Last week biblical support showing God ’ s desire for intimacy with us was requested.

1. Last week biblical support showing God’s desire for intimacy with us was requested. The Bible tells us that God is love, and there is nothing more intimate than love. But as some examples that reveal God’s desire, which is at the core of the question, let me share some scripture with you so that we may see how deeply God wants to share intimately with mankind.

2. “Then those of you who escape will remember Me among the nations to which they will be carried captive, how I have been hurt by their adulterous hearts which turned away from Me, and by their eyes which played the harlot after their idols; and they will loathe themselves in their own sight for the evils which they have committed, for all their abominations.” Eze 6:9 What do we learn here? God’s heart was wounded when His people rejected Him and went after others or when they turned away from Him. People can do things that hurt God’s heart by His own admission.

3. It is important that we learn from this text that God doesn’t rub their failures in their faces. God doesn’t want us thinking about our failures of yesterday – He wants us to give Him our hearts in the present, and He wants us to look to the future with hope and confident expectation. People only dredge up the past for manipulation and control. God reminds us of our past to help us determine we can’t live apart from Him but He doesn’t do that once the heart comes to repentance and believes that we cannot live apart from Him. “Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion: And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith the LORD, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the LORD: neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more. At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart.”Jer 3:14-17 KJV God’s heart is anxiously anticipating the time when Israel will be called “the throne of the Lord” and when Israel will no longer think about previous days when they were distracted by the things that led them away from God in the time of their sin and unfaithfulness. If you have the NASB you noticed that your translation says “I am a master to you” however in Jer 31:32 the same word is used and there NASB translates it as “husband”. But what do you see in this passage? Can you see the excitement and anticipation in God for the time when they do repent, and He begins to unfold His blessing on the objects of His affection?

4. “I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, In lovingkindness and in compassion, And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the Lord.”Ho 2:19-20 As with Hosea and his wife Gomer, God waits for Israel to return to Him, and even to today Israel is trying to solve their problems in their own strength and has not turned to the Lord. God WILL buy Israel back for Himself and yet accomplish what we see above. You should know that the words “know the Lord” use the Hebrew word “yaw-dah” which means to know by experience. It is the word in Gen 4:1 translated “had relations” when it is said that Eve became pregnant. Let us not be stubborn as Gomer and Israel. Let’s turn our hearts to the One who waits for us and live. Now let’s look at the intimacy of God in His engagement with Adam. I would be hard pressed to find anything more intimate than that, or showing more heart-felt desire of the gripping desires of a husband who loves and wants His wife even though she has been unfaithful to him, and who waits for her to return to Him.

5. Let me illustrate the point and process of intimacy. We have established that Adam was created out of the intimacy that was shared between the Godhead, and that man was created to share IN that intimacy and love that They shared. Let’s look at the pristine design and interchange between God and His new creation of man as His son.

6. Remember also that God spoke all of the other items of creation into being, “Let the earth bring forth”, but man was formed by the personal contact of God with the elements that made up his body, and even in the formation of Eve. It is intimate contact beginning an intimate relationship. “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden; and there He placed the man whom He had formed. … Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.”Ge 2:7-8,15 Do you see how intimacy as the point of origin flows into function?

7. God created man and woman by His own hand and then told them to produce their own children. In other words, Adam and Eve were to create life by having children and then go to God for intimate direction in how to raise their own children. Mothers, think about how many times you went to your mother for advice on how to take care of your new babies. Function always draws us together for deeper intimacy. So function comes out of intimacy, and it drives man even deeper into intimacy as a constantly deepening cycle that never stops going more deeply for eternity! “Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the sky, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called a living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.”Ge 2:19-20 And now we see the function of caring for God’s garden, becoming a means to exercise Adam into deeper intimacy as God brings these animals to Adam so they could name them. A Father and son sharing intimately in what the Father does.

8. But Adam and Eve obliterated that condition with their independent choice and “wisdom”. And so a now heart-sick God had to go to work to redeem an absolutely hopeless condition. Here is how He chose to do it. Illusion We all begin in “illusion” like, “I can manage my life on my own, I will marry the person of my dreams and live happily ever after” or “I will fill your life with joy and meaning”. And then REALITY hits! Our illusions began with the foolishness that we could live like the Most High and function effectively without Him. And when we reach to another person to complete our lives, we tell ourselves that we have finally made it. So apart from God, we begin all of our relationships with the idea that another person or a new situation will bring what we lack that will complete us and fulfill function and intimacy. And then what happens? Cold, hard REALITYstrikes the illusion! And we are left in – Why do we all begin in “illusion”? What do you think the “illusion” that we all begin our relationships is?

9. But Adam and Eve obliterated that condition with their independent choice and “wisdom”. And so a now heart-sick God had to go to work to redeem an absolutely hopeless condition. Here is how He chose to do it. We blame the other person and entertain the solution of getting rid of Mr./Mrs. Wrong and finding the right person for the sake of our own sanity, pleasure and success, we try to escape “dysfunction” in search of “function”, since “illusion” didn’t serve us very well. Illusion Dysfunction “You don’t please me any more. You aren’t what I thought you were when I married you.”

10. But Adam and Eve obliterated that condition with their independent choice and “wisdom”. And so a now heart-sick God had to go to work to redeem an absolutely hopeless condition. Here is how He chose to do it. Illusion Dysfunction Function This is why escaping into things like drugs, alcohol, work, recreation or any other distractions only prolongs our bondage to selfish independence, and why it is better to suffer until we decide to die to ourselves. We run from dysfunction because it hurts and we don’t like it, but God gives us the pain of dysfunction to drive us back to the only place where we can live appropriately and that is in intimacy. Dysfunction is God’s first-string corrective tool in exposing us to our ridiculous notion that we could EVER live successfully without total dependence on God, His love, or intimacy with Him! We don’t even really know what we need or want! But there are some very lethal flaws in our new economy of thoughts. Do you know what they are? The first is that “function” is NOT the solution for “dysfunction”. I was one of those people who was highly functional, but function will not satisfy a marriage. It just feels better than “dysfunction”. The second is that “dysfunction” has a very helpful gift for us. Do you know what that is?

11. So now what do we do when “comfort” is what drives our choices? But even if we can invest an entire lifetime in making compromises and adjusting our requirements, changing relationships, we still cannot escape the reality that even if we possibly achieve predominant function, there remains a very deep nagging in our spirit and soul that something is not right, not satisfying, and we end up back in dysfunction and frustration! The cycle usually repeats itself several times over the course of a lifetime. Illusion Dysfunction Function We try to move from dysfunction into function by making compromises; we reduce our requirements in one area, but raise them in another so that we can still feel like we are moving more deeply into what we want. Can any of you give us an example of what that might look like in a practical situation?

12. So God’s purpose behind this whole exercise, to draw us to intimacy, is thwarted by our desire for comfort from the pain that we cause. Intimacy If we are going to look at our best attempts in our easiest relationships and call them “loving” and “self-sacrificial” when we are largely operating in our own independent strength, then we will never realize the conclusion of God’s plan and move into true intimacy. At very best we will come to rest in “function”. If we never face or own our total lack of ability for intimacy and unconditional love apart from Him, and we don’t even know what real intimacy is, how will we ever be able to grow into what God created us for on this earth? Illusion Dysfunction Function And that is why I am spending the time to highlight this problem where we don’t want to diminish what we are calling “love” in our marriages or even in our familial relationships.