait for instructions, then taking another. The two words use different pictures, but point to the same thing: a relationship with God requires active, ongoing trust and following — it isn’t completed by receiving one packet of information.

Not Just Feeling: A Faith That’s Lived Out

“Keeping in step with the Spirit” doesn’t mean that just because we’re familiar with the Bible we’re automatically connected to the Spirit — Scripture is God’s infallible revelation, but the Spirit himself is a living Person, not a book. It’s like knowing a friend — reading through every letter he ever wrote you doesn’t mean you’ve actually met him face to face. Galatians 5:16 tells us to “walk by the Spirit” — a way of speaking that carries real intimacy, like living alongside a very close family member for a long time, gradually sensing their preferences and wishes without needing to ask for instructions every time — you just naturally know how they think and what they’d want you to do. Romans 8:9–11 goes further, saying the Spirit “dwells” in believers — this is a very intimate way of speaking, like someone having moved into your home, staying with you constantly, not just occasionally sending you a letter.

Every believer who is baptized receives the Spirit that God has promised (Acts 2:38). Jesus himself promised that after returning to the Father, he would send the Spirit to us (John 16:7; John 14:16–17) — not waiting for you to achieve certain things or feel a certain way before you’re worthy of this companion. So the Spirit within the Triune God has actually always been present with every disciple — we simply choose either to lean into and live out that presence (Rom 8:5), or to resist and quench that presence (1 Thess 5:19; Luke 7:51). The Spirit’s presence has already been a fact since the moment you were baptized. Ephesians 6:18 tells us we can “pray at all times in the Spirit” — communication with God has always taken place through this Spirit who already dwells within us — we don’t need to first accomplish something before we can begin building a relationship from scratch. What comes next is continually responding to and getting to know this Spirit.

This connection to the Spirit also can’t remain only on the level of feeling. James reminds us: “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22), even more directly: “faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:17). Knowing doctrine, even feeling God’s presence — if it isn’t translated into concrete living, is like a seed that never truly took root — it won’t bear fruit. And this path of “living it out” is often not easy — it requires patience and struggle. But it’s precisely through this struggle to live it out that real transformation comes — Peter’s second epistle describes this as “becoming partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) — meaning: you don’t just know what kind of person God is, but through the ongoing process of obedience and effort to live it out, your own character gradually comes to resemble his. Like a child who’s lived with their parents for a long time — many personality traits and habits are absorbed without realizing it, not a set of rules deliberately memorized.

This “living it out” also isn’t something one person does alone shut away. Faith was never merely a set of beliefs in your head plus your own individual behavior — becoming a disciple means joining a community, learning together how to pray, learning how to treat those who’ve hurt you, learning generosity, forgiveness, hospitality toward strangers. These practices often can only truly be learned within community — just as learning to swim is hard from a book alone, you always need someone in the water with you, correcting your form. Acts 2:42 describes the early church as devoted to “the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” — a relationship with God is ultimately lived out and confirmed within a community; it’s never something entirely private, unrelated to others.

When “Scripture Alone” Goes Too Far

Some believers who highly value Scripture, who feel everything must have “biblical grounding,” might say: this way of talking about “building a relationship” with God simply isn’t taught in Scripture — it’s something modern people have added on. This was exactly the confusion I mentioned in the introduction, which I myself once had.

That statement is half right: the exact phrase “personal relationship” is indeed not the original vocabulary of Scripture — it’s a way of speaking that developed later in church history. But “this exact phrase never appears” doesn’t mean “this idea never appears” — that confuses vocabulary with meaning. In John 15, Jesus commands his disciples to “abide” in him — this word is repeated nearly ten times within just a few short verses, using the picture of a vine and its branches — branches connected to the vine draw nourishment in both directions, not the vine unilaterally transmitting information to the branches.² 1 John 1:3 says, “we… have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” — “fellowship” (κοινωνία) here, in its original sense, is closer to “companionship,” “sharing life together” — a term the New Testament author himself chose to describe the connection between humanity and God, not a modern framework we’re forcing onto the text.

The Relational Language of the Triune God

The New Testament describes the connection between people and each Person of the Triune God not with the cold, informational language of an instruction manual, but with personal, relational, experiential language — reading it feels more like describing a living relationship than a rulebook.

With the Spirit: The Spirit “dwells” within believers (Rom 8:9–11) — like a living companion, permanently in your heart, not occasionally visiting. The Spirit also “bears witness” with our spirit that we are children of God (Rom 8:16) — like someone always by your side, who knows you and affirms your identity. When we’re in hardship and can’t find words to pray, the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Rom 8:26–27); the Spirit even causes us to naturally cry out “Abba, Father” from within our hearts (Gal 4:6) — as naturally and intimately as a small child calling out “Daddy.”

With the Son: Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20); Jesus commands his disciples to “abide” in him (John 15:4–10), using the picture of a vine and branches that mutually depend on each other; Revelation describes Jesus saying, “I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev 3:20) — like the intimacy of friends sharing a meal together; Jesus also promised: “we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23).

With the Father: In prayer Jesus said, “this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God” (John 17:3) — not knowing a pile of facts about God, but knowing God himself the way you’d know a person; 1 John says “we… have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3); Ephesians says we approach the Father through one Spirit (Eph 2:18) — like a child who can walk into a parent’s room anytime, without needing an appointment, without needing to knock.

John 17:3 already says it clearly: “knowing” God himself is eternal life, not “knowing a packet of facts about God.” It’s like I could research someone’s biography, personality, and preferences down to the last detail and still never actually know that person — biblical knowledge can be a path toward knowing God, but the knowledge itself is not the destination.

The same activity — studying Scripture — done with a different heart posture produces a different result. Is it done out of habit, because you feel you “should” read it? Is it to understand the character and heart of the God behind the text? Or is it because you want to build a relationship with him, letting what you read become the starting point of a conversation with him? All three can look identical from the outside — opening the same passage, taking the same kind of notes — but the difference in heart posture determines whether this ultimately brings you before God, or merely stays at completing a task.

If You Don’t Know Where to Start

Before talking about how I myself have experienced God, I want to first share a few concrete directions you could try today — these are just practices I’ve personally tried and found useful; if you also have ways that have helped you draw closer to God, I’d genuinely welcome you sharing them in the comments.

Writing to God — turning prayer from spoken words into writing. Many of the Psalms are themselves the original template of “writing letters to God,” entire poems pouring out one’s heart to God. You could also try a season of fasting from casual prayer requests, focusing solely on seeking God’s guidance.

You could also spend time studying how to pray — even Jesus’ own disciples once asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1), which shows praying was never something that came naturally from birth. Paul also confessed candidly that “we do not know what to pray for as we ought” — this isn’t a problem of insufficient faith, it’s a genuine difficulty everyone faces. But he goes on to say the Spirit himself helps us in this weakness — the difficulty of prayer, it turns out, was never designed for us to overcome on our own, but designed for us to depend on the Spirit.

Prayer also doesn’t have to be an independent, formal occasion. Nehemiah 2:4 records that Nehemiah, standing before the Persian king, being asked what he wanted, the text records only one sentence: “So I prayed to the God of heaven.” Then he answered the king. That happened within a few seconds, in a high-pressure work situation — prayer in that moment wasn’t stopping what you’re doing to do something else, but a natural reflex of staying connected to God, running through the fabric of daily work.

I’ve also tried learning to worship God through singing — Scripture calls us to sing praise to the Lord. If time allows, before daily prayer, I’ll sing one or two songs first, pouring out my heart to God, before beginning to pray. I’ve also tried setting aside a longer stretch of time, taking a hymnal, singing through several hymns from beginning to end — even singing for a whole hour — not waiting for a song to occasionally move me, but deliberately carving out time, singing one song after another into the presence of God. With no one else around, I’m very clear that I’m singing for God to hear, not for people to hear. I also pay attention to the content of the lyrics, thinking as I sing, meditating on what the lyrics are saying. For me, singing is a form of emotional expression — not just verbal communication, but the emotion itself, expressed through melody and lyrics, toward God.

Cognitive practice is also a direction. You can make a point of studying parts of Scripture you’re less familiar with, or you can go back and recite passages you already love. I remember studying for exams as being tedious — most of what you memorize, you never use again once the test is over. But Scripture is different, I think — this is something I’ll use my whole life. So back then, I instead made time to memorize passages I loved. 2 Timothy 3:16–17 says Scripture is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” — knowing Scripture isn’t just for remembering more facts, but, as mentioned above, for actually shaping and forming our lives, so that we’re able to live out and do what pleases God.

You could also read spiritual books — not just to find answers, but also to see how different people, in different circumstances and different eras, thought about God. Paying attention to how the brothers and sisters walking alongside you hold onto faith through different challenges, reading about how forebears in history pursued and gave themselves for God — these are the same kind of strength. Hebrews 12:1 says: “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses… let us… run with endurance the race that is set before us” — this verse comes right after the entire “roll call of faith” in Hebrews 11 — these people, living, written about, and gone, are all part of that cloud of witnesses.

Honestly, examining Scripture and thinking through matters of faith has always been relatively easy territory for me — there’s method, there’s logic to follow, it’s a path I’m familiar with. Prayer, on the other hand, has often left me feeling like I don’t know where to begin. If you’re the same, don’t feel there’s something wrong with you — this is exactly the part I’m still earnestly learning myself.

You could also deliberately schedule time to “enjoy being alone with God.” As a student, I would sometimes take a break during vacations, going somewhere close to nature, spending a stretch of time alone with God. After starting work, I would also find time during holidays — even going to some out-of-the-way places I rarely visited — to spend a little extra time in quiet meditation, praying in beautiful scenery — not just to complete a spiritual task, but like spending time alone with someone close to you, enjoying that solitary time together.

Physical practice, emotional investment, intellectual inquiry — different forms, but all the same posture of “seeking” — rational inquiry has never been the opposite of relationship, but one of the ways of experiencing this relationship.

How I Have Come to Know God, To Experience God

The above is the framework Scripture gives — also a few concrete directions you could try. But this relationship doesn’t only live in the words of Scripture or in the steps of a practice — it also lives in the days I myself have walked through. What follows are things that happened at different stages along my thirty years of faith — I don’t intend for you to go and experience all of it right now. If you keep pursuing a walk with God, much of this will gradually happen in your own life too.

When I first studied Scripture and came across the Gospels’ account of Jesus on the cross, there was an indescribable feeling of my heart being gripped. And reading Romans 5:6–8 — “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly… God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” — the feeling was different, a very deep sense of being moved: thinking that God knows everything about me, even the dark sides I wouldn’t dare let anyone else know, and Christ was still willing to die for me — this touched my heart deeply.

Earnestly singing hymns during worship, feeling the beauty of God described in the lyrics, experiencing collective reverence together with a group of believers — Colossians 3:16 speaks of “singing… with thankfulness in your hearts to God” — there have been times it has moved me to tears. This is an experience I’ve had since very early on.

I also often think about Jesus — his crucifixion, God becoming flesh, God himself becoming human, dwelling among us — however I think about it, it seems inconceivable. In recent years I’ve begun thinking about it more concretely: what exactly is my own relationship with the Triune God — Father, Son, Spirit — no longer just abstractly thinking “Jesus,” but thinking separately about my connection with the Father, the Son, and the Spirit each. When I realized that “the Spirit” cannot be simplified into “the Bible,” I instead became more interested in getting to know the Spirit as a Person himself — the Spirit is not merely a tool for revealing Scripture, but a Person within the Triune God who has direct connection with me.

Prayer also wasn’t like this from the start. My earliest prayers were, honestly, mechanical — words spoken out of habit, in a fixed format. But over the years, it’s slowly become more like confiding in a close friend — no longer completing a spiritual task, but genuinely having something I want to say to him.

Going outside, taking a good look at this astonishing nature, praising God’s magnificent creation — there’s an indescribable, awe-filled reverence — Psalm 19’s “the heavens declare the glory of God” — that wondrous feeling isn’t something analyzed out, it’s something you’re moved into.

Prayer is sometimes unexpectedly answered, bringing gratitude and excitement; but more often, it’s praying to God in adversity when you can’t find the words, and can only weep. It was only later, reading Romans 8:26 — “the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” — that I understood: when language itself fails, prayer still happens, and it’s not a failed prayer — it’s the Spirit himself interceding on our behalf in that space where words fail.

There have also been times I couldn’t feel God at all, feeling like he was hiding his face from me. Holding onto prayer in those times reminds me the psalmists cried out with the same cry — Psalm 13:1, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”; Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”; Psalm 42:3, “My tears have been my food day and night.” The authors of these psalms weren’t doubting God’s existence — they were honestly bringing the very experience of “not being able to feel God” into God’s presence — it turns out God’s felt absence itself was also a taught, legitimate way of communicating in Scripture.

The inner guilt felt in sin, the sense of being useless — that feeling wasn’t something to be suppressed — Psalm 51:17 says “the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit” — inner guilt itself is a valued, necessary step in Scripture that leads toward grace; 1 John 1:9, “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just… to forgive us our sins” — guilt and the joy of forgiveness are two ends of the same cycle.

When facing doubt, working hard to think it through, and once I had thought it through, faith was instead strengthened — this isn’t skipping over reason to believe, but reason pursued all the way through, faith deepened because it was thought through. Anselm’s phrase “faith seeking understanding” doesn’t mean we can fully grasp God through knowledge alone, but that our love for God should compel us to more deeply pursue knowing him.

Witnessing others sin and walk away from God, I’ve experienced God’s own grief and heartache — the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15: “while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion”; the entire book of Hosea, God himself acting out the complicated heart of both anger and heartbreak toward the unfaithful. The relationship with God has sometimes been experienced through grieving over others alongside God.

Witnessing lives changed by God, seeing the reality and grace of God — that kind of confirmation also calls the community into it — it’s not something that stands opposite to individual experience, but an extension of this relationship outward.

Looking back, I see the same kind of experience in Joseph’s story in Genesis — “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen 50:20) — at the moment events were happening, God’s working was completely invisible; only looking back afterward could the whole track be seen clearly. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were the same — Jesus walked with them, explained Scripture to them, yet they didn’t recognize him, until the moment of breaking bread, their eyes were opened — the moment of recognition was retrospective, not known in the instant. Hebrews 12:11 says: “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness” — the process doesn’t feel good while you’re in it, yet in hindsight it can be seen as growth — the two can be true at the same time.

Walking through the experience of life and death has also made me seriously think through the meaning of death and resurrection — no longer just a doctrinal box to check “believe,” but a question I’ve had to face head-on personally. This has been the newest work of the last few years. In John 11:25–26 Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live… Do you believe this?” 1 Thessalonians 4:13 reminds believers not to grieve “as others do who have no hope” — this verse doesn’t tell people not to grieve, only that grief still contains hope, that distinction. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul rests the entire foundation of faith on the verifiable historical event of Christ’s resurrection — I’ve analyzed the argument structure of this chapter in other articles, but reading it again after personally walking through the shadow of death, the feeling is completely different.

All of the above make up the process of how I have come to know God, experience God, and build a relationship with him.

An Echo from an Old Piece

Years ago I wrote a short piece, “Have You Ever Doubted God?”, which already quoted this same passage from Hebrews 11:6 — turns out my own earlier self had already stumbled onto the direction this article wants to make. Doubt is not the opposite of relationship — very often, it’s precisely the opportunity to seek a deeper knowledge of God.

Questions to Consider

If you’re willing, you could sit quietly with the following questions:

• Is your knowledge of God currently weighted more toward “knowing facts about him,” or does it also include lived, relational experience?
• When you study Scripture or think through matters of faith, is your heart posture closer to habit, wanting to understand God’s character, or wanting to build a relationship with him through it? Can all three coexist at once?
• Is your prayer mechanical, or more like confiding in a close friend? If it’s the former, are you willing to try changing it, and how?
• Have you ever experienced God hiding his face, unable to feel his presence? How did you face that time?
• Looking back on your own walk of faith, are there moments that didn’t make sense at the time, but only became clear in hindsight as God’s work?
• If you’re currently thinking “where should I begin” — the practices mentioned earlier in this article (writing to God, fasting from prayer, singing for an hour, studying prayer, examining unfamiliar Scripture, reading spiritual books) — is there one you could try this week?

Conclusion

No one has ever seen God.³ But not seeing doesn’t mean being unable to know him, nor does it mean being unable to connect with him. What this article has tried to say might be condensed into one sentence: a relationship with God isn’t a pile of facts you can recite and present to others as proof — it’s the living stretch of road you’ve walked together with him.

Psalm 8:3–4, David looked up at the starry sky and asked: “When I look at your heavens… what is man that you are mindful of him?” As small as we are, yet able to connect with that supremely great and high God — this isn’t something owed to us by reason, it’s an undeserved grace. No matter how far you feel from God right now, or how newly this relationship has only just begun in your life, this God has always been inviting you, and has always been willing to walk with you.

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If you have other questions about Scripture or faith, feel free to ask below.

1. This article, unlike others, is written in the first person (“the writer”) — because this is my own personal sharing. ↩
2. This “Scripture alone” tendency has, for some, extended into denying that the Spirit continues to actively work today — a stance that hasn’t gone without challenge. Some believe this view essentially has God open up Christianity and then let the biblical text run on its own — God, Christ, and the Spirit all retreating to heaven, only to return at the end to check the results. This worldview shares much in common with traditional Deism’s claim that God doesn’t intervene again after creating the world, which is why some call this position “Bible Deism.” This is not about denying the authority of Scripture, but pointing out: equating the Spirit’s work entirely with the text itself may go beyond what the text was meant to say. ↩
3. This phrase is from John 1:18. The Old Testament actually records God appearing directly to different people many times, e.g., Abraham (Gen 12:7; 17:1–22), Israel’s leaders (Exod 24:10–11), Moses (Num 12:6–8), Isaiah (Isa 6:1–13). What John 1:18 wants to emphasize is that these appearances were only a small, incomplete part of God — unlike Jesus Christ’s incarnation, which let people see the full likeness of God. ↩