Seeing God As He Really Is #5: Connection — God’s Hugs and Kisses

Seeing God as He really is changes how you relate to Him. In this fifth message of the series, titled “Connection,” the pastor teaches that Christianity is not church attendance or a ritual but a two-way love relationship. God has already loved the world; His love lights up a life when it is received and returned. He calls this connection God’s hugs and kisses: an intimate, heart-to-heart exchange through which faith works by love and God speaks plainly.

This message continues from Seeing God As He Really Is #4: Chastening Is Correction, Not Punishment. Below you will find the full video, a structured summary, the Scriptures he uses (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps for building your connection with God this week.

Sermon at a Glance

This message was posted on April 15, 2026. The series takes words people have twisted and hijacked until their real meaning is lost, and looks at what they truly mean. The pastor begins with marriage. He and his wife received no real premarital counseling; when they struggled, their pastor simply told them to go somewhere quiet and pray. He admits he did not know how to love her at first, and says new believers likewise do not yet know how to love God.

How we see God shapes who we become, he explains. If you see God as an ogre demanding you jump on command, you will become a person you do not even like. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12). This message, he says, could also be titled God’s hugs and kisses.

Love That Completes the Circuit

Harmony in a marriage, the pastor says, means aiming at the same target. When both people work at the connection, it grows better over time. When neither does, it is a bust, and when only one does, it becomes strenuous and grievous.

He contrasts two verses. In John 3:16, God so loved the world, a love that flows out from one person. In John 21:20, Peter turned and saw “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” He teaches that this second kind of love is mutual, both John and Jesus exchanging affection. Of the twelve, John was the one who leaned on Jesus’ breast, and that intimacy bore fruit.

He illustrates with an electric light. A positive line runs to it, and God loves the world, but nothing lights up until a second line runs back to the source and completes the circuit. That, he says, is Christianity. Going to church does not make you a Christian, and being baptized does not make you one. It is a relationship of mutual love and respect: He pursued us, and we pursue Him.

John 14:21 makes the connection explicit: he who has My commandments and keeps them loves Me, and he will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him. Some believers fly under the radar, then complain that God did nothing when they prayed. Jesus, the pastor says, would love to manifest Himself to them, but where is the connection?

He went to church before he truly knew the Lord. Only when he yielded, saying “Lord, I’m giving you my life,” did everything light up: blues were bluer and greens were greener. He had thought he must clean up his life first. Instead, he learned it is simply allowing God to love you and loving Him back.

Love Cannot Live Through the Senses

Love that is not returned can be lonely and even painful. And love, he teaches, cannot be achieved through the five senses. Walk into a house where someone has just baked cookies and you may suddenly feel the love of a grandmother who has passed away. The smell did not cause that love; it only brought it to remembrance. The love came from the intimacy you shared.

People who try to find love through the senses, he warns, end up running from one person to another. A relationship with God is the most important thing anyone could ever have, and one main factor in it is faith. Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please Him.

Jesus said that if we love Him we will keep His commandments (John 14:15), yet it is possible to obey without faith. The pastor recalls doing what his parents asked with a bad attitude. God wants faith, not just obedience. He points to Constantine, who, he says, was truly born again but then ordered his whole army to the sea to be baptized. They got baptized, but did they have a relationship with God? Constantine knew only power and force.

Moses tried force too, killing an Egyptian, and then fled to the back side of the desert for forty years when it became known (Exodus 2:11–15). When God called him, he offered excuses, but finally, humbled, he went in faith rather than strength and accomplished what God sent him to do. God rewards those who diligently seek Him.

Faith Working Through Love

Some Christians want to stay unnoticed because they still picture God as harsh, which is why the series looked at words like wrath and justice. Knowing His love, the pastor says, lets you boldly declare from the housetops what you hear in secret (Matthew 10:27), and dwell under the shadow of the Almighty (Psalm 91:1–2). God is not after head knowledge but a heart experience.

Seeing God as He really is also brings boldness. He recalls his Bible college instructor Lester Sumrall saying, “Blessed is the man who God has never told anything to do,” because obeying God meets resistance in a fallen world. All who desire to live godly will suffer persecution (2 Timothy 3:12). But when you are confident in love, it does not matter. You are not living to guard your life; you are living to have His life embedded in your heart.

Galatians 5:6 says that in Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love. Circumcision was a man’s declaration that he belonged to God, but done to show how good we are, it means nothing. You could put anything in its place, even baptism. Works are meant to flow as the fruit of love, not as an intellectual effort toward God. Faith, he says, is not passive; it is active, and love is its driving force.

The greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:30–31). No one can do that through the senses, intellect or strength, only by accepting God’s love. And he does not want believers to love him the way they love themselves if they think they are worthless worms. You are the righteousness of God in Christ, a child of God, a king and priest.

A revelation of God’s love removes the need to earn it. You just want to be with Him and bask in it. Great peace have those who love God’s law, and nothing causes them to stumble (Psalm 119:165), and the law of the New Testament is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:2). 1 John 3:22 promises that whatever we ask we receive, because we keep His commandments and do what pleases Him, and faith is what pleases Him.

The pastor once ministered in a home in Indianapolis where a man insisted God makes people sick, citing a single verse in Revelation. The pastor told him he could show a hundred Scriptures that God heals, and the man was living off one. Revelation, he says, is like a plane that needs a runway long enough to land. God’s mercies are as sure as His promise to Noah that the flood will never return (Isaiah 54:9–10).

Works are not what we do to get God to bless us; we receive what He has already done. In John 17:22–23, Jesus prays that we would be one as He and the Father are one, so the world may know the Father loves us as He loves Jesus. The only thing that brings sorrow to God’s heart, the pastor says, is people unwilling to accept His love. Faith is not mere mental assent; it comes not by might nor by power but by His Spirit (Zechariah 4:6).

Mouth to Mouth With God

The pastor returns to the beginning. In Genesis 2:7, the Lord God formed man of the dust and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. The mouth and nose, he notes, are the openings to our innermost being; in rescue breathing you breathe into the mouth, not the ear. Psalm 2 says to kiss the Son (Psalm 2:12), and in many nations people greet one another with a kiss. God wants that exchange of life, not information whispered into the head.

That is why Scripture says to trust in the Lord and not lean on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5–6). The key passage is Numbers 12:5–8. When Aaron and Miriam spoke against Moses, the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and explained that to a prophet He speaks in visions and dreams, but with Moses He speaks face to face, plainly, and Moses sees the form of the Lord.

The pastor teaches that the Hebrew expression there literally means mouth to mouth, the same way God breathed into Adam. Because of that intimate communication, Moses was taking on God’s likeness, which is why he was the humblest man on earth. His desires became like God’s: to bless, encourage and help people. The pastor sums up the contrast he draws:

Miriam was struck with leprosy and put out of the camp for a week, while Aaron, covered by his priestly garment, was not touched until God later took it off him on the mountain (Numbers 20:25–28). It matters, he says, whether we let God speak into our hearts. Stubbornness and self-reliance will not work with God. Most of us, when we have a dream, call around asking what it means. With Moses, God spoke mouth to mouth, and there was no question.

Most believers can recall a time God spoke to their heart and simply knew it was Him. That connection, the pastor says, is where we need to live, heart to heart. Every day God wants hugs and kisses from His children, and from that every day life will grow, strengthen and prosper, not by our power but by His hand.

Seeing God as He Really Is Through Connection

Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27). The pastor teaches that the word for know, ginosko, is an intimate knowing that leads to following, like John following Jesus. He adds that the same intimate kind of knowing is what Scripture describes when Adam knew Eve (Genesis 4:1). That is the intimacy God wants, in the heart rather than the head.

Had Adam eaten from the tree of life, he says, he would have known God so well he never would have touched the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Instead, God has had to keep proving who He is through His names, the Lord who heals, provides and gives peace. Moses wanted more and asked to see His glory (Exodus 33:18), and that glimpse changed him. We too need the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5).

The pastor and his wife Pam have been passionately in love for over 52 years and have worked side by side most of that time. A kiss or a hug communicates and fuels without words, and in a crowd of ten thousand his heart still flutters when he sees her. How much more with God? When two people are fully committed, a kiss brings an instant download that is returned. That is how it should be with God every day.

Psalm 103:7 says He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel. Israel only witnessed miracles; Moses understood God’s character. Hebrews 3:7–11 warns not to harden your hearts as Israel did, who saw His works forty years yet did not know His ways and did not enter His rest. One-sided love, the pastor says, always brings frustration.

He illustrates with a family dog, Daisy, who stayed with him and Pam after her owner moved away. She liked them but ignored their calls and only lit up for her former master. So they set out to show her affection constantly. One day it clicked: she accepted their love, and they became her master. Many people treat God the way Daisy once treated them, he says, doing their own thing. Let Him love you each morning: “Tell me again how much you love me, Father.”

Finally, God is Spirit, and true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and truth (John 4:23–24), not merely intellectually. Bible knowledge is good, but seeing God as He really is, through a living connection, means knowing that God is love, period. He is not angry or harsh with anyone; people reap from hard hearts and blame God. There is no fear in love, because perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18).

Building Your Connection With God This Week

The pastor closes by inviting everyone to give God their heart, as in a marriage covenant, trusting that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation (James 1:17). Here are practical steps for seeing God as He really is and strengthening your connection with Him:

• Start each morning being loved. Sit quietly and say, “Tell me again how much you love me, Father,” then answer, “Father, I love you.”
• Complete the circuit. Do what He has asked you to do, as an expression of love rather than duty, and expect Him to manifest Himself.
• Learn to be still. Practice sitting quietly before God until your soul finds its rest in Him, instead of always needing to be doing something.
• Trust the inner witness. When God speaks to your heart, live from that rather than chasing interpretations of every dream or circumstance.
• Know His ways, not just His acts. Read Scripture to understand His character, not only to collect His miracles.
• Love your neighbor from overflow. Let the love you receive from God, not your own strength, shape how you treat people.

He prays for the Holy Spirit to shed abroad God’s love in every heart (Romans 5:5), thanking the Father for His embrace and His hugs and kisses.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 Words that have been twisted
• 1:11 What marriage really means
• 3:21 How you see God shapes who you are
• 4:29 Harmony and working at connection
• 5:39 The disciple whom Jesus loved
• 7:01 The light and the completed circuit
• 8:13 John 14:21: I will manifest Myself
• 10:44 When his life lit up
• 12:12 Love cannot come through the senses
• 13:23 Without faith it is impossible to please God
• 14:46 Constantine and Moses: force or faith
• 16:57 Lester Sumrall and persecution
• 18:09 Faith working through love: Galatians 5:6
• 20:37 The greatest commandment
• 23:15 Whatever we ask: 1 John 3:22
• 25:44 The man in Indianapolis and the runway
• 28:00 That they may be one: John 17
• 31:55 The breath of life: Genesis 2:7
• 34:44 Mouth to mouth with Moses: Numbers 12
• 40:16 Hearing God heart to heart
• 41:37 My sheep hear My voice
• 44:19 Show me Your glory; 52 years with Pam
• 48:39 His ways and His acts: Psalm 103 and Hebrews 3
• 51:29 Daisy the granddog
• 54:45 Worship in spirit and truth
• 57:54 Closing prayer for God’s embrace

Seeing God As He Really Is Series

This message is part of a teaching series at NTC Ministries. Start from the beginning or continue where this one leaves off:

• First message: Seeing God As He Really Is #1 — Completing the Love of God
• Previous: Seeing God As He Really Is #4: Chastening Is Correction, Not Punishment
• You are here: Seeing God As He Really Is #5: Connection — God’s Hugs and Kisses
• Next: Seeing God As He Really Is #7: The Two Adams

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the pastor call this message “God’s hugs and kisses”?

Because he sees the connection between God and a believer as intimate, not merely informational. God breathed life into Adam’s nostrils and spoke with Moses mouth to mouth. Just as a kiss or a hug between spouses communicates without words and fuels the relationship, he teaches, daily intimate time with God communicates His love and changes us into His likeness.

Is obedience enough to please God?

Not on its own. The pastor points out that you can do what someone asks with a bad attitude, as he once did with his parents. Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God, and Galatians 5:6 says faith works through love. Obedience is meant to be the fruit of love and trust, not a duty performed to earn something.

Should I rely on dreams and visions to hear from God?

The pastor says God can use circumstances, coincidences, dreams and visions, but they often leave people calling others to ask what they mean. With Moses, God spoke plainly, mouth to mouth. He encourages believers to live heart to heart with God, recognizing His voice within, the way most Christians simply knew it was God when He spoke to their heart.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• John 14:21 — I will love him and manifest Myself
• John 21:20 — the disciple whom Jesus loved
• Hebrews 11:6 — without faith it is impossible to please Him
• Galatians 5:6 — faith working through love
• Genesis 2:7 — the breath of life
• Numbers 12:5–8 — face to face with Moses
• John 10:27 — My sheep hear My voice
• Psalm 103:7 — His ways to Moses
• John 4:23–24 — worship in spirit and truth

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

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