SERIES ON EXPERIENCING INTIMACY WITH GOD!

Hi everyone, I've just finished reading a small booklet by Our Daily Bread, on experiencing intimacy with God. This is actually an adaptation from a book by Joe Stowell, Radical Reliance: Living 24/7 With God At The Center. Felt so refreshed and inspired that I've decided to provide a summary of some pertinent points that have transformed my view of intimacy with Him. I encourage you to stay tuned to my blog to learn more about this and find greater satisfaction in your walk with Him.

So for the debut posting...let me start first by touching on... 

EXPECTATIONS OF INTIMACY WITH GOD...

"...(if) you are expecting intimacy with God to arrive as a blast of the Spirit that will cover you 24 hours a day for the rest of your life with an eternal season of ecstatic praise, warm feelings, and tangible chumminess with the Almighty God of the universe, then this is going to be a disappointment to you". 

The main point is: If we are going to expect intimacy to be equated to simply FEELINGS and EMOTIONS, then we are inevitably setting ourselves up for disappointment. 

Hence, in seeking intimacy with God, we need to address our expectations a the first instance. As the booklet mentions: "(i)ntimacy with God must not be defined in terms of its experiential elements". 

Next, related to this is the point that: "(e)ach of us will experience Him differently. And He will respond to us differently at different seasons and intervals of life". There is no "universal" experience. 

Therefore, by defining it as what a particular individual experiences would entail another disappointment for us if we don't experience it in the same manner. Refrain from framing your own to match others, especially those who have shared their own in biographies and testimonies. 

One last point but certainly no less important is: "(w)hile none of us experience God in precisely the same way, all of us do come to Him by way of the same road map. We do the process; God responds with an individualized product". 

In my next posting, I shall talk more about the process of seeking intimacy with God... stay tuned.