“A major source of emotional pain is lack of intimacy with God. Alienation from the love of God is a basic human problem. Reconciliation to God along with restoration of his love and acceptance is the only complete answer. People develop a true sense of identity when they realize that God loves them unconditionally. People who find their identity in a loving relationship with God do not have to depend on others to establish their self-identity.”
– Meier, P. D., M. D., Minirth, F. B., M. D., Wichern, F. B., Ph. D., & Ratcliff, D. E., Ph. D. (1991)
Intimacy.
Intimacy, in its most basic sense, is the familiarity we have to someone. It is the word we stamp on the depth of relationship we share. Ultimately, we can have no intimacy with someone and still know them by name, or by picture, or by story. To know someone is to be intimate with them. Personally, I have ALWAYS wanted to extend to the word “intimacy” a connotation of romanticism. However, this has not only distorted how I have operated in my relationship with the Lord, but allotted me the position to seek Him without knowing Him. Intimacy, in many ways, has become a common theme in my life without it actually being present. Before the race, there were so many wonderful truths about Jesus floated around in my mind.
I knew that He saved me from my sin, died on the cross so that I could know my Father, tore the veil, fulfilled the law, imputed me His righteousness, and therefore; I was branded with justice before my Holy Father in Heaven who will crown me with glory one day as co-heirs with Jesus. These biblical truths I rattled off in my brain over and over again, but I never sought them out in secret. I had more knowledge of what God had done for me and the appropriate responses, prayers, and sentences that made me seem like a “seasoned” Christian than actually having Him for myself. Knowing that Jesus loved me, will love me, and is doing so right now as I write this blog. A man from the Bible that Jesus has been using to teach me has been Job.
Yes, the man who’s odyssey of pain will leave many of us wondering how it fits into our own lives. For me, I always thought of the Job’s life as what I read in the Bible. However, Job was a man who had lived long enough to have ten children and amount enough business to be a successful man. He also was a man that the Lord called his “…servant, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” These things are easy for me to read over and write off as only super-biblical character qualities or “an example to follow.” What I missed and I am beginning to see in the people and their stories of the Bible is that God reveals His relationship with them.
Michael D. Fiorello observed this about the relationship between God and Job, “God was willing to trust Job, and therefore willing to wound him knowing that Job would remain true. Job, likewise, had confidence in God to the extent that he was willing to be authentic with God and deal with any discontinuity he perceived in his relationship with God while he endured his imbroglio.”
And, “Job… acknowledges God as the source of both good and bad material things and circumstances. Through Job’s identification with God came his security and ability to be authentic with God and the realization that God was also authentic with him. Job understood that God would work in harmony with what he had previously experienced with God; that God would be reliable.”
Wow. How evident is it that Job found God to be everything? It was not only Job’s knowledge of God that brought Him to knees when the news of death and poverty came, it was also his CONFIDENCE that God is good. Job had such a familiarity with the Father, He knew His faithfulness and feared the One that gave him breath to breath. Job’s relationship with God superseded both his relationship with the world and life. I never, ever thought of Job as a brother in Christ. I never was able to see past my own “knowledge” of the Bible to embrace the humanity of Job. The Lord has been constantly bringing men of the Old Testament to my heart recently. My middle name is Daniel, so I decided to read through the book for the first time recently.
Daniel was a man of obedience that was born of relationship. In chapter 6 of Daniel, the high officials grew jealous of Daniel’s increase in position and favor of the king, so they set out to take it. However, when they began to look for an offense against the kingdom in his life, “they could find no ground for complaint or any fault, because he was faithful and no error or fault was found in him.” So they put together an injunction that stated whoever “petitioned to any god or man within thirty days except the king would be cast in the lion’s den.” Before all of this, Daniel was found faithful. He was obedient to God in the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar, King Belshazzar, and now King Darius. Daniel risked his life each time he went before the kings but there was CONFIDENCE in every interpretation. Consequently, two kingdoms were given the decree to honor the God of Daniel. To know Him. Daniel on hearing about the injunction, went home, and “He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously.” Nothing instilled more fear in Daniel than the God he knew and failing in the calling God had put on his life. Daniel, like always, retreated to His home to talk with the Lord. The fear of the Lord did not push Him away from the Lord, but to Him. It pushed him to relationship everyday.
Lastly, as Daniel went to the Lord to understand, Moses went to the Lord to lead. In Exodus 33:7-23, we find Moses at the tent of meeting. The tent of meeting was the place where those who sought the Lord would go. For the tent was positioned far outside the camp. The very purpose in having the tent was to find the Lord and understand His will for the people. Moses’s desire in the passage is to understand what the Lord has promised for the people for Israel. As we see in verse 18, it is glorious. Moses sees the glory of God’s…back. That’s amazing. Moses is then given the command that he again will renew the covenant. So, after seeing the glory of God, he returns from the mountain, his face shining. I bet, in CONFIDENCE, he delivered the Word of God to the people of Israel. Likewise, we have the same opportunity. We have the ability to seek the Lord outside the camp of our thoughts and comforts and ideas. Relationship with the God of the universe sent Moses through war, a sea, and up a mountain. Back down he came changed and yearning. He ran again to the tent.
Relationship with God is an intimacy that will always, always bring you to your knees. When life is showered in pain, or in confusion, or in radical obedience, as we can see above, God is everlasting. These men of the Old Testament experienced God in a way such as this and Jesus hadn’t even come yet. They experienced God in a way that pushed them back out for His glory. Their relationship with the Lord was always tested for the betterment of pleasure in Him. A businessman, a prophet, and the leader of a nation all found the Lord in their knees. That is where I am beginning to find the Lord.
“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” Psalm 91:1 (KJV)
