If you’ve been around church life for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed the way people talk about their relationship with God. Some frame it like a contract: “If I do my part, God will do His part.” Others lean on lover language, with worship songs that sound more like a love song than a prayer.
What if there’s a better way to think about it? One that’s less fragile than a contract, less sentimental than a crush, and more faithful to Scripture’s language of covenant? Let’s consider contracts, crushes and covenants: rethinking our relationship with God.
The Problem with Contracts
As we looked at in a previous article, contracts are everywhere in modern life: we sign them for our jobs, our homes, and for many of us, in our internet/cell phone plans. A contract sets conditions, spells out the “if/then,” and protects our interests and the interests of the other party. But when we import that thinking into faith, it creates problems.
If faith feels like a contract, when bad things happen (or certain things don’t happen), we’re left asking: Did I break my end of the deal? Did God forget His? Faith becomes anxious, conditional, and transactional. It turns prayer into doing deals with God and we wonder if God’s shadowing us for a suprise performance review. That’s not what covenant looks like in Scripture.
The Problem with Crushes
The other extreme is the use of lover language. Many contemporary worship songs speak of intimacy with Jesus in terms that sound like romantic love. The lyrics aim to create an emotional connection, inviting worshippers to think about a love relationship with God through metaphors and emotional resonance. This can lead to misunderstanding the biblical perspective of what intimacy with God is about. We go through high and low feelings naturally, but aligning them with our connection with God, can mislead us.
Your Brain on God
The way we experience emotions like compassion, love and connection in a relationship is described with feelings; they rise and fall because of the chemical processes in our brains. When you feel a closeness to God’s presence or an emotional high, your brain’s reward system gives you a shot of the feel-good hormone dopamine where you feel a measure of joy and energy.
The thing is, these chemicals change over time, so the feelings we experience, say in a relationship with another person, or in our faith – come and go like the tide. This explains why sometimes our faith feels strong and alive, and at other times God seems distant and our faith weak. In low times, we can feel like our faith is collapsing.
It’s in low times, when the emotional highs pass, but the hormone oxytocin can help promote positive feeling. It’s released into our blood stream through supportive social interactions; it’s like a gluing agent that helps bonding and trust in relationships and also acts as a calming agent when we’re stressed. In our personal relationships, we experience the effects of this feel-good hormone in shared moments when one helps the other feel emotionally seen, secure, safe. But how does this work with a God we can’t experience with our physical senses?
We can experience God through similar patterns of brain chemistry that support love, trust and commitment in our physical relationships. Studies show that practices like prayer, worship, study and reflection help to foster a sense of openness and closeness with God.
But when I say “worship,” I don’t mean only singing songs in a church service….
I mean what Paul calls worship in Romans 12:1, Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
This is a choice of daily living – prayer, study and reflection, nurturing gratitude, serving others, living your faith. So lets look deeper.
The Mentor–Protégé Covenant
Between contracts and crushes lies a richer image: covenant friendship. Scripture often frames God’s relationship with His people in this way. Abraham is called a “friend of God” (2 Chronicles 20:7; James 2:23) — but not in a sentimental sense. Nor is it a friendship of equals where we expect our friends to invest into the relationship equally.
Throughout the friendship, Abraham listens, stumbles, questions, obeys, and even argues with God — and yet through it all remains bound to Him. God, in turn, proves faithful, patient, and deeply invested in Abraham’s growth. This kind of friendship is marked by authenticity, vulnerability, and trust. It is not fragile or fleeting. It has the weight of covenant.
Christ the Seed of the Covenant
But Abraham’s story doesn’t start and finish with him. God’s covenant with Abraham always pointed forward, rippling out beyond one man’s life. As Genesis 12 makes clear, Abraham was blessed in order to be a blessing, and through him “all nations” would be drawn into God’s purposes.
Paul clarifies the trajectory in Galatians 3:16: the “seed” of Abraham is ultimately Christ. What began as a pact with a person, became the story of a people (Israel), and in Christ, the covenant expands again — now embracing all who believe in the Son of God.
This movement — from one man, to one people, to all nations — shows us that covenant is alive, not static. It grows, unfolds, and fulfills its purpose in Christ.
The Foreshadowing of Abiding
Jesus carries this covenant imagery forward when He calls His disciples to “abide in me” (John 15). Here the mentor–protégé (apprentice) dynamic finds its fullest expression. A protégé doesn’t simply mimic the mentor’s actions, neither do they graduate. An apprentice of Jesus remains a forever student – learning; experiencing life from the mentor’s wisdom and presence. In the same way, a branch doesn’t strive to produce fruit on its own; it bears fruit naturally by remaining connected to the vine.
Abiding is the language of covenant maturity. In Christ, the seed of Abraham, we’re not invited into a contract of terms and conditions, but into a living, reciprocal relationship where life flows both ways — from God to us, and from us back to God.
Next time, I’ll explore more of this vineyard imagery — but for now, consider this: if we can move past the fragile metaphors of contracts and crushes, we can begin to recapture the sturdier, more faithful image of covenant friendship. Not sentimental. Not transactional. But deeply formative.