The Purpose of It All…Intimacy
Yesterday while on the flight from Chicago to Seattle I was listening to my worship playlist and reflecting in prayer. God has taken my wife and I on a faith journey, individually and collectively. That soft whisper on my heart from the Holy Spirit spoke, it may not be profound to you, but it absolutely was for me.
Intimacy.
The cycle demonstrated through the words and pages of Scripture of God pursuing intimacy with us, and wanting us to pursue intimacy with one another in order to experience a deeper intimacy with God. When we experience a deeper intimacy with God, we will have an ever growing intimacy with each other…..and so that beautiful cycle continues.
At the very center of it all is intimacy. All of us have a tendency to rob the opening chapters of Genesis of its purpose, intimacy. In fact of the most singular intimate moments ever to have occurred are written with reverence to the incomprehensible intimacy in those first moments of creation.
God, creates. He sings and forms with his words a world meant for those made in his very image. First, Adam. Man. Naked. When all of creation is spoken, God takes ownership, forming and shaping with his own hands. Claiming all parts of us as intimately known by him, authored and created. Then he breathes into us.
Then seeing what Adam did not, that missing peace, God laid Adam to sleep and formed woman. Authored, shaped, known in every part. Providing Adam and Eve the intimacy He desires so desperately to have with us. God breathes into Eve.
God then rests. Giving a day to resting so He would have intimacy and time with us. That is the heart of Sabbath. Intimacy. Intimacy with God and each other.
Sin then lies and robs us of our intimacy with God.
Sin distorts and corrupts all things in order to ruin hope. Making sure we can never have that intimacy that we need, that God wants and pursues.
The gospel is not a work. It is a love story of God fighting for intimacy with his creation. Accepting that they have been so corrupted by sin, that they could never get back to that intimate relationship. We don’t even know we are missing it until we have it. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. That breathes that draws us, confront us, and fights to claim God’s rightful place, our hearts. If that isn’t the most intimate relationship, Christ lives in us, through us, for us, by us, and died to reclaim our lives that see sin as true and satisfying. God, we cannot imagine how absolutely hopeless life is without intimacy with God. Look around. All roads lead to hindering intimacy with each other AND with our Creator.
The church was fought for, shaped and formed, guided as a very real body. Pointing us back to the most intimate time in all of time, when anything else after is simply a reflection of those first moments in the garden during creation. Adam and Eve, together, getting what no one else ever will, being first with God, knowing a world without sin, no thought, no trace, no desire, no fight to not sin. Those of us who are saved now will always know the consequence of Adam and Eve’s choice, only they know the world and God before their choice. Grace is the pathway to intimacy, the vehicle which God uses to pursue us to the far corners of life. God knows that we will never get what Adam and Eve chose to give up. He knows that we did not choose to be born into the suffering and separation from our Creator. So he showed and continues to show us grace, mercy, love, and so much more. Our choice is simply to believe and follow Him. When Adam and Eve’s choice was to NOT follow God. Ours is much simpler, choose to follow God.
Now, it is the churches sole purpose to provide and replicate that very real intimacy of God. Through our marriages, how we parent, how we live in every aspect, and in our personal pursuit of those that are devoid and lost of the intimacy of God.
Many Christians do not have the intimacy with God that He desires because they are not pursuing that intimacy with each other.
Why?
Because it is unnatural at first. We are all corrupted in a very real sense by sin. Sin has become natural, instinctive, desirable to all of us. It is more than a behaviour, It is uncomfortable, talking accountability, confrontation with ourselves, looking at and reflecting on what many of us really do not want to look at in ourselves, it takes being vulnerable, and it takes some pain and anguish. It takes change, and we do not like change. However, when you pursue that intimacy with each other and with God, it becomes addicting, it becomes your focus, you realize your reality in Christ is what was intended and that the lie of sin has simply pacified our hearts. We realize we craved the intimacy and it all makes sense. Our addictions, arguments, choices, words, betrayals, they all sedate us from what we are missing. When the church does not fight for the intimacy that Christ died for, it is nothing better than another sedative. When the church lies and says that we individually are fine the way we are, the church shows that the intimacy with God hasn’t been experienced or even understood. When the church is judgmental, critical, and shows any sign of apathy, or a settlement on truth, suppression of questioning and challenging, the church then demonstrates it too has fallen for a lie of intimacy and not the intimacy of God.
Empathy, pursuit, grace and more grace, living and speaking truth no matter how hard it is to speak, and love grounded firmly on the example of the limitless love of Christ is the work of the church. The church is empowered through the intimate act, and continued intimate relationship of the Holy Spirit living in us.
All things center on the indescribable intimacy of God. He intends, desires, fights, and died for us. The church and those of us who profess to be followers of Christ have the highest responsibility; to pursue, to love, to do the hard things, and we have the greatest charge to be the canvas that Christ paints his masterpiece of intimate desire.
All, and I mean absolutely everyone, deserve that intimacy of God.
