Deeper Intimacy

In the challenge from my pastor to deepen my intimacy with God, I’ve been pondering what intimacy means and almost decided it is easier to know when it is there or not there than to describe what it is.

One person says it is like long and continuing eye-contact, which creates a bonding —again without a good description. Others say intimacy is like friendship — you can be yourself and the other person loves you anyway, or you can be together without any hindrance to knowing and understanding each other.

How then is intimacy with God? Eye-contact seems impossible, yet God says, “Seek my face” to the psalmist (see Psalm 27:8). I find it interesting that Hosea connects this seeking with acknowledging guilt (see Hosea 5:15).

Certainly, with God I can be myself and know I am still loved. His love is based not on who I am or what I do, but on who He is. However, knowing that He loves me comes from having a relationship with Him . . .

“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

I had no idea that God loved me until the Gospel informed me of the extent He went to demonstrate it. Jesus came. Jesus displayed God’s glory. Jesus died for my sin. Those are His love actions and when Jesus came into my heart, they declared the reality of intimacy with God.

Yet to me, the greatest intimacy-builder is tied up in the statement of being together ‘without any hindrance.’ How can that happen? God is so far above me, so holy, so indescribable. That distance of ‘being’ and my smallness compared to His greatness is hindrance in itself. How can anyone be in the presence of such a God without hindrance — never mind have intimacy with Him?

The Bible says sin separated me from Christ, so I was alienated from His realm, without hope and without God in the world. (Ephesians 2:12) The hindrances are always about sin.

I think of the things that separate me from intimacy with others. Every issue that springs to mind also involves sin, either mine, or theirs, and usually both. Our fears of being ‘discovered’ or known fully do it. We fear rejection, create walls to protect ourselves and in the process intimacy is pushed aside.

I cannot do that with God. He already knows everything about me, even to the hairs on my head and to the words I speak before I open my mouth. What do I do with that? It forces me to examine my own lack of knowledge of God. Being totally known like that is like being stripped naked. I cannot hide. I must face the fact that my sin prevents me from intimacy with this all-knowing God.

This is not to despair. The Gospel is God’s answer. My sin is forgiven. Not just the past sin, but today’s sin and tomorrow’s sin. it isn’t about my efforts or contrition, but about the One who bore my sin and shame so God would be justified in forgiving me. Even so, my part is confessing sin, saying the same thing that God says about it. David, Old Testament king of Israel knew that. He said:

“Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah” (Psalm 32:1–5)

And I know the importance of confession too. Plunked between two verses about intimacy destroying attitudes is my favorite Bible verse, the one I long ago decided was key to spiritual growth:

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1:8–10)

Confessing sin is key to intimacy. The more I open up, the more time I spend, no matter what else I do, no actions will erase the distance between my heart and the heart of God created by sin that I will not acknowledge or ‘fess up to. It must be acknowledged before I can look Him in the eye. It must come out in the open before I will hear Him say, ‘Child, in Christ you have redemption secured by His blood, forgiveness of your trespasses — all according to the riches of His grace (Ephesians 1:7), and because of Jesus, You can snuggle up close to me and be loved and accepted.’

Timothy Keller, in his book “Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God” says, “To lose our grip on the costliness of forgiveness will result in a superficial, perfunctory confession that does not lead to any real change of heart.” And it is in the changing of my heart that I draw into a deeper relationship with the One who does the changing.

^^^^^^^

Jesus, words often fail me. How can I respond to all of this? I hear You invite me to come and talk to You, draw near, be open, allowing You to show me who I am so I can better see who You are — deepening the bond, deepening the intimacy. Oh, such a wonder!

This life and life with God

Statistically, those who suffer great losses are open to hearing about God — for a little while. When their lives stabilize, their interest in Him usually begins to fade.

In today’s devotional reading, Spurgeon uses the last part of this verse to say that God will bring people into poverty and other difficulties as a way of getting their attention.

I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me. (Hosea 5:15)

In other words, Spurgeon agrees with those statistics; distress can cause people to seek God. However, this devotional author lifted this phrase out of context. The rest of the verse says that God withdraws the sense of His presence because His people are guilty. The resulting distress of that loss causes His people to seek Him.

I don’t think this is how God works with everyone. Instead, it is a description of how He works with His people who have sinned. When believers do not acknowledge their sin and turned from it, God moves away from them (not actually, for He is always with us) so that we feel the loss of His blessing in our lives. Because we know and love the Lord, this sense of lost fellowship with Him is often enough to give us a desire to deal with our sin and seek Him. The same idea is echoed in this verse:

O LORD, in distress they sought you; they poured out a whispered prayer when your discipline was upon them. (Isaiah 26:16)

I don’t think it is biblically correct to say that hard times make other people seek God. Hard times can also make people harden their hearts against Him. Besides that, I noticed this distinction because someone taught me that there are several kinds of faith.

Saving faith is that trust in God that admits sin and seeks His forgiveness. It is a faith that is based on who God is and on a concern for eternal matters and God’s judgment of sin.

However, there is a temporary faith. This is when people seek God’s help because they are in trouble. This temporary faith is just that because when the trouble goes away or the problem is solved, that faith also goes away. This sort of trust concerns only life issues and had nothing to do with eternity so it lasts only as long as the issues last.

Long-term problems in life can lead to saving faith. It did for me. I turned toward God when my marriage fell apart, but in the turning, God showed me that a relationship with Him meant that I had to deal with my sin. It is sin that separates us from God, not just lack of faith. After all, even the demons believe in God (James 2:19). They know more about Him than we do, yet their “faith” is not going to save them or do them any good.

This idea of tribulation awakening an interest in spiritual things can be exploited. At least one cult seeks out people who are lonely, grieving, or who are in other negative situations. These hapless souls are preyed upon, plundered by those who are driven by a point system; the more souls they involve, supposedly the more rewards they will receive. This is not right. God is not like that. He tells His people to care for the poor and needy, not expecting any return and certainly not taking advantage of them for some sort of notch in our belt. He even makes this selfless caring a mark of faith: 

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:27)

In contrast, the Bible describes a worldly attitude that only does “good” for ulterior motives. That could be good deeds done to make me look good, or to influence others to go along with my agenda, instead of simply touching their lives to show them the love of God.

God wants people to have faith in Him because He is holy and good, and because we need His love and His blessing on our lives. The only thing that stands in the way of that is our sin. He wants everyone to turn from sin and become believers in Him. He “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).

He also wants believers who sin to “confess our sins” because “He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Sin ruins our fellowship with Him and He will use troubles to restore that fellowship.

Even so, troubles come and troubles go. If someone trusts God only during troubles, that “faith” will vanish along with those troubles. Yet sin is always an issue. It separates us from God even when everything else is going well for us. So if sin gets in the way, we need to repent. We cannot measure our relationship with God by how well life seems to be going for us. He asks, “Do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4) Troubles or not, sin is always the issue regarding our relationship with Him.

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Father, rich or poor, healthy or sick, no matter my external situations, may I have a heart that seeks You. May You put in me an increasing and deepening desire to be close to You and to enjoy Your presence. May Your Spirit prompt me to be quick to see and confess sin, quick to repent and turn from it, quick to run to You. Don’t let me assume that Your goodness means that I am okay when You intended that Your goodness always leads me to keep short accounts with You.