I am continually learning new things about my relationship with God and his relationships with others.
I have always likened myself to the apostle John who was called the ‘disciple Jesus loved’ because I do feel particularly loved and favored.
But this doesn’t mean that he loves me any more than others. God’s love is the same for all of us.
He loves us all with a powerful and active love … a love that pursues …. a love that adores ….. but a love that never invades!
And this is what became so clear to me today.
No relationship with Jesus is the same because we are all different. The level of intimacy and love that we experience from Jesus is proportionate to how much of our heart we give away to him.
It is all about the heart.
The apostle John gave so much of his heart to Jesus that he enjoyed an especially close friendship with him – right up to his final years. When John was about 92 years old, he was imprisoned on the island of Patmos because he was still incessantly preaching about Jesus. This was where he was given the ultimate ‘Revelation’ of God’s love. Only someone who has truly tasted Gods love, could ‘see’ it and write about it. It is almost as though God supernaturally preserved John and his relationship with him, so that he could bare record of this wonderful ‘Revelation’.
The heart of God merged with the heart of man.
Did you know that the word ‘heart’ is mentioned 830 many times in the bible (NKJ version) and that it is the most used word after the words Lord and God. That says a whole lot about God!
Here is a beautiful scripture that I am sure we all know.
Ezekiel 36:26 New Living Translation (NLT)
26 And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.
The more we open up our heart, the more Jesus comes in and the more our faith grows around this love that we are experiencing.
I am going to use a human analogy to try and portray this concept.
But remember that God is God so he loves us with a Godly love which is a perfect love and far above any human love.
Imagine a father playing with and tickling their son or daughter. The child is laughing and squealing with joy at the fun and attention that they are getting from their daddy.
This is the kind of joy and fun and affirmation that we can experience, even as adults, when we are relishing a close relationship with the Lord.
Now imagine a father playing with and tickling their child but the child is not responding with laughter. Rather they are acting quite bored and even annoyed. This child is obviously not enjoying the closeness of the relationship because they have put up their walls and locked down their heart.
We need to open our hearts to the pursuit of God. We need to let down the walls and enjoy the fun and laughter of intimacy.
The Lord calls us to come to him like children.
Matthew 18:2-4Amplified Bible (AMP)
2 He called a little child and set him before them, 3 and said, “I assure you and most solemnly say to you, unless you repent [that is, change your inner self—your old way of thinking, live changed lives] and become like children [trusting, humble, and forgiving], you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever [a]humbles himself like this child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
The beauty about intimacy with God, is that it is a one on one relationship. No-one else shares it with us. It is you and the Lord.
And the amazing thing is that God embraces all of us with the same love and acceptance, no matter how close we are to him.
No matter how much of our heart we give him.
So at each and every stage of our relationship with the Lord, we will feel his closeness relative to our openness. And we will only ever know that we are missing out on something more, if we find that we have shut down our relationship with him.
Because we are human, our hearts seem to open and close according to what we are going through emotionally in our lives, so our relationship with the Lord is ever changing. We will always remember what it’s like to enjoy that intimacy, but we have a choice as to whether we want to go there again or remain where we are.
Here is another visual analogy.
Think of it like climbing a mountain. A beautiful, high mountain.
The height that you climb to, symbolizes the level of intimacy that you are enjoying with the Lord.
As you climb higher and higher your views become more breathtaking and your experience more incredible. You only know that it gets better, by climbing higher. And only if you have been up to an awesome height, but then get distracted and find yourself slowly wondering on the contour path, do you know that there is so much that you are missing.
Just as it takes hard work, loads of energy and a considerable amount of time to climb a mountain, so it takes all these things to arrive at a beautiful high place of intimacy with God.
Everyone has their own desires and their own places of comfort. We cannot criticize someone for enjoying a comfortable stroll on the contour path just as we cannot criticize someone who has summited the mountain and is sitting tight basking in the splendor of it all.
We are all on our own journey. We all have our own life to life.