Personal relationship with

I did a search using the KJV on Biblegateway.com for the word "personal". It doesn't show up anywhere. Interesting. It seems to me that relationships seem to be more in line with societal relationships than personal within the Bible. God and the Jewish nation, God and Jesus with believers. The Bible doesn't talk much about personal relationships with God except a handful of instances in the OT. He seems to have been replaced in the NT by his angels.  Although, emphasizing a personal relationship does seem to be the American way of things. I think you are correct, throwaway2018, in that it deals with prayers and personal bible study, etc. It also seems to me to create millions of gods among countless Christians, even within the same denomination, each having different concepts of who God is and how this God interacts with them in a personal way. I'm not so sure if the concept is biblical or not, but then the Trinity isn't mentioned in the Bible either. 

I never would have used that language myself either when I was a Christian. I think it tends to be more common among churches in the south. The Dutch are far too stoic to use such emotional lanugage .

I think what questioneverything brought up something really important - when a culture uses the language of "having a personal relationship with God", individual people tend to have very different interpretations of who God is. There's more of a reliance on guidance you feel from God rather than following the Bible. That certainly wouldn't do for the PRC - they want to discourage individuality in religion as much as possible and encourage homogeneity. 

You know, that's something I never really considered but that observation has been true for me too. Any PR friends I had would have thought it was really weird to talk about God or Jesus in a more friendly or loving manner. Religion was more restricted to "God thinks this", or "the Bible says this". I remember being taught the ACTS prayer acronym for how to pray (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) - pretty much everyone kept the adoration part as minimal as possible I think partially because we had never heard much of an adoration in prayer other than "hallowed be thy name". Then my college friends who were not PR (even though they were mostly some form of Dutch Reformed) were the opposite. Their prayers tended to be very focused on the adoration portion. 

A few other notes: I think the PRC forcing thee and thou when talking to God removes some of the idea of a personal relationship. It doesn't really feel like you're actually talking to someone real when the way you speak isn't the way you'd speak to anyone else no matter how much authority they had over you.

I also find that the PRC seems to bizarrely focus on God the Father while Christ and the Holy Spirit get left by the wayside. I think the Holy Spirit gets ignored because you might start leaning into Pentecostal territory if you start spending time focusing on the Holy Spirit, but basically the only time Christ comes up is to reference him dying on the cross. Whereas literally everyone else from any other denomination that I've come across seems to spend a lot of time referring to Jesus. Instead of "God we thank thee" it's "Jesus we thank you". Not sure if it has anything to do with the personal relationship thing or not. 

It shows how fully PRC indoctrinated I am that I never considered that. It makes perfect sense. 

I also have a difficult time handling the fact that Christianity is a blood religion. Violence, pain, and suffering are required, exalted even. Sometimes it seems, usually actually, to be rather in line with most ancient beliefs, not really offering anything different from other religions of the Near East Plain.

I've heard it my whole life long. It doesn't answer my questions, though. I struggle within the realm of the supernatural.