Intimacy Wants To, Not Has To

Obedience is easy when you're in passionate love. In fact, we don't even think of it as “obedience.” We so want to please our lover that anything we even get the inkling they would like we are totally ready to do. And more. “Really? That's all you want? You can have more. I can do more.”

We invent ways to please them, to surprise them with what we did, just to see them smile. If what they want us to do is also actually good for us, that's a bonus. We'd have done it anyway.

That's the way our morality should be with God. If we obey his laws and follows his ways from a place of intimacy, deep lover-passion, it's not burdensome, which it's not anyway because his laws are good for us. Unless we're deceived, then it can be burdensome.

But in the truth of his intimacy, it's a delight. Pleasing him brings us closer to him, our lover. And we're disappointed we can't do more, because we want to be even closer to him.

It's not about “earning” closeness to him, or doing good to get close. It's about doing good because we are already so close. Out of love, not obligation. It's a world of difference in perspective.

Intimacy Serves

The mark of our intimacy with Jesus is not how awesome our experiences with him are. Nor how long they are. Nor how often.

The mark of our intimacy with him is how we serve others. The Bible says it better than I ever could:

“The son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45).

“[Jesus], who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:6-7).

“In humility, consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3b).

We reflect the person we spend the most time around. Jesus was the biggest servant humanity ever saw or ever will. If we truly have intimacy with him, we'll show that by serving those around us, and loving doing so.

Identity from Intimacy

Who we really are, our true identity, flows out of spending time with Jesus.

The world shouts at us constantly. Lies about who we are. Lies about how to be who we are told we want to be. Contradictory lies, one for every possible vulnerability. The enemy only has to win once.

But Jesus whispers who we are. Who we really are. Who he created us to be. Our true destiny. Constantly. Consistently.

If someone's shouting and someone's whispering, you have to be really close to the whisperer to hear them. And we will eventually believe the one we hear the most.

Finding our true destiny depends on our intimacy with Jesus.

Why Emotions?

Some people ask, “Why do my emotions have to be involved in my Christianity? Why can't I just read my Bible and go to church and that's enough?”

Reading our Bible and going to church – those are essential things – but if that's the extent of our Christianity, then we just know about God, instead of knowing God. Those are great avenues for building intimacy. But if we're just moving our eyes over words on a page or just parking our butt in a pew so we can check a box – there's no intimacy.

The Bible describes our relationship with Jesus like a marriage – we're the bride and he's the groom. So let's ask that question in the context of marriage: “Do we want to know our spouse – it's enough to just know about them – just read their bio – right? Why would we want our emotions involved in our marriage? Who would want that?” Obviously, in a marriage context, these questions get very ridiculous really fast.

It's the same with God. We pity a bride (or a husband) whose spouse is emotionally disconnected from the marriage. God feels the same heart-pain when we're emotionally disconnected from him.

So spend time with your lover-God today. Give him your fears. Tell him your hopes and dreams. Ask him for his. After all, good marriages are built on intimacy.

Who's the Enemy in Our Relationships?

When we're hurt by and/or angry with another person, we often forget who the real enemy is. We easily get deceived into thinking the other person is the enemy.

There is an enemy. He wants to destroy both us and the other person with every fiber of his being. Satan, the prince of this world, is our real enemy. But we forget that.

Not knowing who the real enemy is condemns us right up front to fight a losing battle. Why? Because we're fighting the wrong person with the wrong weapons. Once we get the real enemy right, we can fight effectively with a whole different strategy and a whole different armament. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of this world (see 2 Corinthians 10:4). This was brought home beautifully in the movie “War Room” which I highly recommend and strongly encourage everyone to see.

So pray with me: Lord, we repent this day for wrongly thinking ________ is the enemy. (Fill the blank for you.) They aren't the enemy, Lord, they are just a hurting person like me that you love. We acknowledge our true enemy is Satan and we ask you Lord for your strategy against him in this situation. Help me be a blessing to them even when they aren't to me.

Who's the Enemy on 9/11?

When we're hurt and angry, we often forget who the real enemy is. We easily get deceived into thinking the other group is the enemy.

That's why America's so divided. Both political parties are deceived into thinking the other one is the enemy. More than that, both sides on any political or social issue you pick, think the other side is the enemy. But the other side, the other party, the other country, is not the enemy.

There is an enemy who wants to destroy both sides, and he's getting away with it because we're confused about who the real enemy is. Satan, the prince of this world, is our real enemy. But we forget that and so get suckered into doing his work for him.

Not knowing who the real enemy is condemns us to fight a losing battle. Why? Because we're fighting the wrong people with the wrong weapons. Once we get the real enemy right, we can fight effectively with a whole different strategy and with a whole different armament.

So on this day, 9/11, let me come right out and say it: Muslims are not the enemy. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese are the enemy. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are the enemy. Not even ISIS is the enemy. The true enemy is the Principalities and Powers behind them – the forces of darkness in this world (see Ephesians 6:12).

That does not mean we act naively. The government does not bear the sword in vain, but is appointed by God to punish evil-doers (see Romans 13:4). ISIS certainly qualifies. We should confront them militarily and defeat them. We should probably be doing more.

But even while do what we must, using our military to dispense justice and stop evil like ISIS (the nazis of our time) we pray for them. We should not rejoice over the death of our earthly and military “enemies”, because they are just people Jesus loves and died for, prisoners-of-war, taken captive by our real enemy.

True victory will only come when the spiritual demonic forces behind ISIS are dethroned over that land. That will happen as missionaries successfully bring the truth of Jesus and God's love to the region. This is our ultimate battle prayer.

Just like air-support is crucial and often turns the tide of victory in an earthly war, so our prayers and intercession for missionaries in the middle-east provide “air-support” in the spiritual battle, the real battle they face every day. So let's get involved! Every Christian can do this. Our prayer support is what they desperately need to win the real war.

Really Knowing

Is Christianity, at its core, about believing in God, or is it about knowing God? Is it about intellectual ascent to the right doctrine, or is it about having a real relationship with the Creator of the universe?

Experiencing real relationship, with the real man Jesus Christ, and his Father – that's real Christianity. If we've really experienced him, we'd be longing for deeper and deeper experiences with him, ruined for this world (like Isaiah, see Isaiah 6).

At the same time, not everyone needs our particular experience. God has their own for them. We need to be careful not to turn our wonderful experience into a doctrine everyone else needs or a badge to show how much more spiritual we are than the next person.

We need to submit our experiences to our Pastor, for him to help us navigate, as we discover the interpretation, the application/wisdom, and the timing.

Our experience should make us more like Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (see Philippians 2:6). So should we.

So our experience, while absolutely necessary to live out all the fullness God has for us, should never be an end in itself. Jesus is always the end in himself. He's the point. It's all about him.

A License to Serve

If our experience with the Living God really increases our intimacy with him, like it's meant to, then it will also increase our desire to serve others for free. (Service to others that's not free, that comes with strings attached, isn't service. It's employment.)

Mark 8:34 says, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Denying ourselves means saying no to our pleasures and preferences. Taking up our cross means willingly enduring the suffering we have the power to avoid, like Jesus did.

That's where experiencing God, when it's walked out rightly, takes us. Greater humility, greater service to the people around us, and it's all worth it for the greater intimacy with him. When you're in love, spending time with him makes it worth it.

Our God-experience is a license to serve, not a badge of spiritual superiority.

Not a Badge

Sometimes we turn our wonderful God-experience into a badge of spirituality. We wear it down everybody else's nose, “Look at how spiritual I am!” We might even start feeling superior to our pastor. “After all, he hasn't had the experiences with God that I have.”

The experience was meant to bring us greater healing and into greater intimacy with our Lover-King. But we just lost any intimacy we gained the moment we started bragging about it. Pride cannot live in the presence of the Living God. That's why Satan was thrown out of Heaven.

When we do this, we become the hypocrites in Matthew 5, who “have received their reward in full.” Their reward was that single moment of glory before people. Hope they enjoyed; no eternal reward from God.

It's really sad to trade the eternal for the temporary.