Our number one priority as a Christian is to have intimacy with Christ. Intimacy with Christ is not something that comes easy and requires a lot of work. The word intimacy means, “to belong to or characterizing one's deepest nature.” Intimacy takes spending time with someone to know them better than anyone else. When you are intimate with someone you will love them, trust them, and will become vulnerable because they know the deepest part of you. It also works both ways you have to learn and know the deepest part of the other person. If both people are not working toward knowing each other than you do not have an intimate relationship with that person.

It is very much like our relationship with our spouses. If you are going to be intimate with your spouse it will take work. You cannot sleep in one room and your spouse sleep in the other room, you cannot eat at one table and your spouse at another table, and you cannot sit in the living room and your spouse sit in the family room and have an intimate relationship with that person. It just would not work. Then if you were to go out in public and tell everyone how much you loved your spouse, and how wonderful that person is, they would sit there and call you a hypocrite, liar and fool.

Many times when it comes to our heavenly Father we do the same thing. Until Sunday and Wednesday evening we don’t bother talking to him unless we need something, and even when we do go to church we do not really go to worship God, we go to see our friends, and do the “church thing” because we do not want people thinking anything bad about us. When we do show up at church we will stand and sing songs about how we love Jesus and how Jesus is the sweetest name we know. While all this is going on God has to be vomiting at our hypocrisy and religion.

Intimacy with God began in the Garden when God walked with Adam and Eve (Genesis 2-3). God created us for the purpose of having a relationship with him. As we know, Adam sinned and the intimacy with God was lost. But, God had a plan and he covered Adam and Eve with animal skins and shed blood in the process (typifying the sacrifice of Christ in the future) so that the fellowship with mankind could be restored. This was realized at the cross where Jesus became sin on our behalf (II Corinthians 5:17) and bore our sins in His body (I Peter 2:24). Because of what Christ did, we are able to come to God through Jesus our mediator (I Timothy 2:5).

Since Jesus is God in flesh, our mediator, this means the intimacy we have with God is with Christ. The Bible tells us in I Corinthians 1:9 that we are called into fellowship with His Son Christ Jesus. Humility is the key to intimacy. As Christ was humble to the point of death, so we too must be humble to the point of death; that is, death to ourselves, our selfish desires, and our personal wants. When compared to God, our purpose should not be to see what we can get from Him. It should be to glorify Him and to love Him. Pride seeks its own. Humility seeks others. Isn't that what intimacy is, the seeking of another in the deepest sense? How can we do this without humility?

Intimacy with God is a privilege given to us by Christ in His sacrifice on the cross. He removed our sins so that we might fellowship with Him. Therefore, if there is sin in your life it will hinder your fellowship, and your intimacy with God.

The key to everything you face in your Christian life is intimacy with God. If you are intimate with God, missions will be important to you. If you are intimate with God you will be in the center of his will. If you are intimate with God you will treat your family like you should. We have to realize that without intimacy with God we can do nothing. The Bible tells us in John 15:4-5, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”