I just finished sharing this comment on someone else's post. It was relating to working out our relationship with Jesus, and how that can take many years to really get to know Him, as opposed to praying the 'sinners prayer'.
This is on a slightly different tangent, but I hope it fits anyway.
I worked at this relationship with Jesus for 35 years, and in the end I found myself still 'unfulfilled' for some reason. I uttered a prayer of disillusionment, which eventually became answered.
And after sort of experiencing a lifequake (in answer to my prayer), I realized that I was never meant to have a relationship with Jesus... but rather with 'myself'.
This is somewhat of a new concept that a lot of people probably are hesitant about, because well... it's just not something you do!
But if we can comprehend it from a psychological aspect, instead of a religious one, it might make more sense.
You see, due to our childhood trauma we have become separated or dissociated from our Soul, and living 'avoidant' of our Soul consciousness has become a normal thing.
Our wonderful mind has encapsulated the emotional pains and traumas and stored them away in the subconscious, so that we can go on living a somewhat normal life. But, a big part of us is 'absent', and we live 'absent' or unconscious from our Soul. (And if you will recall, when God breathed into Adam, he became a living Soul.)
Our Soul is the aspect that is our direct connection to God, or rather... it is God.
So, when we live 'absent' from our Soul, that is how we experience the absence or distance from 'God'. In order to form a relationship with God, we actually need to reconnect to our SOUL, the Breath of God.
The good news is, we have endless eternities to get reacquainted with Soul (God)... and live in relationship with all aspects of our Being! Living 'connected' (whole) in body, mind and Soul, which is what the Bible calls Salvation.
Let me just speak to the Soul's context of "endless eternity". If God is Soul, we get to evolve our Soul via endless opportunity of "getting to know God" (our Soul) throughout never ending cycles and scenarios to which our Soul can "respond" and "know" itself. I know it sounds daunting and exhausting to the 3D mind, but that is the nature of God or the Universe... constant movement and repose... it never stops.