How "Entangled" Are You With God?

How close, how intimate,  can we actually get with God? Not simply how much can we know about Him, how faithfully can we attend church, or how disciplined can we become in prayer and Scripture reading, but how deeply can our everyday lives become intertwined with His?

I keep coming back to the word "entangled".

Admittedly, entangled is not a biblical word, and we often use it negatively. We become entangled in problems, obligations, conflicts, or circumstances we would rather avoid. I am using it differently here. I am talking about becoming so immersed in our relationship with God that His presence, His Word, His love, His purposes, and our everyday lives are no longer treated as separate things. Prayer becomes more than something we occasionally stop life to do. Communion with God increasingly becomes part of life itself.

There is an ongoing awareness of Him, an ongoing conversation, and a growing dependence upon Him. His Word begins to shape how we interpret what is happening around us. His Spirit influences how we respond.

When I read Jesus' prayer in John 17, I believe we see a remarkable picture of this kind of relationship. Jesus describes His relationship with the Father in terms that go far beyond what we might normally call a "devotional life." It is intimate, relational, dependent, and completely integrated into the way He lives. Even more remarkably, Jesus prays that those who believe in Him would be brought into that relationship.

Jesus Prayed for Us Before We Were There

John 17 occurs shortly before Jesus' arrest and crucifixion. He has spent His final hours with His disciples preparing them for what is coming. In John 14–16, He speaks extensively about His departure, the coming Holy Spirit, their relationship with Him, their relationship with one another, and how they are to live when He is no longer physically standing beside them. Then, in John 17, Jesus turns to the Father and prays.

He first prays concerning Himself and the Father, and then for the disciples who are physically present with Him. Beginning in verse 20, however, His prayer reaches beyond that room: "I am praying not only for these disciples but also for all who will ever believe in me through their message" (John 17:20 NLT).

That includes us.

Before the cross, before the resurrection, before Pentecost, and before the Gospel had traveled beyond that small group of disciples, Jesus prayed about the kind of relationship He desired for those who would eventually believe in Him.

He continues, "I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us..." (John 17:21 NLT).

There is something profound in Jesus' repeated use of the language of being "in" one another. The Father is in Christ. Christ is in the Father. Jesus prays that His people would be in them. Later in the prayer, He says that He will be in us.

This is much deeper than religious affiliation. Jesus is not merely praying that future Christians will agree with certain doctrines or follow a particular moral code, as important as truth and obedience certainly are. His prayer describes our participation in the life and fellowship He shares with the Father.

This is where the word entangled becomes useful to me. I am not suggesting that we somehow become God. Scripture never erases the distinction between the Creator and His creation. Rather, Jesus is describing an extraordinary relational union and communion: the Father in Christ, Christ in the Father, Christ in us, and we in Christ. Through Him, we are brought into fellowship with the Father.

Abiding: John 15 Explains the Relationship

Two chapters earlier, Jesus had already given His disciples a picture for understanding this relationship through the vine and the branches.

Other translations use the word abide, and there is something particularly powerful about that word. Abiding is not visiting. It is remaining, dwelling, continuing, making one's home somewhere. The branch does not occasionally connect itself to the Vine when it needs something. Its entire existence depends upon its connection to the Vine. Life flows through that relationship, and fruit is the result.

This is what Jesus was teaching His disciples as He prepared them to live through the Holy Spirit after His departure. Some teachers have illustrated this relationship through simple visual diagrams showing the interconnected life of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the believer — not as equal members of the Godhead, but as the relationship into which we are graciously drawn (John 17:21; 2 Peter 1:4). The point of any such diagram is the same one Jesus makes: we are not merely meant to imitate Him from a distance. Through the Holy Spirit, we are invited to abide in Him and to live from our connection with Him.

John 17 then allows us to see how completely Jesus Himself lived from His relationship with the Father. Throughout John's Gospel, Jesus repeatedly describes His dependence upon the Father. He does what He sees the Father doing. He speaks what the Father gives Him to speak. He seeks the Father's glory and continually acknowledges the Father's love. In John 17, instead of merely hearing Jesus teach about that relationship, we are allowed to listen as He speaks directly to His Father.

Jesus prays, "Father, I want these whom you have given me to be with me where I am. Then they can see all the glory you gave me because you loved me even before the world began!" (John 17:24 NLT). He does not merely want us informed about His glory — He wants us present with Him to see it, glory rooted in a love that predates creation itself. Then, near the conclusion of the prayer, He says, "I have revealed you to them, and I will continue to do so. Then your love for me will be in them, and I will be in them" (John 17:26 NLT).

That last statement is extraordinary: "I will be in them."

Christianity cannot be reduced to behavior modification or even intellectual agreement with a collection of truths. It is life with God. Jesus speaks specifically of the Father's love being in us and of the glory He received from the Father being given to His people. The relationship Jesus shares with the Father becomes the source from which His people are meant to live.

Dwelling in the Secret Place

This also affects how I read Psalm 91. The Psalm begins, "Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty" (Psalm 91:1 NLT). Other translations famously render this as dwelling in "the secret place of the Most High."

The imagery is important. The Psalm describes someone who dwells, remains, or makes his habitation with God. God is his refuge and fortress, the One in whom he trusts. Under the imagery of His wings, he finds refuge, and under His shadow he remains.

Psalm 91 is not describing an occasional emergency visit to God when life becomes frightening. It describes a person whose life has become oriented around dwelling with and trusting in God. Nor should we reduce Psalm 91 to a simplistic formula promising that believers will never encounter suffering. Jesus suffered. The apostles suffered. Faithful people throughout Scripture experienced persecution, hardship, loss, sickness, and death. Psalm 91 is not a magic formula or a spiritual force field. It is a declaration of where the person of faith has chosen to dwell and in whom that trust has been placed.

When we place that imagery alongside Jesus' language of abiding in John 15 and His prayer in John 17, a beautiful biblical pattern emerges. Psalm 91 speaks of dwelling. John 15 speaks of abiding. John 17 repeatedly speaks of being "in" Him and He in us. These passages arise from different historical and covenantal settings, and we should respect those differences, but together they help us see something fundamental about life with God: He has never intended merely to be someone we visit.

He is our dwelling place.

That is what I mean when I talk about becoming entangled with Him.

When We Don't Feel It

None of this means abiding is measured by emotional intensity. Some days we are keenly aware of God's nearness; other days we walk by faith with little sense of it at all. Feelings rise and fall with sleep, circumstance, and body chemistry, but our union with Christ does not rise and fall with them. It rests on His promise, not on our fluctuating emotions. The branch remains connected to the Vine whether or not it feels the sap moving. Abiding, then, is less a feeling we chase and more a place we return to — again and again, regardless of what the day happens to feel like.

An Unusual Picture From Braveheart

This may seem like a silly example, but I frequently think about Stephen, the Irishman from the movie Braveheart. He talks to someone nobody else can see and refers naturally to conversations with his Father. To everyone around him, he simply looks insane.

Braveheart is not Scripture, and Stephen is no source of doctrine, but his constant, unguarded awareness of God's presence has stayed with me for years. Within the story, talking with God is not an isolated religious exercise — it is simply part of how he lives.

I want more of that.

What would happen if communion with God became that natural to us? What if prayer were not primarily an event but an ongoing conversation with our Father? Throughout the ordinary circumstances of the day, we could learn to turn toward Him: Father, what do You think about this? Help me see this correctly. Holy Spirit, show me what I am missing. Thank You for that. I trust You here.

This is not religious performance. It is relationship. Sometimes it involves speaking, sometimes listening, sometimes sitting quietly, and sometimes opening Scripture because we need our thoughts realigned with His truth. At other times it may simply mean becoming conscious again of the reality that we are not navigating the moment alone.

Living an Integrated Life With God

I wonder whether we have sometimes made our relationship with God too compartmentalized. We have our prayer time, Bible time, church time, and worship time, and then we have everything else: work, driving, cooking dinner, paying bills, going to the grocery store, dealing with difficult people, and sitting quietly with a cup of coffee.

Perhaps the purpose of spiritual disciplines is not merely to create isolated moments with God, but to teach us to recognize and respond to Him throughout the rest of life. Reading Scripture becomes more than completing the day's assigned chapter — through His Word, we come to know His character, and our minds are renewed so that His truth shapes how we understand everything else. Prayer becomes communion rather than a list of requests. Worship becomes an orientation of the heart rather than something limited to music or a service.

Abiding is not another spiritual activity added to the schedule. Abiding is where everything else happens.

This seems much closer to the life Jesus describes in John 15 and the relationship for which He prays in John 17.

There is also an important dimension of John 17 that prevents this from becoming merely an individual pursuit of spiritual experiences. Jesus connects our union with Him to our relationships with one another. "I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one," He says, and then explains why: "so that the world will believe you sent me" (John 17:21 NLT).

Our communion with God was never intended to produce spiritual isolation. The closer we live to the heart of God, the more His love should become visible in the way we relate to His people. The "entanglement," therefore, eventually becomes visible. Love becomes visible. Grace, patience, forgiveness, unity, and the character of Christ become visible. The life flowing from the Vine produces fruit on the branch. The branch does not manufacture that fruit independently; it bears fruit because it remains connected to its source.

How "Entangled" Are We?

This brings me back to the original question: How entangled are we with God?

The answer cannot be measured by how many Scriptures we can quote, how many church activities occupy our schedules, or even how long we spent praying this morning. Those things may be valuable, but there is a deeper question underneath them: How much of our actual lives are we consciously living with Him?

When something good happens, is He part of the conversation? When fear arrives, do we retreat entirely into our own thoughts, or do we remember our refuge in the Most High? When we don't know what to do, is our first instinct only to calculate, worry, and strategize, or have we learned to turn toward the One in whom we abide?

Through Christ, we have already been brought near.

The invitation is simply to increasingly live from the relationship we have already been given — to abide, to dwell, to remain, to become immersed in the love of God revealed through Christ and made real in our lives through the Holy Spirit.

I want His Word woven into my thinking, His love shaping the way I see people, and His Spirit guiding the ordinary moments of everyday life. I want to dwell with Him rather than merely visit Him, and to abide in the Vine rather than try to produce fruit on my own.

Most of all, I want to live more fully in the reality Jesus prayed for before I was ever born:

"You are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us."

That is the kind of entanglement I am talking about.

And that is the life to which Christ invites us.