Love to hear from and know who is listening
Intimacy is the experience of really knowing and being known by another person. An intimate friend is someone we feel very close to; they know us at a deep level. Because of my job I know a lot of people. I easily recognize those who don't really know me though because they call me by my last name “Ellis” because that is the name on my uniform. Intimacy also has nothing to do with how physically close you are to someone. When my work requires me to travel for training and there is many miles between my wife and I, we can still be intimately connected to each other. The opposite is true as well. You can be sitting right next to someone and still feel very distant from them. Joyce and I use google docs to save important information so that we can both access it. For example Joyce has a document saved that is a list of all the medications she takes. It also has a list of all her doctors and their phone numbers. If I was to give you this list and add to that list other personal information such as the fact that Joyce is 5 foot 6 inches tall, weighs 135 pounds has gray hair and blue eyes and snores when she sleeps you would have some very personal information about Joyce, but would you know Joyce intimately? No not yet, you may have some very private and personal information but you wouldn't know here intimately? Joyce and I have been married for 26 plus years and I can tell you that she cares deeply about everyone she knows. I can tell you that when she makes a mistake at her work she takes it personally and it sometimes brings her to tears, because she wants her work to be perfect. I can tell you that Joyce loves to sing and has a beautiful voice and that we hold hands during church and sit so close to each other that nothing can come between us. And I thank God that Joyce is a very forgiving person, and God knows I need a lot of grace and forgiveness. God wants us to have an intimate relationship with him and He has known you since before you were even born.
Jeremiah 1:5 NIV Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.
The bible shows us that God is intimate with those who trust him. The more we trust God, the more intimately we come to know him. One common mistake is thinking that nearness to God can be achieved through knowledge accumulation. Of course, to intimately know God, we must have knowledge about God. Jesus said, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. But having a vast knowledge of God does not create and intimate relationship. Never in the history of the Christian church has so much knowledge been available to so many people as it is today. The American church enjoys perhaps the greatest amount of this abundance. We have available to us many Bible translations, good books, insightful articles, recorded sermons, interviews, movies, documentaries, music, and more. But knowledge of God is not the same as having an intimate relationship with him. That’s why Jesus pointed out to the religious leaders of his day they knew the scriptures but they didn't know Him.
John 5: 39-40 NIV You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
To know God intimately means that you have developed a relationship with God that is personal and is consistent. Intimacy with God is the place where we live in consistent fellowship with Him throughout our day, and we can honestly say that our love for Him far outweighs our desire for the things in the world. James 4:8 says Come near to God and He will come near to you.....
