2) Another aspect of relationship is Trust.
Psalm 37:3 - "Trust in the Lord with all your heart".
Trust is a decision to place confidence, that God is good and faithful, reliable. It's a decision to become vulnerable. Trusting. It's a hard one, this one's the most sensitive one. To trust God means you commit something you value into His hands, it makes you vulnerable to Him. To trust God means you respond to His counsel and guidance. You're trusting Him, that His way is better than your way. When you forgive someone, you are trusting that God will take care of this issue for you. When you start to order your finances, and make a portion for giving to the Lord, you are trusting that God will care and multiply the rest.
Psalm 9:10 - "Those who know your name (or those who know what you're like) will trust you."
You need to know what God is like. Then you know I can trust him. Can you trust Him with your marriage? If you're a wife, can you trust your husband? Big issues, but that's the core of relationship. If there's areas of distrust, they have to be repaired, so intimacy can be established by deepening the trust.
3) The third aspect of relationship is honor. Honor means you place a high value, and you treat someone with respect. If you want to build a relationship with God, learn to honor Him and respect Him, and His word, and His ways and deal with the defilement in your life, and have a proper attitude to the family of God. It's our father's family, don't get familiar, and treat them, and talk about them, and gossip about them, and run them down and criticize them. They're just immature Children on a journey; love them, and build them, and help them, and invest in them. If I want to build a relationship with God, then I must honor Him in my life on a daily basis. I must learn to progressively entrust my life into His care, and trust He will work it out, even though it doesn't always initially look that way, and I must learn how to build the intimacy with him.
4) The other area was responsibility. Responsibility means you got something you're called to do - you're responsible. There are lots of areas we are responsible for. Jesus said: I honored you father, and this is how I honored you...
John 17:4 - "...I finished the work you gave me to do".
Fathers give their sons work to do. They have a purpose. He's assigned a work, and in doing that, he's called to represent his father in the work. He was called to do what Adam didn't do. An assignment then is a specific task, and the Bible tells us very clearly that all sons are given assignments. It's your job to find what He called you to do. God puts you in a house like this, so you can be trained how to be faithful. That's one of the purposes of being in a church, is so you can learn how to be faithful in serving the house of our father. If you can't be trusted to turn up when you've got a job to do for your father's house, you can't be trusted full stop. It means you've got an attitude about your father, and His house, of disrespect and dishonor. Maybe no one says anything, but God sees it all, and notices, and this is very important to your maturity, your development, your inheritance.
Every son is given assignments, and they vary in scope and size over the course of our life. When I started my first assignment, I just cleaned the floors with a vacuum cleaner, I made cups of tea, all kinds of things - even cleaned out the toilets. It didn't really matter, it's just a job to do for father, and you're doing it all for your father in heaven; not for someone to notice you, or to get some recognition - that's what it's about.
Ephesians 2:10 - "We're created for works that God has prepared before you've begun".
Before you're even thought of, God has something for you to do. You've got to find what He's called you to do, and prepare yourself, so he can fulfill it. God has purposes in those assignments. Another thing to recognize about your assignments is that God sends you; every son, God sends. If you're in a certain neighborhood, God sent you there; if you're in a workplace, or got a business, God sent you there. You're commissioned as His representative to carry out His purpose there. If you just think church is church, and the rest of it's everything else, you're not thinking kingdom. You've got to think: I am a representative, all the time, of my father. If I've got a marriage and a family, I was sent there to be a blessing, and to build it. If I'm in a business or a work, I'm sent there to build it, and whatever God has sent you to do, he will authorize it. He will back you up, and give you spiritual authority to operate in that area. You just got to learn how to do that. It's so simple, but so profound, because it affects everything that you do.