Opening the Door to Intimacy

i've been enjoying some wonderful sermons by rob bell lately (pastor at mars hill in michigan). i was hooked by the nooma videos that he produced and have been listening to his podcast ever since. well, his series on jonah has me thinking, and in my typical form it has caused me a tangential "hmm" session. thinkings, thinkings, thinkings...

one of my passions is intimacy...the possibility and reality of intimacy with god and the subsequent life that flows out of that to others. i find it so odd...the number of christians who equate "relationship with jesus" to knowing an awful lot about him and how to behave well (and force others to do the same). oh my!!!...such a terrible picture of the true "deep" we were meant to know! so...it's a journey i'm on every day. some days are better than others, but regardless of that, what i intimately understand and experience today is so much more than before...and it will only deepen!!!

well...back to my "hmm"...i've landed on something pertaining to my love for intimacy. i've begun to wonder how possible it is for "americans" to know the best of intimacy with god. my reason??...our need for and our dependence on circumstantial joy. when i think about it...that's not really "joy" at all. true joy isn't reliant on work satisfaction, relational success and on and on and on...but we...well, we need it. we've convinced ourselves that happiness is and should be a result of material possessions and/or performance, appearance and on and on. AND...we're entitled to it often at the expense of others. goodness, it's why we are in debt up to our eyeballs and continue to justify so much stupidity.

that dependence...and temporary satisfaction with lesser existence (i.e. denial)...is in direct competition for the "more" that we are meant to know and experience. an obstacle, i believe...because we become doomed to a life of running after all those things (or complaining when it doesn't shake out). that's a lot of work!!!!...leaving little time to even entertain the notion that there could be something better.

so...i've been thinking about how we break with the need for circumstantial "joy", how we can have our pursuits and passions without being subject to them, how we can know true peace and joy come what may...all in the tornado of more intimacy with the hottie god.

i think this month of no spending is helping me more than i had originally thought...