CollegeLife

If you look back a couple of posts (community?) you will see that we are trying to major in 3 relationships.

Intimacy with God.

community with Christians

and Influence with non-Christians.

Community is a “hot” word.  What I mean by that is there are a lot of people turning toward community first and Christ second. I completely understand this trend.  We all want to be liked, no matter how introverted and shy you are, you still want to have a place where you feel accepted and known. You may not admit to it, but we all desire to share life with others.

So as we talk about Intimacy with God there are some things I would like to clarify about what I mean by “intimacy with God.” I am not referring to Jesus being your homeboy.  For you to be truly intimate with someone you must first really know them.  It seems simplistic but I think many people take this for granted with Jesus.

For example…Lets say that you and I are becoming friends.  We’ve hung out on several occasions, we’ve talked about important issues, laughed together, seen movies, been to each others houses, etc… And then after years of friendship you decide to take me to a baseball game for my birthday.  Problem. I don’t like baseball. If you KNEW me you would know this. Or lets say you even know I don’t like baseball, but every time you come around you KEEP talking about baseball. Eventually I would say you didn’t really care about me.

You see you can’t be intimate with someone you don’t know. It doesn’t matter how passionate you are, it doesn’t matter how much you want to be intimate with that person- you simply can’t be intimate with someone you don’t know.  We all know people who have posters of their “favorite band/person/entity”, they have books, cds, desktop wallpaper, memorabilia, etc.. But just because they are passionate about New Kids on the Block, doesn’t mean they are intimate with them.

The same is true of our relationship with Christ.  It is not based on passion alone. It is not based on experience alone.  It’s based first and foremost on who God is and that is revealed in scripture. Your experience and/or passion cannot trump scripture. That would be like you coming to me trying to convince me to like baseball simply because you do- that doesn’t work.  Your experience won’t change me. With people we want to be intimate with, we don’t take our experience and try to transform them, rather we allow who they are to transform us.

The same is true with Jesus- no matter how much you want God to be a certain way, who God is has been and is being revealed in scripture.

So are you intimate with Jesus or are you intimate with who you want Jesus to be?  Do you have the posters on the wall or do you have a changed life because of your “renewed mind” in Christ?

Be intimate with God today.  Read some scripture.

(side note: for any baseball lovers- i’ve seen major league, minor league, college, high school, little league, tee-ball- I just don’t get baseball. For any naysayers thinking, “You just need to go to Fenway or Wrigley or the Old Yankee stadium…” Not true- I sang then national anthem with a choir in high school on the field at Wrigley Field. Cubs vs Dodgers. Still not interested. So please don’t try to convince me baseball is fabulous, it’s just an analogy)