NEW – drawn from a response by Jay Ferris to a question from a reader.
I was thinking about that portion of the desire in the heart of all of us for intimacy. It is kept inside like the pressure in a bottle of Champagne. Suddenly we find ourselves in circumstances where we feel safe to share with others at a deep level. That’s like releasing the wire that holds the cork in the bottle. With the release of the cork comes the celebration of intimacy.
A reader asked: “What is the key point that makes the cork pop?”
I would have to say, “the key point” is that these things are spiritually discerned. Only the Grace of God has the ability to disentangle the wire on the cork. This wire is the bondage of how we used to be, even the bondage of systematic religion.
Take Paul, for instance. The “popping of His cork” began with his being knocked down on the way to Damascus. The intimacy that day was with The Lord Himself. Then he had a few conversations with others, probably not so intimate, and then into the Arabian wilderness for “Surpassing” intimacy with The Lord Himself once again. It is clear from Paul’s testimony that the fruit of that intimacy was the untangling of Paul from all that he used to be – all that religious wiring. There was a major change from the religious bondage that used to be Paul. Paul was changed from Christ killer to lover.
There was much that Paul got in Arabia that he could get only from the Lord, and not from men, even the best of them in their then understanding of the “oneness” that Jesus prayed and died for.
As for us, we now have the help of Paul’s maturing in the lord, according to his own words, and those of Luke. So that we already have an intelligible clue that there is more to intimacy than how things are in the old creation. There is a Unity of The Spirit that, beyond His gift of Himself to us, is perhaps the greatest gift we have, as well as our most convincing testimony, not only to our own hearts, but to the hearts of one another, and by the looks of it, to the world.
This is not about being in the same place and time in the flesh, but being in the same place and eternity in the Spirit. :-) This is about a people who are beginning to get to know each other “even as also they are known,” and in this present age.
Love!
For more reading, see “The Champagne of Intimacy.“
Loving Like God 