Peter writes about the nature of our New Covenant relationship with our God in 1 Peter 2:3-4, “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature.”

We are participants in the divine nature of our God.  Notice the message here is not that we participate in His work or even His mission.  We participate in His very nature.  We participate in Him. This is another way of expressing the idea of our union with God, our being joined into Him.

We are joined into Him that we might have intimate fellowship with Him continually, all day, every day. This is to be a conversational communion shared among intimate friends. It is at the same time a worshipful and holy bond between the creator and the created. It is the literal presence, the very life of our God within us for the purpose of living His life in and through us at all times.

The most natural, sensible, and appropriate response to being partakers or participants of the divine nature of our God is to join into conversational communion with Him every day.  What if Jesus Himself came to stay with you at your house for a couple of weeks?  And what if, when He arrived, you spent only about fifteen minutes with Him most mornings and about an hour with Him on Sunday, and the rest of the time you left Him to fend for Himself?  Would that not seem totally ridiculous?  How much more so when we consider that He does not visit us daily but lives within us continually.

So how can we entertain and engage with this divine inhabitant in our lives?

• We must decide that we will truly love our God as our first and highest love in this life.  He must become our magnificent obsession for this is His rightful place.
• We must choose to participate in His divine nature as our life and mission each day. 
• We must commit to unhesitating obedience in whatever He points out to us.  Revelation from our God always follows obedience.
• We must begin to live in full surrender to Him. The unsurrendered life cannot fully engage with our God.
• We must turn to Him often in conversation.  Just like if Jesus were walking side by side with you in every event and action of your day.
  • Speak together as you walk, work, drive, and transition.
  • Confess anything that you need to confess – simply level with Him about any sin or selfish motive, any fear or reluctance.
  • Repent of all self-dependence and anything that might be an obstacle to your unconditional love.
• Create silence in your life, and fight to keep it sacred.  Once you begin to settle into silence as a daily routine, you will long for more and more of it.  In the silence is where you hear your God.
• Make sure you are in the company of like-minded folk with whom you can share successes, setbacks, and accountability for what you are hearing.

We have the life of our God made available not only to us but within us for the purpose of experiencing a daily conversational communion with our creator.  There is no greater life imaginable than to be in communion with the divine nature of our God.  This is life in abundance, life without limits, life as it was meant to be for us.

Image via author, Yosemite Valley, in December