Finding intimacy with God despite my weary heart

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 Intimacy-"A close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group."

This is dictionary.com's definition of the word intimacy but what does that mean when it comes to my relationship with God? This idea of intimacy is something we all crave and there is a reason why. As Christians the most beautiful aspect of our faith is the fact that we get to have a intimate love relationship with our God. Our God is not some untouchable spiritual dictator but is a God who actually seeks after us for an intimate relationship with Him!

So what does that look like? I mean we all know that most of us think of intimacy as something physical most of the time and that's not something that really applies here but once we start to understand the kind of intimacy God has for us we start to see how much deeper and satisfying it is.





"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."-Deuteronomy 6:5

"Oh God, you are my God,
earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, 
my body longs for you... My soul clings to you..."
-Psalm 63:1, 8

"As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God."
-Psalm 42:1-2 

These verses scream intimacy to me. Is there anything that we even love with ALL our heart or do we even know how to love something with all our heart let alone our souls and our strength? The way David talks about God and the way he "thirsts and longs" for him blows me away. I love God, I love him so deeply it hurts sometimes but I honestly can't say I have an intimacy like David's. Not yet at least! The most amazing things that I take away from passage like David's is that I can have that too! And so can you! David figured it out and we need to too. I think the first step in understanding how we can have an intimacy with God like that is looking at God's love and desire for intimacy with us.

What does God's love look like?

"The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying ' I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with unfailing kindness." - Jeremiah 31:3

"And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered."- Matthew 10:30

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget. I WILL NOT FORGET YOU."- Isaiah 49:15

These verse show so much of God's love for us. First he tells us how much he loves us, then he tells us that he loves us enough to know us more than we even know ourselves and then he compares his love to that of a mother's love and says He loves us way more!

"And a voice from heaven said, 'This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well please." 
-Matthew 3:17

photo by punkrot143

In this verse God is talking about His love for Jesus. None of us can doubt how much God loves Jesus. But read the verse again and then read the verse below.

"I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."
-John 17:23

How amazing is that when you put those two verses next to each other?! John 17:23 is about us! Jesus says right there that God loves us as much as God loves Jesus. God is so obvious about his love for us and yet it so easy for us to make ourselves believe we are not loved. Once we start to believe that we are loved we can truly start to understand what intimacy is through that love.











Understanding Jesus' intimacy with God and how we can have that too:

1. Jesus found intimacy with God through prayer:

"Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you."
-John 17:1

"Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed."
-Mark 1:35

"...Sit here while I go over there and pray...And going a little farther He fell on his face and prayed."
-Matthew 26:36,39

This is so very important! Jesus prayed and he didn't have to. Jesus was God in the flesh and still he spent so much time in prayer. If Jesus prayed to God all the time imagine how much more we should be in prayer! We need to pray that our lives glorify God, we need to pray that we find intimacy like what David had. We need to pray and we need to listen! This is how we connect with God and this is how we discover intimacy with God.

2. Jesus found intimacy with God through obedience: 

"And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death- even death on the cross."
-Philippians 2:8

"Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered."
-Hebrews 5:8

"Even His coming to earth was an act of obedience to His Father."
-John 14:31

"For I did not speak of my own accord, but the father who sent me commanded me what to say and how to say it."
-John 12:49

Jesus was obedient to God in all things and because of this He experienced an unwavering intimacy with God. As Christians we are called to follow Jesus' example and that means that we need to take the time to listen to the promptings God has for us and obey them. There are ways in which this is the same for all of us, the ten commandments, reading our bibles, praying etc, but there are also so many ways in which this is different from person to person. For me I obey God when I honor my husband, when I work hard at my job and honor him with the way I use my words and so much more.

3. Jesus found intimacy with God through sacrifice:

"And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him to died for them and was raised again."
-2 Corinthians 5:15

"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
-2 Corinthians 5:21

"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.."
-1 Peter 3:18

Jesus' sacrifice was the greatest of all. He came down here as God in the flesh being as close and intimate to God as is even possible and gave that all up for us. He died on the cross and took our sins and because of that, he experienced the greatest suffering there is. Separation from God. We will never have to sacrifice the way Jesus did. We will never be asked to sacrifice our salvation. That is something that was bought for us and that can never be taken away but we are going to have to sacrifice. There will be times in our lives where God asks us to make sacrifices for him and when we obey him that brings us into a beautiful intimacy with him. There will be times when we feel as though our sacrifice is too much or it's more than we can handle but trust me dear friends the pay off is more than worth any of the sacrifice that we could ever experience.

Intimacy with God brings a love, a peace, and belonging like we have never known. Being with God in a loving relationship is all we even need. He will always be enough no matter what we have to give up or what we lose.

"But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst."
-John 4:14

Just like the woman at the well God seeks us and welcomes us to intimacy with him despite our messy and sinful lives.