The Temple in Jesus’ day was designed around the idea of
intimacy. As you moved through each gate
and court you progressed toward the holy of holies where only the High Priest
once a year could enter on behalf of the nation into God’s presence. Gentiles then women could only go so far,
then men, and even priest. Proximity to
God was limited. With the sacrifice of
Christ on the cross and His resurrection, that all changed. No longer is intimacy with God so bounded
and constrained, but rather open and accessible to all. Thanks be to God we can know God, not just
know about Him. We can come to an ever-deepening
relationship with him. It is up to us,
though, to maintain and cultivate the intimacy we have with God by our daily
obedient response to the grace he gives us each day.
Samuel Logan Brengle, in a chapter entitled “Knowing Jesus” (in
Heart Talks on Holiness) raises the
question of how we might maintain and cultivate communion and intimacy with
Him. He uses the metaphor of marriage to
say,
“It is possible for a
husband and wife to live together for many years, and instead of increasing,
except in the most superficial way, in the knowledge of each other, to grow
apart, until after many years they are heart strangers to each other, with
separate interests, conflicting desires, tempers, and alien affinities. To really know each other they must be bound
together by stronger ties than mere legal forms; they must commune with each
other, live in each other’s hearts, enter into each other’s joys, and share
each other’s sorrows, counsel each other in perplexity, seek the same ends and
cultivate the same spirit.
And so to know Jesus,
there must be sympathy, fellowship, friendship constantly cultivated. The heart must turn to Him, pour itself out
before Him, share its hopes, its joys, its fears with Him, draw its
consolations, its strength, its courage, its sufficiency, its life from Him, trust
and obey Him and delight itself in Him as its everlasting portion.
Secret prayer must
often bring the soul face to face with Him, and the Bible, God’s record of Him,
must be daily, diligently and lovingly searched, and faithfully applied to
daily life. Thus shall we know Him, and
be ‘changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the
Lord,’ and people shall see and feel ‘Christ in us, the hope of glory.’”
One of the great blessings of experiencing each day an increasing intimacy with God is His continuing work shaping us into His
likeness. With His hands on the clay of
our lives, He is shaping and perfecting us so that He can fill our hearts and
lives with his very self in His desire to be intimate and make Himself
known. Glory to such a God!
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