Intimacy of God 101: A Theology of Life With God

Intimacy of God 101 is a series that will surgically observe the disconnect that Christians sometimes experience when considering God’s nearness in their lives. At its most basic level, intimacy is simply fully knowing and being fully known. It is the ambition of every Bible-believing Christian that such intimacy would describe the quality of relationship they have with God, and yet - despite healthy theological conclusions and airtight erudition - something seems to stand in our way, preventing us from knowing the God who fully knows us. In surveying a theology of life with God, we will observe the subtle ways we think about God reveal a anemic understanding of his intimacy, which in turn causes us to relate with him poorly. The ultimate goal is not to live life under, over, from or even for God; but to live life with Him. The whole of the salvation story is a restoration of intimacy, and it is that intimacy we seek to embrace in both our hearts and minds.

All of the lessons and the corresponding notes can be found below.

Intimacy of God 101 is our current series on Wednesday nights. Please come out and join us in person starting at 5:30, and enjoy good food, great worship and engaging teaching.

Intimacy of God 101, Part 1 - Introduction and Life Under God

As we begin our series on our intimacy with God, we identify four postures that serve to threaten that intimacy under the guise of otherwise religious behavior. The root of the problem is that we mistake where intimacy is located. In Life Under God - the first of the four postures - we locate intimacy in obedience, and its reward in blessing. This posture insists that our obedience should be rewarded with the blessings we want, and that God remains unjust if he doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain. This kind of transactional intimacy is not what God desires from us. God desires, first and foremost, to be with us. We do not glean favor from obedience. We obey from having already received his favor in Christ.

Intimacy of God 101, Part 2 - Life Over God

Sabotaged intimacy takes on many forms, but sometimes it can be veiled in a pretense of having mastered God and his word. the desire to know God and his word so well that you can testify the name of Jesus with clarity and concision, though admirable, has the propensity to predicate our lives on a wrong kind of relationship with God. In the second lesson of our series Intimacy of God 101, we will be observing the posture of Life Over God, which focuses on reducing God to a set of measurable, standardized and surmountable principles that serve to make us “effective.” Together, we will expose how God cares more about faithfulness than he does about effectiveness. A life built on effectiveness can only end with the Life Over God posture, while a life built on faithfulness ends with the Life With God posture.

Intimacy of God, Part 3 - Life From God

Saturated in the wealth of the first world, where we are situated in history is certainly going to infect the ways we relate to God. One of those deceptively subtle ways is in the posture of Life From God, which takes a supremely utilitarian view of God and evaluates him based on his usefulness. Comparing this posture to a spiritual leprosy, Jethani observes that Life From God anesthetizes us from pain and fear, leading to a lifestyle in which we amuse ourselves to death. In effect, we relate to God insofar as we receive material blessing from him. Although this looks most obvious in the form of prosperity theology and the health-and-wealth gospel, it may subtly find itself worming its way into our own theology. Whenever we view God as a means to an end instead of the end itself, we live into this posture.

Intimacy of God 101, Part 4 - Life For God

Unlike the other postures, the Life For God posture can often be veiled as a celebrated virtue. What better life could one live than to abandon all things and perpetuate a sacerdotal Christianity, wherein only ministers, missionaries, and monks have sole claim over a life rightly called significant? Buried within this problematic posture is another means of controlling God, perpetuated on a desire to resolve fear. What is the fear for this posture? Insignificance. So, in order to remedy the possibility of a live lived without significance, we manipulate God into recognizing us by living “remarkably.” We counteract this problematic posture by observing the example of Paul, who viewed the mission of his savior as secondary to being with his Savior.

Intimacy of God 101, Part 5 - Life With God

In our final lesson, we culminate our series with the concept toward which we have been building for the past four weeks. We cease observing the problematic postures that plague our intimacy with God, and we finally identify what a life defined by intimacy with God looks like. In this lesson, we will learn that the postures are diseased because they are predicated on one simple idea – Instead of God, we want what he does for us. Life With God is the cure because God becomes our delight and our treasure. When we’ve rightly understood God’s worth, we cease using him to patch the holes in our lives. We cease using him to acquire lesser treasures. Instead, he becomes our whole and only treasure.