Intimate

 "Jesus said to them, 'Come away with Me. Let us go alone to a quiet place and rest for a while." Mark 6:31...."God does not have favorites. But He has intimates." Paul Rees

I've always kind of puzzled over why Peter, John, and James had a closeness with Jesus that the other disciples didn't. His Word tells us that He's not a respecter of persons. As Paul Rees states, He doesn't have favorites. Yet there are those who enjoy a deeper, richer, more intimate relationship with Christ than do others. Why? We were created for relationship and intimacy with Him, yet many of us advance very far in fulfilling that purpose. Where is the lack? Is it in us, or did He create some to enjoy a deeper knowledge of Him than others? These are questions that I, and likely no one can answer, but I do have some thoughts on it.

We're born in a fallen, separated condition from God. Our human and spiritual ancestors Adam and Eve caused it when they sinned against Him in the Garden. The infinite rift created between the human race and our Creator could not be healed by any effort on our part, yet we humans were, are, left with a longing for the One who made us. In our lostness, we have tried to fill that longing with substitutes for Him, though none can replace Him. God, in His love, knowing our state, sent His Son, Jesus Christ to take upon Himself on the cross our sin, and in His death and resurrection, make a way, the only way, for us to return to our Father Creator. In Jesus Christ, our longing for Him can be fulfilled. Yet so many who come to Him for restoration and salvation continue on with that longing being only partially fulfilled, or not at all. So we continue to look for substitutes. And those substitutes continue to fail us.

It may be that some are born with sharper spiritual sensitivity than others. It would seem so with the disciples. But is it His desire that it would remain so in them or us? I know in my life, when I saw the relationship enjoyed by great men and women of God, of the intimacy they walked in, it put a hunger within me to know Him in such a way as well. You couldn't keep me away from listening to such people. Yet others around me had no such desire. They seemed to be satisfied with sips and nibbles of His water and bread of life.

Paul exhorted Timothy to "stir up the gift within you." I believe God has given each of us the ability to enjoy deep and satisfying intimacy and relationship with Him. Our failure is that we seem content to let that ability lie dormant within us as we pursue other loves and objects of devotion. The gift of the possibility of relationship intimacy with Him never gets stirred up by us as we neglect it in our pursuit of those things that can never satisfy what we were created for.

We may not all come to the same degree of intimacy, He has made us each unique, but we all have the capacity for deep intimacy with Him, to the fullest extent possible for us. It's a matter of focusing that gift upon the only One who can satisfy it as He draws us ever more deeply into Himself. I have been given that gift, and so have you. May the waters of our spirits be stirred as we enter into all of its fullness.

Blessings,

Pastor O