When I think about intimacy, I think of a place filled with love and safety. I see a picture of my dad putting his arm around my shoulders and pulling me close. In that place, with my head resting on my daddy’s chest, close to his heart, I’ve always felt loved and the cares of the world seemed just a little further away. He might not have known the details of our days, but he was there for the significant events and he knew when we needed some daddy-time. With his calm demeanour and gentleness, he loved his daughters uniquely and calmed our unsettled hearts like only he could.
Recently I found myself trapped in busy-ness. I was becoming a tangled mess trying to do all my jobs perfectly. I tried to be a loving wife and caring mother while studying, job hunting and chasing dreams. It was not sustainable, but I just didn’t know how to stop. One Sunday morning, the service was running late, and I was ready to leave, when someone stopped me. “Stop running”, he said. Stop. Rest. Remain. It is time for intimacy with the Father. Spend intimate time with Jesus. Out of intimacy comes strategy. Don’t do things your way, do it God’s way. Your way is no lasting good. Also don’t now try and do more religious activities, rather, go deeper and open your heart to your Father.
Psalm 2 says all who seek refuge and put their trust in God will be blessed. It says to serve the Lord with reverent awe and worshipful fear. We must come to the Father and honour Him. At the feet of Jesus, we can ask what we need, we can share our hearts, we can find forgiveness, let go of offences and find direction, but if we walk in our own way, things don’t work out well. I believe that God wanted to give me a serious warning in a gentle way, to not push and shove and forge my own path, but to rather follow His lead. At first, I tried to figure out what I should stop doing, but I couldn’t really quit any of my jobs yet. When I worshipped, God however flooded me with a blissful sense of calm and gave me the peace of heart that enabled me to slow down. Through the grace of God, I found intimacy with my Father.
In spending time with God, it felt like I was stepping out of my life and seeing it from a different perspective. I looked at the goal-oriented woman that was me, that was trying to achieve everything and make a difference everywhere. I saw a woman searching to be valued. I saw a woman marked with a myriad of labels. Good and bad. And I had to ask myself what I was searching for. Why do I want to please so many different people that badly? And then I felt God putting His arm around my shoulders, pulling me close, saying to me that I am valued already by the One that matters most. I am loved by my Heavenly Father and washed by the blood of Jesus and He can remove all the labels so that His craftmanship can be displayed, instead of the marks of the world.
We were created to display God’s glory, but often don’t because we search for acceptance and try to fit into the world. How easy isn’t it to make our lives look impressive with good works and inspiring social media posts? How easy isn’t it to compare our reality to our perception of others’ achievements? Often, we are our own most skilful accuser, criticizing ourselves as we draw comparisons to others. We wallow in self-doubt and unforgiveness and we end up with a bunch of labels that obscure our identity in Christ.
We need to find that place of divine intimacy where we can share all our stuff with the Healer Who can make all things new. A place where we know that He loves us just as we are, to hear Him proclaim His absolute Truth over us, to feel how His love satisfies us and heal the battle scars of the day and to lay all our achievements at His feet. If we abide in our Saviour, Christ promises to make our hearts His permanent home. In Jesus we will be rooted deep and founded securely on His love and come to know the breadth and length and height and depth of it (Eph 3:17-18).
Jesus said if we stay in Him and He in us, we will bear much fruit. If we stay attached to the Vine, the Vinedresser will pick us up when we fall to the ground, clean us and position us to receive the light of the sun. He will also prune all the excess away that the impressive appearance of many flowers will not block the sunlight and keep the branch from bearing fruit. How important isn’t it to therefore go to the Father every day to be cleansed and washed and pruned that only His work remain and none of our own?
God gave Zechariah a beautiful picture of intimacy with the Father when they wanted to rebuild the temple. It is a picture of two olive trees, filling up a bowl with a ceaseless supply of oil which in turn is connected to a lampstand that produces light continuously. God said to him that they will not get ahead in their project if they use power and might, they will only have success through the Spirit (Zech 4:6). If they were going to take on this massive project of rebuilding the House of God, they were going to have to do it using God’s blueprint for success. By staying connected and asking God to remove any blockages, we are filled up with oil and we can be conduits to shine God’s light, and then God will fulfil His predestined purpose through us.
We have the privilege to play a part in God’s plan for creation. There is absolutely nothing we can do to accomplish God’s work on our own. We bear the fruit of the Spirit, not of ourselves. We will look more and more like Jesus when the Spirit produces more fruit that becomes visible on us. We display God’s light, because we happen to be a lampstand, not because we can source our own oil. We bring His fragrance into the world because He positions us to do so and He infuses that fragrance into the world.
What an awesome God we serve. What an amazing Creator. What a loving Father. Blessed Redeemer. The King of Glory. Immanuel, God with us. May we crave the privilege or living with God every moment, that we may experience His loveliness and be filled with awe, delighting in His glory and grace (Ps 7:4)!
[Collage created using Pinterest images]
Dankie my kind. Jy is sooooo spesiaal.