Intimacy with God - Based off Psalm 36: 5-10, John 5: 19-30

In his book Soul Cravings, author and pastor Erwin McManus puts forth the idea that all human beings have three basic cravings. We yearn for intimacy, destiny, and meaning. We have these deep desires in us for these cravings because God has designed us to have them, to lead us into a deeper relationship with him from which we derive our identity. However, after Genesis 3, with the Fall of Creation through the sin of Adam and Eve, things have become a little messed up. We no longer look to God to fulfill our cravings, but rather turn to other things and people to define who we are.
Tonight, I want to focus on the first craving. The craving of intimacy. We want to belong. To be loved and accepted for who we are. But we’ve ran into several roadblocks that make us fearful of intimacy as well. We become bitter because other people have hurt us.
And all of this leads back to the ultimate problem, we’ve looked to others to fulfill this deep longing for intimacy. But because they are fallen, just like you and me, we will never be loved by others as perfectly as we desire to be. And then we turn around and instead of thinking, okay, no human can love me perfectly, because only God, my Father, my Abba, my Daddy, can love me perfectly, we use human failures to define God. We shy away from going deeper into a relationship with God because we think he’ll hurt us, because well, everyone else has. What a tragedy! We cut ourselves off in fear from the perfection of love, the only true acceptance we will ever have! It’s like we have forgotten all about 1 John 4:16 which says, “We know the love that God has for us, and we trust that love.” We don’t trust God. We don’t trust his love. But God calls us to remember, remember all of the times that he held us close and told us that he loves us, and has this beautiful, amazing, relationship with us. Do not let bitterness from the pain inflicted by other imperfect people block you from this relationship.
For about a year now, I’ve been signing almost all of my emails with “You are LOVED.” I hope that this is a small reminder to those I correspond with that they are first and foremost loved as a child of Christ. They are loved by God no matter how they see themselves or how others see them. They are loved by God no matter what they can or cannot do, because God doesn’t alter his love for us. He loves us just as we are, broken pieces and all. I equate this to something that I have told a friend of mine. I love him for who he was, who he is, and who he is going to be. I love him, because I love him and I see beauty in him even on his bad days. My care for him isn’t based off of a feeling, it goes deeper then that. And that is just a small glimpse of how God loves us, with this unshakeable love. 1 John 3:10 reminds us just how deeply God loves us when he says “The Father has loved us so much that we are called children of God. And we really are his children.” Just incase you missed the fact that you are a child of God, John emphasizes it twice in one sentence. In other words, this is a big deal. We have this intimate connection with God, that all too often, once again, has been marred in its beauty because of our tarnished human families. God loves you the way a perfect father would. For those of you who didn’t have the ideal father, God is the one who created you. He rejoices over you. He cheers you on. He scolds you out of love in order to make you develop into a more complete person. He sacrificed everything for you. God would be the dad who would be home early every night to ask you how your day was and mean it,, and tuck you in at night.
If I could think of one person who had an intimate relationship with God from the scriptures I would say David. David was a little Shepard boy who God choose to be the King of Israel. He is known for being called a man after God’s own heart and promised that one of his decedents will be the Messiah. David and God were close. If you need proof just look at the psalms. David was close enough to God to tell him when he was having a horrible day. He was intimate enough with God to share his highest joys and deepest pains. He had no doubt that God had made him and loved him, even when he screwed up, which he of course did. And the relationship that David boasts of in today’s scripture passage, that dear brothers and sisters is what we crave! Steadfast, faithful love. Love that envelops us and lets us rest in the knowledge that we are loved, perfectly, forever. And that steadfast love, the love that God showed to David, he is trying to show to all of us, if our bitterness would stop blocking him.
The beauty of our relationship with God, the intimacy we crave from God, flows from the intimacy he has with himself. Follow me now into the deep waters of theology – the study of God. As Christians we believe that that God is three in one. We believe in God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. All three have separate functions, but they are all equal. And they cannot be complete without one another. They are always present with one another and their love is perfect and complete. They need each other so that they can give love, because love requires an object.
I know that all sounds confusing. And honestly, it is. But I want to share with you a passage that describes this reciprocal, perfect love from William Young’s The Shack. “Jesus reached across the table and took Papa [God’s] hand in his, scars now clearly visible on his writs. Mack sat transfixed as Jesus took his Father’s hand and kissed it and looked deep into his Father’s eyes and finally said, “Papa, I loved watching you today as you made yourself fully available to Mack to take Mack’s pain into yourself, and than giving him space to choose his own timing. You honored him, and You honored me. To listen to you whisper love and calm his heart was truly incredible. What a joy to watch! I love being your son!”
This intimacy, dependence, passion for one another, and authentic love is what Christ was describing in John chapter 5 when he says “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing, for whatever the Father does the son does likewise. The Father loves the sons and shows him all that he himself is doing and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished.” The Godhead was revealed at different places for different purposes in history. At Mount Sinai where God gave Moses the 10 Commandments and covered the mountain as a cloud, but Christ and the Holy Spirit were present also, because they each can do nothing of their own. At Bethlehem, Christ was born as a baby, after the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, but God and the Spirit were present also, because they each can do nothing of their own. And at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit distributed spiritual gifts and languages to the believers, but God and Christ were present also, because they each can do nothing of their own. Do you see how God’s intimacy, his love is linked to his dependency? Can you see that this relationship is ultimately one of community, acceptance, belonging, and identity?
May we strive to have this type of intimacy in our relationship with God. May we become utterly dependent upon God and place all of our trust in him. And may we stop defining our relationship with the Most High off of our fallen relationships with others. God yearns to show you true intimacy, let him. Amen.