Intimacy

My friend and I were sitting in his living room chatting.  He wanted me to pray for him to find a job.  Holy Spirit prompted me to ask what kind of job he would like to have.  My friend responded, “Whatever the Lord wants me to have.”

When my wife and I were young and in love, I would offer to take her out to dinner.  She would agree to go out.  After we were all prepared and in the car, I would ask her, “Where would you like to go?  What kind of food would you like?”  She almost always responded, “Oh, anywhere is fine with me.  You choose.”  I would agree and start driving toward the restaurant of my choice.  She would ask where we were going.  When I told her, she would always object to that choice.

Sadly, marriage counsellors are continually dealing with couples who are unhappy with each other.  But, more often than not, in their unhappiness the partners have often complained to or about each other but they have never affirmatively communicated what they desire to their partner.  This is true in matters ranging from the simple choice of a restaurant to money management and sexual relations.

All these failures of communication, and many others, are often based in our fears.  Fears of rejection; fears of being a disappointment; and, fears of intimacy keep us from opening up true communication.

The other frequently recurring element in these failures of communication lies in the unknowns.  Often a person will not communicate his desires to another because he or she honestly does not know what he or she actually desires.  When my wife was not telling me what restaurant she wanted, it was because she really did not know.  Sadly, she lived in a world in which she did not know what she wanted but she knew she did not want whatever I was choosing.  This perspective in life continued to the point that in our later years we almost always ate at McDonalds because she could accept that even though it was a place neither of us really wanted.

Often, I get the opportunity to talk with young women approaching the age to consider marriage.  I tell them that it is important for them to take ownership over themselves. Owning implies being responsible for themselves and thus requires getting to know themselves.  The woman who does not get to know herself and take ownership over herself cannot possibly truly give herself to her husband.  

The same dynamic is also true for each of us as we become the Bride of Christ.  Jesus desires His bride to be able to enter into deep intimacy with Him.  When He rejects the charismatic miracle workers in Matthew 7:23, He uses the same language that describes His mother Mary as continuing as a virgin until after His birth.  His concern was not with the performance of the miracle workers but with their intimacy of relationship with Him.  He is telling us that He wants a bride that will pursue intimacy with Him, the Bridegroom.

A related problem that marriage counsellors face on a daily basis is our failure to own our emotions combined with our willingness to accept responsibility for another person’s emotions.  For me to say to my wife or my children, “I am angry so you need to change.” makes no more sense than for me to say to them, “I am hungry so you need to eat something.”  Tragically for my wife and children it took me many painful years to learn that simple truth.  If I am experiencing emotions, whatever they may be, I am responsible for them.  I have been given a gift of self-control.  I choose whether to be angry or to be loving.  I choose whether to be happy and hopeful or to be depressed and despairing.  No other person is responsible for how I feel.  My feelings are the result of my choices not the result of my circumstances.

No one can make me angry.  No one can make me happy.  And all the same choices I have the power to make, are also choices that every child of God has the power to make.  However, the enemy of our souls is always working to deceive us into believing we do not have the power that God has given to us.  

If I do not know myself, if I have not admitted to myself, that I have the power and responsibility to live in control of myself and my own emotions; then to that extent I am imprisoned in the enemy’s deception and I am foreclosed from becoming intimate in my relationships with Jesus and with other people.  For too many years I was living deceived in just this way.  I was deceived because I wanted to be deceived so that I could believe my failures as a husband and father were not really my responsibility.  Indeed, I was so deceived that I was also actively working to deceive my wife, my children, my counsellors and the world that my failures were my wife’s fault or my children’s fault or someone else’s fault.  

Sadly, I kept myself entrapped.  It was not until I was willing to know myself that I could change.  It was only when I was willing to admit to myself that I was responsible that God’s grace would begin the process of cleansing me from the unrighteousness of all that I had been.  Failure to confess our sin does not keep God from forgiving us.  But, it does keep us from receiving His cleansing from all the unrighteous foundation the sin is based upon.

The foundation upon which all these forms of self-deception are built is one simple belief.  It is the choice to believe that God does not really love me like I am right now.  God cannot love me.  Because I do not love myself the way I am clearly neither God nor anyone else can really love me the way I am.  The only ones who love me are the ones from whom I have kept myself hidden.  And when they see the real me they will reject me too.

BUT THAT BELIEF IS A LIE !

THE CREATOR GOD OF THE UNIVERSE LOVES EVERY ONE OF US 

EVEN WHEN HE KNOWS EVERY DETAIL ABOUT WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE HAVE DONE ! !

When we choose to believe this truth, when we choose to receive this enormous unending love, His perfect love will cleanse away all of our fears.  His love will empower us to accept our true selves and to accept responsibility for actual control over ourselves, our emotions, and our responses to the people around us.

Then, we have the power to pursue true intimacy with Jesus, with our spouses, with others whom we love.  Then we are empowered to get to know ourselves more deeply and then to pursue even deeper levels of intimacy.  

I pray for each one of us to hear and heed the call of Jesus to connect with Him in a deep intimate relationship experiencing the total acceptance and approval that flows through His Spirit into the very core of our hearts.

His, thus Yours,

  Stuart