Intimacy: Forming and Defining Relationships

You meet. 
You can’t have a relationship without meeting them in some way. You can’t decide to have a relationship without knowing they exist. You have to have some sort of defining and noticeable encounter that makes you want to know them and not stop knowing them!

My prayer for you: May you have and continue to have an encounter with God!

You Decide. 
You decide what you want to be to that person and they decide what they want to be to you. God wants to be everything to you. Do you want the same?

Casual
This mutual decision is sometimes unspoken. It just happens. But the more important the relationship, the more definition it needs. There are people you see occasionally. You laugh, catch up and there is no desire for continued conversation until you run into each other again or have a need to talk to them. There’s no obligation to call or text. But if you do it’s great. You can go days or years and it’s ok. But with God… is that where you are or what you have with Him?

Close Friends
You know that you are close because typically you share more of yourself, experiences and you’re more open with this person. More people know that you’re friends. It’s not natural to hide a close friend unless your profession or life is very public and you need to keep things more private. Close friends can range in intensity and boundaries are determined by personality and where you both are in life. It’s natural to have a close friend and life causes your closeness to be and change. Sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently. But while you’re close, you’re close. You may be so close that you help them sometimes financially, with emotional crisis. They may feel like family and you watch each other’s kids. I have a friend and neighbor who is also on the board of our Nonprofit. She gets “offended” when I call her my BFF or best friend. She says… “we are sister”. I’ve accepted that view and love her dearly. Yeah… she’s going to tear up when she reads this!
Close friends can vary in levels of friendship. I’ve had a dear friend who has become like a daughter to me… because the word mentee is just too impersonal. I want to take her everywhere and help her however I can as though she were my own daughter. We grew to that place over the years.
What is my point and how does that relate to God? Have you or do you desire a relationship with Him where He’s not just provider… or the One who come to when you need things? Is He more of a friend that’s like… family? Your best friend or also a Brother to you, or a Father. He can be all of that.

Groom
This is the part that makes some people either happy or very uncomfortable. Sometimes even men have a hard time grasping the parallels around the Bible verses that talk about Christ being the bridegroom and others that say we are the bride or like a bride. They are not written to strip anyone of their masculinity or to confuse your relationship with Christ. On the contrary, it is to define the love, responsibility and commitment that God has to us. This responsibility is called a covenant. Meaning He intends this to be “for life” with you. For the sake of simplicity, we can say that.

My Testimony with Him
I had a night… long after my salvation where I felt that I wrestled with God and myself. Where I was up all night weeping… just searching out where I was. Confessing that I didn’t like things about myself and how HARD I’ve tried to change or to do better. But I couldn’t. And I realized… I was trying to fix myself, but I’m not the Creator. I needed the One who Created me, who KNOWS me and KNEW me when I had no clue who God even was. I needed Him to fix me. And so, He put me on a journey and showed me. And guess what… I often STILL ask Him to do that just to maintain… me. So that I don’t get tempted to be my own mechanic. After all, we didn’t write the manual to “us”.
He’s that stock person behind the scenes placing everything carefully so you can obtain it, making sure what you need is in order and within reach. The one we care not to meet. He’s like the cashier person that we do see, but when we get what we need we quickly forget all they’ve done and their name as we walk away. Sometimes we will forget the Names of God and all that He is to us.
He’s so in love with you and desires to be closer to you. He doesn’t want you to run from Him. Christ died so you would run TO Him.

Have you encountered God? What are some noteworthy encounters with God? If you have trouble identifying an encounter where you feel that you met Him or He revealed Himself to you in some way, do you desire an encounter?