INTIMACY WITH CHRIST?

If Intimacy With Christ Seems A Distant Reality

If intimacy with Christ seems a distant reality, there may be a couple of possibilities as to why:

(1) We may not have God’s Word in your heart

(2) We are not obeying the Word of God.

He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.  (John 14:21)

God calls us to simple, unequivocal obedience of His Word. Often, however in our ignorance or rebellion we:

* Don’t know what the Word of God says:

God to Adam:

But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.  (Gen 2:17)

Eve to Satan:

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.  (Gen 3:3)

Eve, after adding to God’s Word, soon succumbs to Satan’s seduction.

* Challenge the authority of the Word of God:

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.  (Gen 3:4-5)

* Water down the Word of God:

For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.  (2 Cor 2:17)

* Twist the Word of God:

As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.  (2 Peter 3:16)

The intimacy with Christ we long for is based on a childlike understanding and response to the Word of God. Do we have the courage, faith and will to seek out, discover and obey the Word in this manner?

To often many today do not know God’s Word, and because they do not know it they often challenge it.

It is all to true that individuals are guilty of watering down and twisting God’s Word around so it fits their own selfish desires and lifestyles.

To do so however is to bring destruction upon ones-self.

Pastor Woody