Intimacy with God?

M. Irons

Some of us felt our greatest closeness to God while in the Assembly, and we have found it difficult to recapture that experience. Does God intend to have an intimate relationship with us? Emphatically, yes! But without the support of shared group belief and emotion, we will experience it now individually as we personally believe the promises and the images God gives us in Scripture.

This is the blessing God pronounces on his people in the Old Testament: “The beloved of the Lord shall settle down securely by him, for he shields him all the day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders,” Deut 33:12, and vs. 27, "The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms."

In the New Testament we are told that after Jesus washed his disciples' feet (an act of intimacy), "One of the disciples, the one Jesus loved dearly, was reclining against him, his head on his shoulder." Jesus was accessible and present in a very human way.

In Luke 13:34 Jesus expresses his desire for intimacy with his people: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem….how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings…” One of the purposes of the incarnation was to show us what God is like in a tangible form, so we could ‘get it.’ Jesus gives us this picture of the relationship God longs for with his children—nurturing, protecting, comforting, close. We can bank on this desire of His because Jesus said it is so. As our intercessor, Jesus prayed this great prayer for us in John 17:23, 26:

“May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me….I have made you known, and will continue to make you known, in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

In our union with Christ, we are loved by God the Father with the same love with which he loves his dear Son--not for any merit of our own, not disqualified by any demerit of our own, but purely out of grace to sinners in the work of Christ. What kind of relationship does the Father have with His beloved Son? Distant? Or close and intimate?

How does God the Father love his Son? John the Baptist said, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” Jesus, the Wisdom of God, says about the creation of the world, in Proverbs 8:30, “I was the craftsman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence.” Can you imagine the Father ever turning away or withdrawing from his beloved son? Only once, at Calvary on our behalf so that he will never have to withdraw from us. He promises, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

God would not give us these pictures of intimacy, and many others as well, unless he intended for it to be so. He took the necessary measures at Calvary to bring it about. He can heal our scarred souls so we become able to experience that closeness more and more. We can lean our weary souls on Him and know for a fact that He is that close.

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Photo of hen and chicks is by Njei Moses Timah in Cameroon. Picture of Jesus and his disciples is a detail from a painting by contemporary Argentinan artist, Maria Molinari.

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