Intimacy

We were created for Intimacy.  The best definition I have ever heard of this is: To Know and Be Known.  This is the foundation to relationship.

We long for intimacy in our marriages, our families, and our friendships.  Intimacy is a place where we can come just as we are and we are accepted.  Church and other places of community is where intimacy can be shared between people and God.  We need intimacy.  We need acceptance.  We need love.  This fuels us to do the work. 

Intimacy is also a safe place; a place where we can run to and a place where we can return to often.  It is a welcoming place; A place of hospitality and freedom to be who we are!  We don’t have to compete.  We don’t have to perform.

Intimacy is a place of Joy because we know that we are loved, and we feel the security of that love and that security gives us the courage to go out and conqueror the world!

It all goes back to Jesus.  All that He did in this world was because of the intimacy that he shared with His Father.  It was the key to His success.  It was the key to His life and death.  And He took along 12 men and formed an intimate circle, in which he shared with them the love and intimacy he had between Father and Son.

And there were women, too that He invited into His circle, and delighted in them and gave them a job to do, and even revealed His Glory to them in resurrection power!

Intimacy with God and Intimacy with each other; that’s why honest and vulnerable people are so alluring.  We are like them, too. 

Jesus experienced intimacy wherever He went.  He was called to listen, to touch, to heal, to speak life, to encourage, to exhort, to be present.  He modeled intimacy for us.  And He was the safest individual anyone ever met.  People let their guard down, people were themselves, people trusted him.

“The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.”  Proverbs 18:10