Humans crave intimacy.
We are relational by design. In fact, when God created man He said that it was not good that the man should be alone, so he made a perfect companion called woman. Intimacy is foundational to the human experience. The entirety of God’s law can be summed up in two commands that are both fundamentally about relational intimacy: love God and love others. Apply it to any person. Love God and love your spouse, love God and love your child, love God and love that person who doesn’t look like you or think like you or act like you. You get the idea. Intimacy with God requires intimacy with others. And true intimacy with others requires intimacy with God.
I wish it was that easy. Love God, love everyone else, and our world would be like Heaven. But we live in a fallen world with fallen people where sin runs rampant and intimacy is distorted to the point where it’s unrecognizable. Since we’re relational at our core, the effects of our sin and the sin of others spreads like cancer to touch lives that aren’t even directly connected. I’ve seen it happen and tried to help pick up the pieces too many times to count. One experience stands out.
A dear friend shared with me that her family had been torn apart because of the actions of another. As she poured out the hurt that flooded her soul, the reality of her devastation crashed over me like a giant wave. The air was sucked out of the room and I felt like I’d been thrown into a roaring ocean. For a moment, I felt helpless and at a loss for answers – like I needed a sense of direction.
That same feeling had engulfed my friend and spread like wildfire through her marriage, her immediate family, her extended family, her church, and her friends. It seemed everyone with any connection was tossed about by this giant wave. As she continued to share her heart, I watched her shoulders shake as despair consumed the room
Over the following days and weeks I came to a deeper realization of how one person’s actions can cause destruction that spreads all around. We are not islands. Our actions have consequences for ourselves and for those around us, like bombs dropped in the ocean with waves of destruction unleashed in all directions. That realization led me to fear all the ways I could be affected by the choices of those around me, and how my actions could impact those I love.
As fear began to set in, I felt the nudge of the Spirit. His voice reminded me that He is a God of redemption. He showed me that He is still in control. I began to see how He was working in the life of my friend’s family. He provided for their needs. He moved and restored the brokenness of my precious sister in Christ. I watched as she grew in her own relationship with Him. As she matured and grew closer to Her Lord, she developed a total dependency on Him and the peace of God flowed from her life. All the while, He was restoring the shattered pieces of her life. It didn’t happen overnight or in a week or even in a couple of months, but God in His timing was healing wounds and making things new. I began to marvel at how a situation so hopeless and futile was now blossoming into a beautiful testimony of God’s intervening, gracious hand in the life of His child.
As years passed by, I watched this dear sister’s marriage be restored. I watched her family work toward healing together. I watched them deal with the difficult issues and face them head on, and grace upon grace was displayed in their lives and in their home. Those chaotic waves of devastation had been calmed by our great God into gentle waves of healing in every area of life, and His grace extended even to the ones further removed from the direct impact of the original sin. Intimacy was restored with God and with one another because of the mercy of God and the obedience of those involved.
Do you crave a closer relationship with God? Do you want more intimacy with your spouse, your children or someone else? I have great news for you! The same God that restored my friend’s life desires a close, deep, personal relationship with you. He knows everything there is to know about you. He knows your thoughts before you think them. He knows the desires of your heart. He can count the hairs on your head! He desires for you to know Him.
As you grow closer to God, you will inevitably grow in your relationship with those around you. You will begin to produce the fruits of His love and your life will be used for His glory. You will see others through the eyes of Jesus, who loved us and gave Himself for us. And as those around you respond to the grace of God in their lives, and grow closer to him as well, you will each experience deeper intimacy with Him and with one another.
If I could leave you with one thought on your journey toward intimacy with God and others, remember the encouragement of Paul in his letter to the Philippians.
If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort from love, if any fellowship in the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfill ye my joy that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus… (Phil. 2:1-5)
Grace be with you.
Brooke Russell is a Licensed Professional Counselor at Cord of 3 Counseling, wife of 9 years and mother of 3.
