Closeness With The Father - Part 2 Series

Our key verse for this series is:

- James 4:8, “Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you.”

- God desires for us to be close to Him, to share intimacy with Him

Last week we talked about intimacy.

- Intimacy isn’t just about sex.

- A close friendship has intimacy, belonging to someone has intimacy

Interesting story about Relationships

If you think your family has problems, consider the marriage mayhem created when 76-year-old Bill Baker of London recently wed Edna Harvey. She happened to be his granddaughter’s husband’s mother. That’s where the confusion began, according to Baker’s granddaughter, Lynn. “My mother-in-law is now my step-grandmother. My grandfather is now my stepfather-in-law. My mom is my sister-in-law and my brother is my nephew. But even crazier is that I’m now married to my uncle and my own children are my cousins.”

There are three things that God Himself has placed within us.

1) Every human desires to have intimacy with another person

2) Every human desires to have intimacy with God

3) You can’t have deep intimacy with another person without having intimacy with God

God simply made us this way.

Let me give you two examples of someone’s desire to have an intimate relationship with God.

1) David wrote in Psalm 63:1, 3-4, 6 & 8 – “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you… Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands… I think of you through the watches of the night…my soul clings to you.

- David desired to have something more than just a distant relationship with God.

- He was burdened to be intimate with Him.

- David said, “Your love is better than life!”

- It sounds like a man who is completely lost in his love for a women. But he is craving a different kind of intimacy, he’s craving closeness with the Father.

2) Mary also had a great desire to have an intimate relationship with God.

- Luke 10:38-42, “38As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed them into her home. 39Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. 40But Martha was worrying over the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, "Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me." 41But the Lord said to her, "My dear Martha, you are so upset over all these details! 42There is really only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it--and I won’t take it away from her.”

- Martha was concerned with all the stuff that didn’t matter and Mary just wanted to have a close to Jesus.

- Even though inside we want to have a close relationship with God, often we make ourselves busy and fill our lives with meaningless stuff.

- We don’t seek after God, we don’t read His word, we don’t pray…we just fill our lives with useless, meaningless junk.

- But God says, “Get rid of all the stuff and focus on Me, desire to be close to Me.”

When we lack the desire to be close with God, it affects our relationship with Him.

Let me ask you a question:

If I go throughout my life without spending quality time with my wife, not trying to develop a close relationship with her, do you think that our relationship will last?

- No. That’s obvious.

- I’m trying to explain to you that it is the same way with God.

- In order for our relationship with God to last and be prosperous, we must spend quality time with Him.

- We need to give him our hearts like Mary. We need to forget about all the stuff in our life: being cool, having the nicest things, going out with the popular kids, etc – and focus on our closeness with the Father.

Not having a close, intimate relationship with God puts us at risk of losing everything in our life.

- There is a story of a man who (within one week) went to a strip club, met a stripper, left his wife, rented an apartment, moved in with the stripper, realized what he had done, kicked out the stripper, consulted his pastor on what he had done and then tried to get back together with his wife.

- Why?

- He had lost intimacy with his wife because he had lost intimacy with God.