A River of Intimacy

I’ve been thinking a lot about what intimacy is. Being an English teacher, I did what all good English teachers do and looked it up in a Thesaurus to get a better sense of related words. What I found began to give me a deeper sense of the meaning: acquaintance, affection, communion, confidence, friendship, inwardness, and understanding.

So how does that translate to being intimate with God? Here are some things I thought about:

* Intimacy with God is to know Him as He desires to be known. It means communing with Him and having confidence in His character, so much so that your relationship exists deep within you.
It means that I live daily in His presence, yearning for Him and His word so that it becomes impossible to exist without them. What do you yearn for? What does it even really mean to yearn? To yearn means to feel a deep desire or longing for. Usually we think about yearning for that special loved one or perhaps for that elusive, distant dream. It is something that consumes us.

To yearn also means to pine. This means to become sick gradually from sorrow or loneliness. Do you pine for God? That for every day you do not meet with Him and commune with His Spirit, you grow sick and lonely? Are you lonely for God? Is He that real to you? Or is he just a notion - a nameless, abstract higher power that has no identity or intention?

* Intimacy also has the connotation of being filled with pity or compassion. It seems that when we have an inward, deep relationship with God, a compassion for others springs forth. We give out to others what we have received from God. Imagine a river building in depth and height, straining against its borders. It will eventually spill out and over to flood the surrounding areas. It is similar when the love and mercy of God builds within you. This river of grace cannot and should not stay underground and hidden. Its merciful current flows to a hurting, lonely world, bringing healing and compassion to all who stand in its wake.

* Another aspect of intimacy is acknowledging God for who He is. Who is God? Here are just a few of the ways God reveals Himself in His Word:
God is a creator.
God is a father and a mother.
God is a judge.
God is a warrior.
God is a husband and a wife.
God is light.

Who do you think God is? What evidence is there in His Word of this perception? When we allow our notions and traditions, which have been formed by our experiences to infiltrate what God says about Himself, we are actually fabricating and fashioning an idol. God is who He is whether we agree with Him or not. He is either God as He reveals Himself in His Word, or He is anything I make Him up to be. The trouble with this is that He is no longer God. He is just a figment of my imagination that not only has no power to redeem, but has no interest in my heart. I cannot be intimate with someone I do not truly know.

* Intimacy is to desire service at an ever increasing level. Out of a full inner man comes the desire to serve.

* Intimacy leads to fulfillment spiritually, personally, creatively, intellectually, relationally, and emotionally.

* Intimacy is to no longer be satisfied to exist on the surface, but to consistently dive deeper and deeper into your relationship with the Lord. We need to ask if we have compartmentalized God? Does He only exist on Sundays and holidays in a particular building? Is He just a name we call out when we are in crisis? Has he infiltrated all the areas of our life? Intimate means deep, essential and innermost. Does that describe the way I see God?

* Intimacy is to allow the Spirit into your inner man to cleanse you from your secret sin, to release you from your life-controlling strongholds, to fill you with sustaining peace, and to inhabit you in increasing measure forever.

* Intimacy is hope fulfilled, passion expressed, and joy unleashed.

Merciful Father, I am sorry for the distance that I have put between us. You desire closeness and truth in my inward parts. You are my hope, my passion and my joy.

Check out: I Corinthians 13:4-13