In a certain chapter of The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren talks about intimacy with God. About how it is essential. About how we should seek it.I don't know if I'd ever taken much time to think specifically about the idea of intimacy with God before. Sure, I'd heard the phrase. Others had talked about closeness to the Lord in those terms...but I really never did.
And it's not that I don't want to be close to God. I do. It's just that the term makes me...uncomfortable.
Now, I understand that intimacy means much more than sexual or phycial closeness. But, like many, that is often the first thing I think of when I hear the term. At the very least, the connotations are there.
Because Jesus was a man and the predominant metaphor for God is masculine, I wonder if women have an easier time speaking of intimacy with God than men.
And I have to admit I don't hear guys using the phrase that much. I think it makes us feel "icky."
That's probably unfortunate.
Intimacy, I guess, is an appropriate metaphor for the relationship one should seek with God. It indicates mutual vulnerability, mutual sharing, openness like no other openness. Really being one with the other.
It means being so involved with the other that joys and sorrows become shared joys and sorrows. That each person in the relationship is some intertwined with the other that they have the power to delight or depress at their fingertips.
We don't deserve this kind of relationship with the Creator of the Universe. After all, why would He want to be affected by what we feel and do?
I don't know. But He does.
And I think He does because that's what the Scripture shows Him doing. Being intimate with God is the way we were meant to be. The way it was in Eden. It was what we were made for.
In this fractured world I think that intimacy with God can help us to both fulfill that basic purpose and gives us the motivation and desire to see this same purpose revealed to the whole world.
And if I have to work through some ickiness to get to this...I guess I just will.
That's probably unfortunate.
Intimacy, I guess, is an appropriate metaphor for the relationship one should seek with God. It indicates mutual vulnerability, mutual sharing, openness like no other openness. Really being one with the other.
It means being so involved with the other that joys and sorrows become shared joys and sorrows. That each person in the relationship is some intertwined with the other that they have the power to delight or depress at their fingertips.
We don't deserve this kind of relationship with the Creator of the Universe. After all, why would He want to be affected by what we feel and do?
I don't know. But He does.
And I think He does because that's what the Scripture shows Him doing. Being intimate with God is the way we were meant to be. The way it was in Eden. It was what we were made for.
In this fractured world I think that intimacy with God can help us to both fulfill that basic purpose and gives us the motivation and desire to see this same purpose revealed to the whole world.
And if I have to work through some ickiness to get to this...I guess I just will.
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