We all long for intimacy. That’s how we were created. God longs for intimacy. That’s why He created us. Being intimate with someone can be really scary. It requires us to be raw, vulnerable
and free to express the deep feelings of our heart. And the more we intimately give ourselves, the more our
imperfections come to the surface.
Yikes! I don’t think
there’s anyone who will read this who hasn’t been hurt by someone who was
supposed to love them, who they’ve been intimate with and then received rejection
or hurt. We all have from one
extent or another. I don’t know
about you, but whenever that happens to me, I put a wall up.
So we go through life in this messed up cycle of:
desiring intimacy, finding it in someone else, getting hurt, closing ourselves
off. We look for intimacy in other
people to fulfill us when the reality is, people aren’t perfect and their love
will fail us. It’s pretty much a
guarantee. And God is there,
wanting to love us, wanting to hold us, wanting to be intimate with us and
fulfill every need we have, and yet we look the other way. Why?! It only brings heartache.
It saddens my heart to realize that in recent years
the church has failed to lead people into an experience of God and really
knowing Him. We have taught a lot
about God – not that this is wrong, but we have failed to then lead people into
a heart experience of Him.
According to George Barna research, nearly two-thirds of regular church
attenders say that they have never experienced God’s presence in a church
service. 48% of regular attenders
have not experienced God’s presence in the last year.
Now I don’t want to put all of the blame on the
church. It’s our own fault
too. I think some of us believe
that others have let us down, so we assume Jesus will act the same way. Or we have been hurt so bad from other
people it’s like there is not even an option of being intimate with anyone
else, no matter what. Or we look
everywhere else to find intimacy except Jesus. But if we can trust Him with our salvation, with our eternal
destiny, why can’t we trust Him with our everyday life and with our
intimacy? Kind of seems a little
crazy huh?!
So to end this blog…I invite you on a journey of
intimacy with the creator of the universe. We no longer have to look to the things of this world to satisfy us or to make us feel good. God and His love is really all we ever need and if we can grasp that, for real, our lives would never be the same. There’s nothing we could ever do to change His love for us. He wants to romance us. He is real. His love is real. His love will never fail. He is our daddy, Abba and we belong to Him.
