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Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 4/29/2003 12:13 PM (GMT -6)

Tigress-

Thanks for helping me understand your point.

I’m going wild with the long posts! Sorry everybody.

There is no one verse that explicitly commands us to “pursue a personal relationship with God” in exactly those words. But that doesn’t mean we are not to pursue such a relationship, or that there aren’t passages, or implications of truths we already believe, that imply that this is exactly what God has in mind for us.

Well, to begin with, the Psalms are loaded with confessions of intimate love and longing for God that are as personal as you can get. God is the object of every emotion that makes personal relationships what they are and without which they would be less than intimate. David "longs for" God, "pants" for God as a thirsty deer pants for water, "cries" out for God, "misses" God when he appears absent, "yearns" for God in the night watches, “weeps” for God during trouble, "earnestly seeks" God day and night, even gets “mad” at God. The psalms were written to provide God’s people with examples, templates as it were, for entering into the intimate world of their own deepest personal emotions and there experiencing God.

The prophets are full of the same sort of language (longing, crying, being frustrated, being jealous for, even—here’s your word—“pursuing”) except it’s used to describe God’s attitudes and behaviors toward US. He’s chasing Israel, longing to embrace her, staying up at night thinking about her, dancing over her with joy, etc. God loves his people personally and intimately.

Jesus loved people personally and intimately (Jn. 13.34 and the Cross). When Jesus speaks of his relationship to the Father he speaks of it as a relationship grounded in love (Jn 17.24) before the foundation of the world, and he wants us to relate in love to him just as he and the Father relate in love (Jn. 17.26). Do you know of a love between persons which is not “personal” and “intimate”? In Eph. 5 Paul commands husbands to "love" their wives and finds the highest example of this in Christ’s love for the church.

Now let me really bore you. I have a sermon I preach on the “Four Essential Truths of Sonship.” It’s about what it means to be a son/daughter of God. What are we to understand about our relationship to God when God calls us his “children.” The four truths, or dimensions, of being a “child” (son/daughter) of God (that I can see) are:

Relationship

Intimacy

Inheritance

Likeness

As “children” of God our relationship with God is a personal one in a way no other relationship is personal. It’s not like the relationship of a people to their king, not like that of a slave to his master, and not like hat of an employee to his employer. These can be personal (and they are used to describe aspects of our relationship to God), but they don’t define what it means to be a “child” of God. Being God’s “child” is personal in a more fundamental and intimate way. These other relationships are all based on external agreements or contracts, while being a “son” or a “daughter” is based on an internal transfer of life.

Consider too, personal relationships are dynamic, not static. They’re always changing. They’re alive. They’re going somewhere. Your relationship with God is going somewhere. It’s either improving or dying. It’s either moving forward or going backwards. It’s impossible to remain relationally static with God. You have to go for it, to pursue it. That’s what the Psalms tell us.

Intimacy?

Intimacy with God is the reason we exist on earth.

If you’re not intimate with God then you’re not fulfilling the purpose for your existence.

Our intimacy with God glorifies God most

Our intimacy with God satisfies us most

This is why God designed the marriage relationship to image, or reflect, the divine-human relationship. Why do two people get married? To have kids? No. To share rent expenses? No. They get married to “create and enjoy personal intimacy,” to love and to be loved. Having kids and sharing living expenses is the desert, it’s not the main course.

Intimacy, then, is the goal of this personal relationship that we have with God. To be a “son” or a “daughter” of God is to have a personal relationship with God for the purpose of being intimate with him. That’s it!

Now ask yourself an important question: What is Intimacy? That’s a question that I keep thinking on. I figure, before understanding what intimacy with God is, let me just try to understand what intimacy with another human being is. That will basically tell me what I’m looking for with God. Here’s my shot at it: Intimacy is the mutual sharing of life. One person can’t be intimate without the other being intimate. It’s mutual honesty, mutual transparency, mutual acceptance, a mutual exchange of thoughts, feelings, and desires (a total mutual sharing of life, love, and responsibility). That ‘bout sums it up for me.

To be intimate with somebody is to have a personal relationship in which there exists the loving and mutual sharing of life (thoughts, desires, feelings, and decisions).

Being intimate with God means inviting God into the thoughts, feelings, desires, and decisions of my life, giving those to God, and being invited by God into his thoughts, feelings, desires, and decisions. Intimacy, in short, is the exchang of life between two people.

So, when God commands Israel (and the world), “Love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” what do you think God wants? He wants us to pursue a personal relationship of intimacy with him. We’re asked to put our whole selves (thoughts, feelings, desires, and decisions) into loving God. I can’t think of a better single verse than this one command. Unless you define loving somebody with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength as relating to that someone in a manner that is NOT personal and intimate, that holds part of your self back, then this command of Scripture is a command to pursue a personal relationship of intimacy with God. You've found your one verse. And the sort of human relating Godward that is intimate is all over the Psalms, while the sort of divine relating humanward that is intimate in found in the Prophets.

Now, if Mephi’s right and “pursuing a personal relationship with God” has you thinking about the modern, diseased, self-centered personalIZED pursuit of a God who exists for me and my needs, period, then scratch that. We’re not talking about that.

A funny example is what I heard one guy call the difference between Dog-theology and Cat-theology. A dog says to it's owner, "You feed me, you care for me, you provide me shelter...you must be God!" A cat says, "You feed me, you care for me, you provide me shelter...I must be God!" I'm talking about Dog-theology Tigress! Ruff Ruff!

Pursuing a personal relationship with Christ = Loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

It’s straight out of the Scriptures.

Now I gotta just wake up in the morning and try to do that for one more day.

Tom

Edited by - TGB on 04/29/2003 5:29:38 PM

John Earp
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Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1715

Posted 4/29/2003 12:28 PM (GMT -6)

I haven't read all the post in this thread yet, but it seems hard to understand how one can obey Jesus (loving God supremely and one's neighbor as oneself) and NOT have an "intimate relationship with Him" by means of the Holy Spirit.

...God is love, he that lives in love lives in God, and God in Him.

"The Discovery of new truth will modify old views and opinions, and there is perhaps no end to this process with finite minds in any world." Charles G. Finney, Systematic Theology.

revivaltheology.net

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 4/29/2003 12:32 PM (GMT -6)

quote:
I haven't read all the post in this thread yet, but it seems hard to understand how one can obey Jesus (loving God supremely and one's neighbor as oneself) and NOT have an "intimate relationship with Him" by means of the Holy Spirit.

You're right John. It's that simple.

Tom

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 4/29/2003 1:01 PM (GMT -6)

Tigress: My inquiry is in regards to engaging in an intimate relationship with God on a personal level like friends would have together, or like a married couple, etc. That's the difference.

Tom: The difference between how we relate to friends and marriage partners on the one hand and to God on the other is that our relationship with God a) has to be pursued more intensely, and b) is more personal and intimate than any other relationship with another human beign will ever be. What you're looking for with God is MORE intimate than your other relationships, not less.

Somehow "intimate" got to be defined as bordering on disrespectful paltalk. That's too bad. I hope you don't give up the conscious pursuit of a confessedly PERSONAL and INTIMATE relationship with God.

Tigress: What I'm looking for is the proof for the kind of relationship with Him that contemporary Christian culture preaches? The kind of give and take that occurs within the boundaries of two people who love each other deeply.

Tom: I told you Mephi. I was right.

Tigress: Is this really what God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit is looking for from us?

Tom: Yes. Yep. Certainly. Truly. That's a 10-4 good buddy. Absolutely.

Kidding aside, Tigress, tell me, if this is NOT what God is after, what would you put in its place?

Tigress: Or was it simply a correcting of our positions in creation so that order could be restored and God's enemies (Satan and his demons) would be defeated?

Tom: OK, this is what you'd put in its place. See, Doc. It's YOUR fault!

Try to relate the two, Tigress: Relating personally and intimately to God and being used by him to subdue the earth and reorder creation. Why should this not both be true?

Remember, intimacy means being invited into the thoughts, feelings, desires (plans, goals), and decisions (intentions, choices, strategies) of another person. People intimate with God want to know God's plans and goals. They want to fulfill those with God. Daniel said it: "They shall KNOW their God and DO exploits." Divine-human personal intimacy is HOW God gets done what he wants done in the universe. There's no either/or here.

Tigress: Are we to assume that Adam and Eve really did have the same kind of relationship with God as they had with each other?

Tom: I think it was BETTER and MORE INTIMATE with God. I think our capacity for intimacy with other humans is designed to reflect the intimacy we have with God and to point us back to the more fundamental relationship we exist to participate in with God.

Just my thoughts.

Tom

"Love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength" -God

Edited by - TGB on 04/29/2003 6:13:02 PM

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 4/29/2003 2:38 PM (GMT -6)

Hey, I can be ok with being wrong. No biggie. It can happen once a year...well, maybe twice.

Sorry about that, y'all.

But seriously, now that I have a better handle here, maybe there is something that can be addressed here. Perhaps one concern that may occur to some is how to have a truly "personal" and "intimate" relationship with God without somehow either elevating themselves to God's level or making God an EQUAL with them. Perhaps, in some of our ways of thinking, reciprocity and mutuality is too often linked with EQUALITY on most, if not all, levels. And seems too much like the diseased theological position of which Tom speaks, where God is implicitly devalued.

So, Tom, can you speak to this issue? How to speak of mutuality and intimacy without falling into the modern pitfalls. This may add a bit to this discussion.

PS: As far as your idea of "Intimacy with God is the reason we exist on earth", I'd agree for sure. But, as for me, I'd personally add a certain "glorification idea" just to round things out better for me.

"Smile. It could be worse." --from a good friend.

Edited by - MephEternal on 04/29/2003 7:42:52 PM

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 4/29/2003 2:55 PM (GMT -6)

Last minute thought.

Tom:

quote:
Tom: The difference between how we relate to friends and marriage partners on the one hand and to God on the other is that our relationship with God a) has to be pursued more intensely, and b) is more personal and intimate than any other relationship with another human beign will ever be. What you're looking for with God is MORE intimate than your other relationships, not less.

c)is NOT one of equivalence, but MUTUALITY and SYNERGY. We (God and humans) are NOT on the same "level", like friends or spouses may be understood to be, but can and do INFLUENCE one another, infusing each other with life and love.

"Smile. It could be worse." --from a good friend.

Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?

Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635

Posted 4/29/2003 3:24 PM (GMT -6)

If there was only someone I could entrust without reserve, someone familiar with my most inward thoughts and struggles, someone to love me entirely for the individual I am, embrace me dearly, in spite of my peculiar public and improper private actions, in spite of my character. I am looking for someone to be the lover of my soul, someone that will transform my very being, when held in that someone’s embrace.

PotOnWheel
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 4/29/2003 5:38 PM (GMT -6)

Who's this a quote from?: "God is closer to you than you are to you..."

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 4/29/2003 7:42 PM (GMT -6)

Thanks Mehpi. Yeah, I agree with God's glory being included in the reason why WE exist. That's why I said I thought our being intimate with God a) glorifies God most and b) satisfies us most. Sounded kinda like Piper!

And dittos on your (c), our personal relatioship not being on the same level with husbands and friends, etc., not equivalent. The answer? Eh, yeay, let me see here, I had it in my pants pocket; let me...just a minute...(#$^%!@)...eh, how 'bout checking out the thread "Defining God" over in the Theological Q&A category. Someone called 'exborg' asked the same sort of thing and we spun on into this same question.

Gotta run!

Tom

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 4/29/2003 11:23 PM (GMT -6)

Mephi (and others)-

Here are two threads about Mephi’s question regarding how far we can push the similarities between God and humans and still maintain that God is “other” than us.

"Defining God": http://www.gregboyd.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1987&whichpage=1&ARCHIVE=

"God as Personal": http://www.gregboyd.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1817&whichpage=1&ARCHIVE=

Tom

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 4/30/2003 1:53 AM (GMT -6)

Mephi-

I hear you asking: OK, though we’re justified in speaking of our relationship to God as a “personal” and “intimate” one, what must this mean? Are there limitations to the description of God as “person” and to our relationship to God as “intimate”?

I’ve been pondering the “personal” nature of our relationship with God a lot lately. You know Mephi, I just don’t have the tools (the background in different disciplines, like psychology or anthropology for example) to tie it all together into a convincing argument. I’ve got these ideas floating around in my head with nothing to hang them on. I feel like all I ever have are “hunches” and “intuitions” (which I know are a lot of times wrong). Do us all a favor and finish your doctorate!

God aside, it’s not easy to definitively say what human being is, what it means to be human.

On the “God as Personal” thread I suggested human being was fulfilled in our:

Reasoning
Relating

Determining

Loving

We fulfill what it means to be human persons when we reason, relate, and determine ourselves volitionally in love. The less loving we become, the less human we become. I concluded that if God is personal, this at least means that God reasons, relates, and determines himself volitionally in love at all times. How should God then be different from us? He’s different (not equivalent to us) in that:

God’s reasoning is infallible, characterized by omniscience while ours is finite and imperfect, subject to mistakes and failure.

God’s relating is perfectly loving and selfless, never manipulative or disingenuous, while our relating is almost always less that completely loving and selfless, and always subject to the influence of sinful motivations.

determining

Thus, God always reasons, relates, and determines himself in perfect love at all times. We don’t.

So, the differences between God as person and us as persons are, I think, in the exercise of reason and will in relating lovingly to one’s self and to others: God's exercise of reason and will in relating to us is infinitely and perfectly loving and wise while our exercise of reason and will in relation to him is finite and fallible. But it's the same kind of thing going one.

If it's not the same kind of thing going one, if what constitutes God’s being personal is essentially different from our understanding and experience of "personal", then there’s nothing we can say about God here because God has not revealed it to us. I say, whatever the truth about God’s essence might be, it cannot render the divine-human relationship less than personal in terms WE can understand, otherwise we render the concept of “revelation” vacuous. (This gets back to my big beef with transcendence: God’s otherness/transcendence may mean his is more than what he reveals himself to be, but it cannot mean he is less than or contrary to what he reveals himself to be.)

Do we relate personally and intimately to God in the same way we relate personally and intimately to others? I personally don’t know as a human being any OTHER way to relate personally and intimately. God’s not human, OK, but that doesn’t render the concepts “personal” and “intimate” in relation to him vacuous.

Maybe this isn’t such a problem in my mind because I see us getting what it means to be personally intimate FROM God and from our being created in his image. In other words, I’m not trying to just arguing from what is true for me to what therefore must be true of God. Rather, I’m trying to argue on the basis of our being image bearers that “personal” and “intimate” mean for us what they do BECAUSE that’s what they mean for God. Our experience of “personal” and “intimate” points to God. So he cannot be infinitely and qualitatively other than this.

I apologize everybody if I’m obsessing on this!

Tom

PS I'm so ticked off right now 'cause I know I've entered the commands correctly for that last bulleted list, but it won't appear. I wanna kick the thing into the ocean!

Edited by - TGB on 04/30/2003 07:20:45 AM

Edited by - TGB on 04/30/2003 11:02:03 AM

Tigress
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Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252

Posted 4/30/2003 4:40 AM (GMT -6)

Tom,
Bummer! You're already married!

tigress

Tigress

The Angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and He delivers them.
-Psalm 34:7

Tom
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 4/30/2003 6:05 AM (GMT -6)

Tigress: Tom, Bummer! You're already married!

Tom: Wow! Hey, listen, I live in the Muslim world, and here you can legally marry up to four wives. I have three slots open. Interested?

Tom

S.B.G.
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 143

Posted 4/30/2003 6:20 AM (GMT -6)

Tigress,
In looking for a Biblical command to develop a personal relationship with Jesus, I think of John 5:39-40 "You diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. " To know ABOUT Jesus is not the same as actually KNOWING Jesus. Jesus tells us that He “no longer calls us servants, he calls us friends,” and He “wants to make known to us the secret things of God.” When Jesus was here, He emphasized relationships, He touched people, He ate with people, He experienced their joy and sorrows…we can have that with Him today if we open our minds and allow Jesus to reveal Himself in our everyday lives. Many on this thread have given excellent illustrations of what this means and how to go about it, through trust and prayer.

Relating to your Lutheran background, I was raised Lutheran (which meant my non Christian parents dropped me off at Sunday School and confirmation class) When I was 5, a Sunday School teacher told us about developing a relationship with Jesus and prayed with us to ask Jesus to come into our hearts. I prayed with her that day and asked Jesus into my heart, and He literally became my best friend. He played with me, laughed with me cried with me and listened to me when no one else would. I could imagine Him sitting next to me and talking to me. As adults, we tend to feel silly about having an “imaginary friend” but Jesus says we must become like little children to enter the kingdom. My “maturity” and pride got in the way of my relationship with my Lord, and I had to re-believe and be re-born to love Him with unabashed childlike faith again and recapture our relationship. This meant learning to pray and know He was listening, to read the Word and know He was talking to me, to sing Praises to Him and know He was smiling. But most of all, it meant sacrificing my shame to talk openly to Him and about Him with others, and to worship and live as though a relationship with Jesus makes all other things in this world meaningless.

As far as the trinity is concerned, I don’t think God is offended that I visualize and speak with Jesus more than Him. I am conscious of the fact that the Father and Spirit hear my prayers as well, and sometimes I address them directly, but for the most part, I imagine Jesus. I think God knows human nature, and it’s easier for us to develop a relationship with a person, rather than “the wind” or “a rock.”

Sorry this is so long!

S.B.G.

To understand and to be understood is bliss.

Tigress
Registered Member

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252

Posted 4/30/2003 6:30 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

Tigress: Tom, Bummer! You're already married!

Tom: Wow! Hey, listen, I live in the Muslim world, and here you can legally marry up to four wives. I have three slots open. Interested?

Tom

Grrrr! Never mind!

Tigress

Tigress

The Angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and He delivers them.
-Psalm 34:7

Tigress
Registered Member

Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252

Posted 4/30/2003 6:39 AM (GMT -6)

Well, everyone has been pretty good at showing me how the Bible portrays God as someone with whom we all can have a close, intimate, personal love relationship with. I guess I was just worried that maybe this concept was new and therefore questionable. Yet, as I said before, I want to be able to have that kind of relationship with Jesus and I do, but I just wanted to be sure that that's the right thing to do - that it's not just a human addition to God's Word in order to make Him fit our needs.

Thank you all for your responses. I appreciate the time and effort you all put into them. The more I questioned about this, the more I realized how illogical it is to see God in any other way than personal. I suppose that was probably The Holy Spirit telling me, "No, Pam, I love you! Don't misunderstand me!" Satan was probably just trying to throw a wrench in the works.

I also feared that by posting these questions that I caused other people to think that God isn't personal. I hope no one believes that, though. It's so obvious that He is! Praise Him for it!

Tigress

The Angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and He delivers them.
-Psalm 34:7

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