[Darris McNeely] When is the best time, what's the best way for you and I to come to know and have a very close, intimate relationship with God? I've been thinking about this in connection with so many different episodes in the Bible. There's one here in the book of Genesis in the early chapters in the Garden of Eden, that we all know the story. After the temptation of Adam and Eve by Satan, the serpent, and their decision to take the knowledge of the tree of good and evil, there was a change that we know about. But in that verse, in that story, as God comes among them in the aftermath of that decision that they made, notice what it says. We all know the story. "After the eyes of both of them were opened because of what they did and they saw they were naked, they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings." Verse 8 of chapter 3 of Genesis, "They," Adam and Eve, "heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, 'Where are you?'" Well, in just these few words, there's a great deal of comment that we could make.

God goes looking for His creation, the two human beings, Adam and Eve, already knowing what had happened and really knowing where they were, it's almost a rhetorical question, but keep in mind that God formed man out of the dust of the ground to have a relationship with this being, to bring many sons ultimately to glory and to add to His family, and here God, even after the first humans made a decision to disobey God, He still wants that relationship. He goes looking for them in the garden, but is in the cool of the day, it says.

Now, we can take that to mean certainly as the day comes to an end. My question was, when is the best time to get to know God, to have a relationship with God? Well, the reality is any time is, any time of the day, no matter what's going on in our life. But we see in this particular moment, this picture, in the cool of the day and the evening, God goes looking, wanting to talk and to relate to His creation.

The story goes on and it's not a very pleasant conversation because it leads to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden. But in the process here, I think we can at least pull one point for us to learn and think about in our own day and our own relationship with God. As the day winds down or in the mornings before our day starts up and really gets hectic, those are the times to set aside time and our thoughts and our prayers and in our study of God's Word to get to know God. Now we can get to know God at any time under any circumstance, but make an appointment with God. We get the impression here that that was the time when God went looking for them. That that was their time together, that it was almost like a set apart appointed time.

Get to know God, order your life. Don't let it order you or myself. In the process, we can come to a more close, intimate, meaningful relationship with God that keeps us on the straight and narrow.

That's "BT Daily." Join us next time.