Remember the feeling you have as a young lover, realizing there is someone who sees you as perfect and perfectly suited to them? This is also the experience you have when God allows you to see yourself through His eyes. He sees you as beautiful, perfect and perfectly suited to be His bride. He shows you all those wonderful and unique things about who He created you to be and how all of this is fulfilled as you become one with Him
I am extravagantly loved and blessed by God. He is so intimately beside me each day as I walk with Him and continue to grow in my love for Him and obedience to His will and way. He has brought incredible teachers into my life always, and this year, I am awakening to this truth more each day. Amazing…
I journal as a way of praying and talking to God, and before I write, I review what I have written months or years in the past. At the end of this year I found an entry from May 29th 2017, which has become an amazing exploration of true intimacy with God.
Through this process I began corresponding with a wonderful godly man who I believe was a God led encounter to help both of us grow in our walk with Him. I was asked to serve as a co-leader in a life group serving with a wonderful godly woman who continues to inspire me with her commitment and courage to become intimately involved in the lives of the women we were entrusted to lead. Our church began a series exploring the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan. We were doubly blessed to have him visit our church as a guest pastor. I was invited to become a prayer partner at my church campus.
Each of these I treasure as very special teachers and opportunities, brought to me by God, answers to my desire and prayers to walk more closely in true intimacy with Him.
This year started with correspondence from my dear friend, in which we exchanged our thoughts and impressions of what true intimacy with God looked like, using scripture as our guide. I pulled from Song of Solomon and spoke of the intoxicating, all-consuming intense desires of young love and how our hunger and desire for God should drive us to seek Him fervently and relentlessly. My dear friend took an altogether different approach, speaking of how a mature love, born of trials brings true intimacy with God.
I wrote, “Remember the feeling you have as a young lover, realizing there is someone who sees you as perfect and perfectly suited to them? This is also the experience you have when God allows you to see yourself through His eyes. He sees you as beautiful, perfect and perfectly suited to be His bride. He shows you all those wonderful and unique things about who He created you to be and how all of this is fulfilled as you become one with Him.
From this place, you are filled with a light shining for all the world to see. You see everyone differently, you enter their presence, even in their sin and disgrace, and you see the beautiful child God created and longs to become one with, just as he became one with you. Returning to your first love, being filled with that light shining for all the world to see, will draw all men unto Him. Good works flow from this.”
He wrote in response, “I believe to experience a level of intimacy and intoxication is first required a level of maturity. Noticed that David went through a lot of trials and difficulties to experience intimacy with God, just as the apostles experienced those as well. Even Jesus grew in stature and wisdom (Luke 2:52) before his ministry began.
I believe that when you love someone the way Christ called us to, and you respect and accept them because of who they are in Christ, and both of them are lovers of Jesus and lead by His Spirit, then something magical and beautiful takes place and that is when Eliza loses control and becomes spirit driven.
There is a song by Kim Walker called ‘Where You Go I Go’, and in that song there is a part that expresses what I believe intimacy is:
Jesus only did what He saw you do,
He would only say what He heard you speak,
He would only move where He felt you lead,
Following your heart,
Following your spirit.
I believe that intimacy with God is a Spirit lead life where complete transparency, complete dependency and complete obedience is found.”
This concept of letting go of the need to control, and taking a submissive and obedient role next to Jesus, the lover of my soul, helped me to see how submission and obedience is an incredibly intimate posture. This is only born through trials, suffering, and the maturing of a love relationship with Jesus.
As our love grows, deepens and matures through the trials and storms we walk through with Him by our side. Through this we come to trust and lean into Him. Then, submission and obedience is the fully expressed union of two becoming one flesh.
From here, we no longer rush out ahead, trying to figure out and predict the outcomes, we simply go where He leads, following His heart and Spirit because we are so in sync. We are in right relationship with him as the head and we as a fully submitted bride.
As I continue to meditate on this new insight, I find myself saying yes to opportunities to serve in my faith community, as the Lord leads. It is no longer an obligation, but it is a joy and instead of draining me of energy, it energizes me. I show up expectant and excited to see where God will lead through these experiences.
It continues to be an amazing and wonderful journey and He continues to teach me so much about His love for me and for all His children, for His beloved.
