Invitation to Unlimited Intimacy
What if you received an invitation to form a friendship or marriage with a sure guarantee that it would mature into one with no limit to intimacy? In addition, what if you were also welcomed into an exemplary interpersonal relationship to emulate; one that also offered free counseling when needed? Wouldn’t such a prospect be worth pursuing? The good news is: Such a perfect interpersonal relationship does exist! In fact, we have already tried to describe the nature of this most intimate relationship in Part 2 [Click HERE.]. It is the divine relationship among the three Persons of the Triune Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Best of all, we are each invited to participate in the joy of this divine relationship.
Eternal life is not simply an eternal, blissful existence. It begins at the moment we hear and respond in faith to the Triune God’s call:
“Come unto Me! Come and be one with Me,” invites the Father.
“Even as Christ is in Me,” declares the Father, and “as I AM in the Son.
Jesus’s invitation is clear: “So come, be in Us, so the world may believe that You (Father) sent Me.”
We who are Christ-followers ought to be amazed each time we realize that the shed blood and resurrection of Christ and His gift of faith to believe (Ephesians 2: 8-10) opens the way for God to invite us to become partakers of His divine nature! The Apostle Peter wrote of this divine invitation (emphasis added):
Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by evil desires (2 Peter 1: 3-4).
Ingredients for Intimacy
What specifically are the necessary ingredients for an intimate interpersonal relationship? At least one is found in Jesus’s teaching about the vine and branches in John 15.
Experiencing and practicing the character virtues of the Eternal Life of the Spirit within us requires that we feed upon the Word of God as our daily spiritual bread. When anxious thoughts arise, we ought to Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful (Colossians 3: 15). When we need wisdom or correction, God’s Spirit prompts us to Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God (verse 16).
God lovingly communicates to us through His Word and through His Spirit abiding in us. In return, our intimacy with God in friendships and in marriage is sustained through prayer.
😊Knowledge is the third ingredient for an intimate relationship. In Psalm 139: 1, David acknowledges God’s profound, personal knowledge of his innermost being. David begins, O LORD, You have searched me and known me (verse 1). Then, he reverently recounts all the ways God knows him (verses 2-18). As the table below illustrates, we found at least seven areas of his life in which David humbly acknowledged God’s complete knowledge of him. [CLICK on table to enlarge.]
God’s complete knowledge of each person transcends space, time, and even the spoken word. God knows the thoughts and intentions of our hearts before we speak or act. As he meditates on God’s omniscience, David exclaims: Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? The answer is: "Nowhere!" But there is more that we can apply to deepen our relationships.
Prior to their sin, Genesis 2 records that the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (Genesis 2: 25). The human race began in a perfect creation with a perfect marriage. The male and the female were designed to cleave to one another and be as “one flesh” (Genesis 2: 24), realized physically by their sexual union, and intellectually and emotionally by their intimate, personal knowing of one another’s thoughts and intentions. This blessed intimacy was corrupted by sin when Adam and Eve yielded to Satan’s temptation and rebelled against God’s design for them in the Garden of Eden [See Part 2, HERE.] 
😔Humble Submission: God had created Adam and Eve, and gifted them with an intimate relationship that reflected the perfect intimacy within the Triune Godhead as we discussed in Part 2 [Click HERE.]. But the first couple chose what they thought was the “better and wiser way.” Genesis 3: 8 reveals that ...they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. When God came seeking Adam and Eve (He knew exactly where they were physically and spiritually.), He saw the couple hiding from Him and hiding from each other by the fig leaves they had sewn together. We, as Adam’s fallen descendants, have inherited their sinful nature and proneness to hide.
The central biblical narrative is an account of God lovingly seeking Adam’s fallen descendants and ultimately sending His Son, Jesus Christ, as the perfect Lamb to atone for our sin and bring us back to intimate oneness with Him --that is, to become “partakers of the divine nature” as noted above. If we are yielded to the Holy Spirit, then God’s Spirit and His Word convict us to confess our sin and repent (turn from our sin). Then, we can become forthright in our prayers and in our actions toward God and in our friendships and marriages.
Inventory of Our Intimacy
Imagine a conversation with your friend or your spouse if you knew they were all-knowing (omniscient) like God is! But we all know they are not omniscient. So, we are tempted to hide or hold back information; and, to suspect, mistrust, and misjudge one another. It follows that the degree of intimacy with our friend or spouse depends on the degree to which we have each, individually submitted to God, and then worked together to promote a relationship of trust and openness. Let’s pursue this logic to make an inventory of our relationships.
👂Applying Scripture-Fed Prayer: Second, we must be disciplined in keeping the “circuit” between us and God open by continuing in God’s Word daily (His Word to us) and abiding in Christ through prayer (our words and thoughts to God). The discipline of making time for daily Scripture-fed prayer is not easy. We must give high priority to regularly set aside time for quiet solace to commune with God through our spirit and hear from Him through His Spirit and Word. Charles Swindoll shares the following challenge in his book, Intimacy with the Almighty1 :
Here again we can learn from David. Long before Christ came, David seems to have concluded how wise it was for him to yield to the all-knowing God and the convicting power of God’s Word. Hebrews 4: 12 tells us that God’s Word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4: 12). At times, this process can be harsh and threatening. But thankfully, we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4: 15). Instead of denying our sin or trying to hide it from God or others, the next verse lovingly calls us to draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Is there any place more intimate than at the throne of God where Christ intercedes with us as our Advocate seated at God’s right hand?
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me and know my anxious thoughts;
And see if there be any hurtful way in me,
And lead me in the everlasting way.
- Psalm 139: 23-24
David’s prayer is offered from a humble, contrite heart with full admission of his need for God’s Spirit to find both hidden faults and willful sins (Psalm 19: 13-14). David asks to be delivered from both so that he may experience the “joy of Thy salvation” (Psalm 51: 12) and willingly follow God’s “everlasting way” (Psalm 139: 24). Then, he will be blameless, having reached “a state of moral integrity and purity before God;” a state, not of moral perfection, but of mature awareness of his continual need to press on while leaning upon the Holy Spirit, our Comforter and Guide.
How Will You Respond?
We hope you have responded to our invitation take biblical inventory of one of your Intimate relationships as outlined above? We urge you to come prayerfully before God’s throne to respond according to the conviction of His Spirit and Word. If you have never repented of your sin and received Christ’s sacrificial blood atonement for it, check out the simple outline of “Steps to Peace with God” (Click HERE.) which provides helpful Scripture and a prayer. As always, you may post your comments or questions below using the “Comment” link. Or you may contact us at silviusj@gmail.com.
😌A Christ-follower’s Prayer: Father in Heaven, thank you that we can call you “Father” because Your Son, Jesus obediently left Heaven’s glory and took upon Himself all the sin and sorrows of the world, bearing them on His Cross, dying there, and raising to new life which opened the way for us to be saved by faith in Him. Thank you, Father, Son, and Spirit for opening your eternal intimacy to spill out Your love through the blood of Christ so that you, Holy God, can invite us into intimate relationship with you as partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by evil desire (2 Peter 1: 4). Convict us of sin or any distraction that deters us from pursuing and achieving intimacy with you, God, and in our friendships and marriages. Amen.
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Footnotes:
1Charles R. Swindoll. 1996. Intimacy with the Almighty. Word Publishing.
