Intimacy is the state of deep, personal connection characterized by closeness, trust, and a sense of being fully known and accepted by another person. Our level or intimacy with others is shaped by events and patterns of behaviors that are reinforced by the world around us. We learn what we can say and not say from our family. We learn how to act and not act, not just by correction of our failures and praise of our successes but through the daily response to our need to be seen by others.
Children shamelessly come to their parents “mommy, daddy, look at this” excited to share anything and everything with the one they love the most, the one that is supposed to love them the most. When that excitement is met with excitement and curiosity, the desire to share continues. But when children are shut down repeatedly with “not now, I’m busy”, half interest as a parent faintly acknowledges the child’s newest thing shared or is invalidated or put down for their childish interests, constant questions, or need for attention, that desire for connection is ruptured. Children adapt to their environments, looking for ways to have deep, personal connections and learning when it is safe and in what ways it is safe to have intimacy.
As they grow up, they continue these patterns of behavior, healthy or unhealthy, because the way of being seen and known are what the child knows, it is how they connect with others. There may be a break in intimacy as they learn that closeness isn’t always safe, trust isn’t always good, conditional acceptance is what they know. They learn to hide who they truly are. Often people go through life masking who they are – and it starts before they are even old enough to recognize what they are doing or why they are doing it.
This is true of most people, unless there is something that interrupts that cycle and a new way of connecting is learned. And because it plays out in our earthly relationships, the people we can see and have physical and emotional intimacy, this also often plays out in our relationship with our Heavenly Father. Unless we take time to learn His way of intimacy, we may continue to replay old patterns even with Him.
If you would have asked me two months ago what my relationship with God was, I would have answered “I have intimacy with the Father” and I wholeheartedly believed it. I have deep faith in God and accepted Him as my Savior when I was eight years old. I spend time with Him daily. I know His Word. I talk to Him and about Him daily. I see evidence of His presence in my life, and others do too.
But as I was preparing for a group, God showed me that I wasn’t really in the true level of intimacy He desires to have with me. I was playing out with Him the same patterns I have in other relationships – guarded trust, hiding the parts of me that I need to feel safe and not allowing my full self to accepted by Him. I was not personally abandoning myself to Him, trusting Him absolutely. I often still try to work things out myself instead of relying completely on Him. Just as I had learned I had to rely on myself for some needs growing up and as I have walked through life, I felt those areas I was still better off handling than letting God handle it.
I didn’t think that was the case, but when we look surface deep, we have shallow relationships. God desires such intimacy with us that His heart is crying “Trust Me fully, abide with Me.” We see this repeated in Scriptures like:
O Lord, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know my sitting down and my rising up;
You understand my thought afar off.
3 You [a]comprehend my path and my lying down,
And are acquainted with all my ways. Psalm 139:1-3
And
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. 1 John 15:9
He knew before I could truly abide with Him, I needed a level of intimacy with myself I didn’t have. His initial work for this message began last September when I felt challenged to connect. God needed me first to look at myself and what shaped my connection with others, so I could see how it also impacted my connection with Him. My hope is that you will also explore how You are trying to connect with God and look at how you might be playing out old patterns of relationships.
James 4:6-8 tells us “But He gives more grace. Therefore He says: “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”
Before this we find James saying that often we ask of God but don’t receive because our motives are wrong. We often ask for our own pleasure, our desires lining up with the world and not with Him. God is jealous for us. And then, “But God gives more grace!” He wants us to humble ourselves, receiving His grace (His unmerited favor and empowerment to live as He called us to) and submit to Him.
We don’t like the word submit, but that is what His grace gives us the power to do – to obey Him and choose to subject ourselves fully to Holy Spirit. As we draw near, turn our thoughts to God intentionally, when we desire to become acquainted with him, God draws near to us and gives us the gift of His grace and help. But we are only as close to God as we choose to be. So, if we want to have His power to love and His help in living, we have to choose to abide in Him.
Let’s read the words of Jesus about abiding John 15:1-17““I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
“These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another.”
Twice in this passage, Jesus promises “…you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.” John 15:7 and “…whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.” John 15:16 These are the promises we love to claim. We make our request and slap “in Jesus name” and ask God to say amen to our prayers instead of starting where Jesus tells us 10 times in this passage that being able to ask in His name comes from – drawing near, abiding in God.
One of the main words for abide in the Greek is men-o a verb meaning not to depart, not to leave, to continue to be present; something has established itself permanently within my soul, and always exerts its power in me: to be rooted as it were in Christ or in God, knit to him by the spirit received from him,
Think about how we often live our lives. I don’t know about you, but I often run on autopilot. I must be intentional to start my day with time with God, because as soon as I leave my house, and quite frequently even before then, I am running from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next. If I am not careful, I find it easy to leave God where I met with Him and try to go take care of things on my own. I know I spent a lot of my life trying to fix others’ problems and meet others’ needs, but I wasn’t abiding in God. I was busy doing verse 13, laying my life down for others, but I skipped the most needed thing, drawing near to God, abiding in Christ.
In my own power I would feel resentful when people were not doing what “I told them would help.” Or when my effort was not noticed or not appreciated by others. I would be exhausted because I was trying to pour from an empty cup. The world likes to talk about self care, and trust me I believe in that, but most important is “soul care”, if my soul is not okay, nothing else will be either. I have to daily Cleanse my hands, purify my heart, and renew my mind so I won’t be double-minded, trying to be god in my own life and the life of others working in the flesh. I must intentionally draw near to Him throughout the day. Here is the thing – abiding must be intentional on my part, but it can’t be done in my own effort.
So how do we know if we are abiding in God?
I John 4:12-16 tells us “No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.”
It is by Holy Spirit in us that we can know that we are abiding in Christ. His actions through us, His testimony of the Father and Son spoken and lived out in our lives, and our love for God and others.
When that self-righteous complaining starts showing up, we are not abiding.
When we are feeling resentful about our effort, we aren’t abiding.
When we look for someone else’s comfort before we go to God, we aren’t abiding.
When we are looking for someone else to tell us how to do something before hearing from God, we aren’t abiding.
When love isn’t our motive, we aren’t abiding in Him.
It is not meant to condemn, but to have us pause and humbly ask God “into me see”. So that in His grace He will respond “Into You I see” helping us come back to submission to Holy Spirit, washing our hands, purifying our hearts, drawing near to Him as He draws near to us and we intentionally enter that place of abiding with absolute trust and personal abandonment responding to His call “Into Me, See”. Only then can we connect to Him and to others in His way instead of our past patterns.
Restoring Voice 
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