Comments on: Four Circles Of Intimacy With God https://intimatekingdom.com A conversational study through the Song of Songs Wed, 21 Apr 2021 17:04:56 +0000 hourly 1 By: Shelby https://intimatekingdom.com/four-circles/#comment-1841 Mon, 08 Feb 2021 11:11:08 +0000 http://intimatekingdom.com/?page_id=3648#comment-1841 Pamela this is beautifully said and taking into account that we have free will, it can be explained like this: you gave me a beautifully wrapped gift, such attention to detail. I received it with joy! And everyday I admire how lovingly it’s wrapping is. The hand-made paper, the dainty bow. Yet I never open it. The gift is mine and I admire what I see on the outside, yet the riches of the inside are oblivious to me.
To me, the relationship with God, Creator, Jesus, however the One that is All is called by, there is much benefit when one goes within (I am in you and you are in me) to nurture that relationship. To become familiar and to know personally that the depth, the width and the height of the Love of God is personal as well as collective. Is expansive not contracting. The Love of God is not one-sided. It’s an inner mingling, and is offered to every single one of us because of who God is, not necessarily because of who we are, but Whose we are. We are one, like a beautiful tapestry, each connected not only to Creator of All, but also to each other. And what we do with that connectedness is an individual choice.
I no longer quote the Bible book or verse, yet I am very familiar that the Creator of All doesn’t just HAVE Love, but IS Love. We were created in His image, therefore, we too ARE love. Even if we haven’t tapped into that gift fully yet, doesn’t make it any less true. Just like I am the receiver of your gift in the story above, yet I haven’t benefitted fully of what the entire gift has inside. There is something I must do to enjoy fully the gift I have been given.
I’m very thankful for grace and for people like you, Pamela. You’ve nudged me forward on my path more than once and i love you very, very much!

]]> By: Markus https://intimatekingdom.com/four-circles/#comment-1837 Sun, 07 Feb 2021 08:52:47 +0000 http://intimatekingdom.com/?page_id=3648#comment-1837 The sentence:
“We are at this moment as close to God as we really choose to be”
Is too simplistic because it places the focus on our choices or actions. It leaves out the element of God’s action.
Jesus said:
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. – Jo. 6:44
This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them. – Jo. 6:65
To make it clear, the other way round, Jesus said (and I never heard a sermon about this one!):
The secret of God’s kingdom has been given to you. But to outsiders everything is told by using stories.
12 In that way, “ ‘They will see but never know what they are seeing. They will hear but never understand. Otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’ ” Mark 4:11+12
Yep, you read that right! Jesus spoke in parables so that the Jews wouldn’t understand, return to God and be forgiven! If God(Jesus) didn’t want them to return to Him what chance did they have to understand the secrets of the kingdom?
Likewise John the Baptist said: A person can receive only what God gives him from heaven. – Jo. 3:27

… and the same goes for intimacy! To say it is our choice how intimate we are with God is plain wrong… as it is wrong to say that our heart’s desire isn’t involved at all.
The balanced way:
To whom God desires to have closer intimacy with Him, to him or her He plants a deep desire for it deep down in the very core of the heart. Yes, even the desire for Him isn’t our product but a gift from God:
For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. – Phil. 2:13
And in Romans 9:15-16 Paul confirms it again:
For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
16 So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.

To say that it’s our choice will only send us on a “bucket at the end of the rainbow chase” resulting in frustrations or bubbles of vain illusions in the end.
God (Jesus) is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebr. 12:2) and all we’ll ever accomplish isn’t our product but “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” – Eph. 2:10

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