Chapter Six

The Relationship That Changes Everything

This walk, this surrender, was never meant to be built on performance.
It was meant to be rooted in relationship.

I didn’t choose Jesus because I needed a belief system.
I chose Him because I met Him.
I encountered the One who didn’t just tell me who I was.
He knew me before I ever knew myself.

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart.”  (Jeremiah 1:5)

It still undoes me.

This whole time I was searching, comparing, striving, and the answer wasn’t a formula. It was a Person.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”  (John 14:6)

Not just the way to life.
He is life.
The truth I was desperate to find? That’s Him.
The rest I couldn’t manufacture? Found in Him.
The identity I couldn’t sustain? Secure in Him.

When I started treating my faith like a relationship instead of a role, everything changed.
I stopped trying to impress Him.
I stopped pretending I had it together.
And I started bringing the real me to the real Jesus.

And you know what happened?

He didn’t reject me.
He didn’t rebuke me for being broken.
He welcomed me.

Because He didn’t come for the fixed, He came for the willing.

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door,
I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”  (Revelation 3:20)

This isn’t distant theology. This is table fellowship.
He wants communion, not compliance.
Intimacy, not image.

And once I truly opened the door, He didn’t just enter my life, He became it.

“I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.”  (Galatians 2:20)

I don’t wake up every day trying to be a good Christian.
I wake up asking, “Jesus, how can I know You more today?”
That’s the relationship.
That’s the transformation.
That’s the life I never knew I needed.

There’s a reason you still feel empty when you’ve checked every religious box.
It’s because Christianity without Christ is just behaviour management.
But Jesus came to dwell in you, not just direct you.

He doesn’t want you to just read about Him.
He wants to walk with you.

He wants to hear your thoughts.
He wants to sit with you in silence.
He wants to break the chains the world taught you to wear like jewellery.

You can’t fake relationship.
But you also can’t fail your way out of it, because this one is held together by grace.

The only question is: Will you open the door?

Jesus,

I don’t want religion. I want You.
Strip away the layers of performance.
Tear down the walls of appearance.
Break every chain I’ve built around my own heart.

Come in.
Sit with me.
Walk with me.
Speak to me.

I don’t just want to follow Your ways.
I want to know Your voice.

Be the centre. Be the goal.
Be the reason I wake up, the one I walk with,
and the joy I fall asleep in.

I choose You, not just once, but every day.
And in choosing You… I’m finally finding me.

Amen.