HOW TO HAVE INTIMACY WITH GOD (PART 1)
Intimacy with God is available to you. It is as
accessible to you as God¡¦s promises. And God¡¦s invitation to you to enjoy
intimate fellowship with him is that thing that is putting your faith to the
test more than anything else (James 1:2-4).
The Heart of Intimacy is what we call the experience of really knowing
and being known by another person.
We frequently use spatial language when describing
this experience. An intimate friend is someone we feel very close to; they know
us at a deep level. If something happens that damages the intimacy with our
friend, they feel distant from us. Or a person who doesn¡¦t know us intimately
knows us at a superficial level. But of course intimacy is not spatial but relational.
We all know what it¡¦s like to be sitting right next to a person with whom we feel
distant, and we can feel close to a person who is four thousand miles away.
What makes us feel intimate with another person? While there are many
ingredients to intimacy and each intimate relationship we have has a different
recipe, common to all of them is trust.
We cannot be intimate with a person we don¡¦t trust.
Trust is at the heart of intimacy. The more we trust someone, the closer we let
them get to us. The degree to which trust is compromised in a relationship is
the degree to which intimacy evaporates.
This is as true in our relationship with God as
it is in our relationships with other human beings. Our experience of God¡¦s
nearness or distance is not a description of his actual proximity to us but of
our experience of intimacy with him. Scripture shows us that God is intimate
with those who trust him. The more we trust God, the more intimately we come to
know him. A felt distance from God is often due to a disruption in trust, such
as a sin or disappointment. This reality is vitally important to understand. As
Christians, we want to experience intimacy with God. With the psalmist we say,
¡§For me it is good to be near God¡¨ (Psalm 73:28).
And we want to heed James¡¦ exhortation and realize
its promise: ¡§Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you¡¨ (James 4:8). But
we can seek that nearness in ways that don¡¦t produce it. Nextpage
Intimacy Is More Than Knowledge One common mistake is thinking that nearness to
God can be achieved through knowledge accumulation. Now, of course to
intimately know God we must know crucial things about God. Jesus said, ¡§You
will know the truth, and the truth will set you free¡¨ (John 8:32) and he pointed
out that many worship what they do not know (John 4:22). But never in the
history of the Christian church has so much theological knowledge been
available to so many people as it is today. The American church enjoys perhaps
the greatest amount of this abundance. We are awash in Bible translations, good
books, insightful articles, recorded sermons, interviews, movies,
documentaries, music and more. And much of it is very good. It is right for us
to be very thankful.
But America is not abounding in Enoch (or finding
them frequently disappearing), saints who walk with God in a profoundly
intimate way (Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5). Why? Because knowledge is
not synonymous with trust.
That¡¦s why Jesus said to the religious leaders
of his day, some who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture:
¡§You search the Scriptures because you think that
in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet
you refuse to come to me that you may have life.¡¨ (John 5:39-40) Biblical
knowledge is far better than gold when it fuels our trust in God, because it
fuels our intimacy with God (Psalm 19:10). But when biblical knowledge replaces
our trust in God, it only fuels our pride (1 Corinthians 8:1).
Why Aesthetic Experiences Fail Another common mistake is trying to achieve intimacy
with God through subjective aesthetic experiences. We might call it a ¡§Field of
Dreams¡¨ approach: If we build the right environment, God will ¡§come.¡¨ Some
pursue this in high liturgical environments designed to inspire an experience
of transcendence and mystery. Others pursue it in contemporary worship events
designed to inspire an experience of immanence. Others chase revivals, thinking
that proximity to God¡¦s power will result in proximity to God. If we truly
trust God, such environments can encourage our intimacy with God. But none of
them inherently possesses the power to conjure God¡¦s nearness to us. Think of
it like this: A candle-lit dinner with romantic music may encourage a sweet moment
of relational intimacy between a husband and wife, but only to the degree that the
environment encourages and deepens their mutual trust and love. If there¡¦s
relational distance between them due to a lack of trust, the aesthetics
themselves have no power to bridge the distance.