This is a question I’ve received many times from people and the way I’m going to answer it now is the way I reply to everyone and hopefully it’ll help you out no matter what you’ve been struggling with.
Firstly we need to clear up the meaning of intimacy.
Intimacy – a close, familiar, and usually affectionate or loving personal relationship with another person or group.
I really want to focus on the “loving personal relationship” part of the definition.
Firstly I’d like to highlight that there is a big difference between sex and intimacy. I hear many married people say they are having some sex problems in their marriages and it really confuses me. I would argue that when people say they are having “sex issues” in a relationship I would actually suggest that in the majority of cases there aren’t any issues with sex, but rather there are issues surrounding intimacy.
I would like to suggest that we all require intimacy to some degree. When we don’t experience intimacy we feel alone and we go searching for intimacy in other things such as drugs, idols, porn, sex etc.
I think it’s very clear that we were all created to experience intimacy with God and a lot of the time I think we can get the wrong idea of intimacy from our culture and the society around us and I would suggest that’s why many of us struggle to experience intimacy with God.
So hopefully we’ve cleared up the meaning of intimacy so now I can go on and explain rebuilding intimacy with God.
The only thing we need to know about rebuilding intimacy with God is that there’s only one thing we need to do and it’s to trust Jesus with our salvation. As I read back at what I just wrote I’m very aware that it’s easier said than done. I’ve highlighted a few things that have really helped me to rebuild my intimacy with God. It’s worth me highlighting that these aren’t the only options but I promise you that if you attempt these things you will very quickly regain that intimacy with God that you’re looking for.
1. You need to know that it’s already been paid for- If you want to regain intimacy with God then I guess it’s safe to assume that you’ve fallen short and messed up along the way, well I’ve got news for you…. Me too. We’ve all messed up and once we’ve realized that we come to Jesus and he wipes it away and makes us perfect. We must realize Jesus has paid the cost.
2. Read the Bible – it sounds like a very obvious thing and very cliché but it really is an amazing thing that will draw us close to God.
3. Prayer – I remember when I used to work with children and we used to teach them a song which highlighted that “prayer is like a telephone for use to talk to Jesus”, now while that’s a child’s song I totally believe we can learn something from it. If I never talk with my wife then we’ll never grow in our relationship and it’s the same way with God.
So, my challenge is that we come to the realization that everything’s been paid for by Jesus hanging on the cross, may we lead a life full of prayer and be rooted in the word so that we can really walk in the true intimacy that we were created to experience.