Today's Journey
Pilgrimage Toward Intimacy
"I said to the LORD, "You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing." Psalm 16:2
Several years ago, as I passed the fifty mark on the calendar
of my life, I discovered a new and distinct desire to go deeper and
pursue God more intentionally than ever before. I had dreamed a lot of
dreams and seen many of them materialize. God, for reasons best known to
Him, had been abundantly good to me. But after all those years of
fast-paced busyness for Him and of conquering frontiers that loomed
large in front of me, I found that beyond and under it all I still had a
yearning in the core of my being that kept drawing my attention back to
God.
I had given God my best years and maximized my energies for Him, but
busyness had not drawn me closer to Him. I discovered that, in some
ways, busyness creates a false and treacherous sense of spirituality
that leads to the assumption that spirituality is a performance and that
intimacy with God is a business arrangement. It creates a flat and dull
sort of Christianity that can begin to turn our hearts cold and even
sour if we’re not careful.
I am awakening to the reality that we do ourselves no favors when we
act and live as though Christianity were a stage on which we perform as
if there were no deep need for an intimate relationship with the One who
is the focus of our activity.
I have begun to sense as well that in the abundance of God’s goodness
to me, I am prone to lose touch with the reality of how much I need
Him. I know I need Him—my problem is that I find it easy to lose touch
with the reality and ramifications of that knowledge. Early on in my
life and ministry, my sense of need was apparent. I earned less than
needed to meet my family’s expenses. Without God’s gracious,
over-and-above financial provision, my family would not have made it. We
needed Him. My insecurities as a minister and public figure also kept
me very much aware of how much I needed Him. Each new church I
shepherded challenged my sense of self-sufficiency.
When we forget that we need Him, our Christianity becomes little more
than a task maintained by responsibilities and requirements. God really
doesn’t need to do much for us. We are pretty well set. While we count
on Him for the big things—redemption, bailing us out if life goes in the
ditch—we miss the pleasure and wonder of needing Him and being in touch
with His presence and power that alone can satisfy, sustain, and secure
us as an ongoing experience of life.
While my life has not been without God in some ways, it has been a
life that has yet to cultivate the kind of adoring dependency that is
required to experience Him most fully and to be most powerfully used of
Him.
It’s not that I haven’t felt His touch. I have—in some very special
ways. In fact, those periodic brushes with His wonderful reality are
part of what drives me to live in the constancy of His touch. And it’s
not that I haven’t loved Him. I do. It’s that I stand ready and wanting
to know Him in a more personal and intimate way. I am hearing the
longing of my soul for more of Him.
I want to go deeper with God. Want to come along?
YOUR JOURNEY…
- Does your heart resonate with a longing for a deeper relationship with God?
- Make a list of the things and/or people you lean on to fulfill and sustain you. Where does God rank on the list? How might the others on the list be preventing you from complete dependence on Him?
- Do you sometimes feel as though “spirituality is a performance and that intimacy with God is a business arrangement”? If so, what led you to that conclusion?
- What can you do today to begin cultivating a deeper dependence on God?
- Psalm 16:2 says, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.” Recite these words aloud to the Lord throughout the day as a reminder of your dependence on Him.
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