Journey to Intimacy

intimacy

/ˈɪntɪməsi/

noun

close familiarity or friendship. "the intimacy between a husband and wife"

The first time I heard the word ‘intimacy’ was at a Christian fellowship. The preacher said that ‘intimacy’ meant ‘into-me-see’. He was explaining why people shouldn’t get sexually intimate with others until they got married. That explanation was a bit cringy but it taught me that intimacy meant ‘naked’ and vulnerable. I didn’t understand this in the context of my relationship with God though.

I accepted Jesus when I was just a child and I didn’t know the next step. I just did what every Christian does ‒ go to church and refrain from committing sins. In secondary school, I discovered that reading the bible was quite interesting, so I added that to the list of things I did as a Christian. I also found the beauty that is journaling and this was basically prayer. So, my checklist was complete.

After university though, I decided that I was tired of the normal Christianity and I wanted to know God more. Before that resolve, I didn’t even know the significance of the old testament and why it was all about Abraham’s family. I didn’t truly understand what Jesus had done for us. Basically, all I knew were bible stories.

I began this journey, telling God I wanted to know Him more. And know Him more I did. I suddenly understood the bible a lot more. I found helpful bible resources that made me understand the bible. I discovered the New Living Translation (NLT), further aiding my understanding of the bible. Before NLT, Paul’s letters could have as well been written in another language.

However, I was misguided in this resolve because I thought that knowing God more meant having more spiritual experiences. And these spiritual experiences were not happening, at least, not as I wanted them to. Hence, I was a very frustrated Christian. This impacted my intimacy journey because I felt like I was giving so much and God was giving so little. In ‘giving so much’, I was praying for 3 hours every day, reading up to 10 devotionals at a time, going on prayer walks, praying while I was at work, serving tirelessly in the church, and obviously avoiding sin (this will be expounded on in the coming blogposts). But I was not seeing the fruits that I wanted to see. I half-expected that every time I prayed, a bright light would appear in my room and it would be Jesus coming to honour my 3 hours of praying. It didn’t happen and I got discouraged.

This, coupled with other things that were happening in my life at that time, made me give up. I stopped talking to God and doing all the above-mentioned, because what was the point? In my head, I was not getting intimate with God anyway. I revisited the old lie that I would leave Christianity because it seemed like God didn’t want me to get close to Him. But God, in His great love, found me in this discouraged state and pulled me back to Him. He showed me that intimacy was not really about having supernatural experiences. He also exposed that I had made supernatural experiences a god in my life. Now realising my mistake, I decided to restart the journey to intimacy.

However, I kind of took a wrong turn with this as well. Afraid that supernatural experiences would become a god in my life again and lead me back to being discouraged, I ran as far away from supernatural experiences as possible. This translated into me being focused on reading the Bible because I felt like I didn’t know God as well as I should; and leaving prayer behind because it was when I was praying that I fantasised about supernatural experiences happening. Not like I wasn’t praying, but not as much as I did before. And I was this way until recently, when I saw these passages again. John 5:39 (NLT):

You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!

2 Corinthian 3 (NIV):

He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant ‒ not of the letter but of the Spirit for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

You see, I got bored with the bible; I felt like I had read the bible before and there was nothing new it could offer me. These two passages reminded me that the secret to this intimacy is the Holy Spirit, who I had relegated to the back because I was afraid of obsessing over the supernatural again. However, I just went from one extreme to the other and I am grateful that God pointed this out to me.

What was the whole point of this blogpost? Well, I’m not sure. Maybe I’m meant to show others that I still don’t know what I am doing and I am trying to figure out this journey with God. Also, I realised that it is not a journey to intimacy with God, but a journey in intimacy with God. In my next post, I’ll write about the practical steps anyone can take to begin this journey. As for me, I have admitted to God that I really don’t know how to do this journey and I need Him to lead me and He is leading me. I hope you found this helpful.