The Need For Intimacy

 
Our private life of intimacy with God must always exceed our public world of ministry. Ministry is only a working out of what God has already worked into our lives. - Susan Tang


We are well aware of how conception takes place. A man and a woman must first become intimate with each other before a baby, their fruit, is conceived. Susan Tang, Author of Demands of Love (a book I'm currently reading), helped me realize that the same process also takes place in the spiritual realm. We are the church, and the Lord is the Bridegroom. Why aren't we being intimate with Him yet? Are we even thinking that public ministry could be a substitute for intimacy?

This question should be posed to the churches of this generation: Have we been intimate enough to hear His demands? His desires for us?


Now, I'm not trying to duplicate Susan Tang's book. I just wanted to share what I had learned from what I've read. Honestly, intimacy is also one of the things that I had been struggling with. I didn't know how, and as time went on, I did not even care to identify personal intimacy with the Lord from public ministry. I had, without realizing it, substituting my intimacy with the Lord with "work"! I thought I was closer with the Lord each time I served His church. Trust me, you do not want to be in that situation. And if you already are, please, go back to your First Love. Please.

"I know your deeds, your hard work, and your  perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and endured hardships for my name and have not  grown weary.

Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place." Revelation 2:2-5


There was a time when I was too engrossed in the ministry entrusted to me by the Lord, that my personal moments with Him had become a monotonous routine. I read the Word and prayed everyday, but the flame for genuine intimacy had slowly shrunk to embers that not even public ministry could fan. Outside, though, I was working and being joyful about it. I haven't realized what was wrong until I was forced to step out from the field. Depression overwhelmed me when I was made to stop abruptly. I thought that was the end. And each time I thought about the ministry that I had been in, my heart hurt. It was so painful and I questioned the Lord every night. "Lord, didn't you want me to serve you? I could serve you even if my life was endangered. Lord, can you even hear me? Please hear my plea. Why are you turning your face away from me?"


But He wasn't. Instead, He was drawing me CLOSER to Him. He is drawing US to Him. The Lord wants intimacy from us, not our efforts. Because only through intimacy with Him will we be able to conceive - His desires, His burdens, and His visions. I realized, if we, His church, continue to just work in His church, doing what we think is right and pleasing, forgetting the basics of intimacy (and of complete exposure and brokenness before the Lord, ready to be molded even in the most painful ways), we would only be running in circles. How could we please God, without actually being intimate with Him enough to know what He wants? How could we bear fruit without being intimate with our Lover? Doesn't it make sense? It does to me now. I hope it also does to you.


Brethren, I encourage you to spend time reading Susan Tang's Demands of Love to learn more about Intimacy with the Lord through the Holy Spirit's leading. Believe me, I didn't even share a hundredth of what you will be reading from the book. :)

May we be like David who longs and even thirsts for the Lord Himself.

"You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water." Psalm 63:1