True Intimacy
Read Genesis 2:21-23
The relationship challenge for most of us is to really understand what God meant by loving one another and what we believe loving one another means?
What does loving someone mean to you? Think about your husband, wife, children, brother and sister, mother and father, friend and relative. Most of you have some paper, please write down 3 reasons why you should love someone. (4 mins)
In the early days of marriage, a husband and wife learn to be with each other. Changes take place, or more negotiations and many compromises. You possibly learn the most important thing, you no longer belong to yourself! You’re responsible for each other. As promises have been made to be there for each other at all times, it teaches many that love isn’t the kind that would always captivate your heart, you won’t feel on cloud 7, but choosing to love when they least expect it. When it will hurt to love means you’re being modelled to what God demonstrated love to really mean.
God at the very beginning of creation instituted marriage, and it was made to become a model for those that wished to unite in sacred union to one person for life. However, the problem for many is actually appreciating what really loving someone unconditionally means!
God’s aim was to show his creation how he wanted to have a relationship with us and how he wanted us to have a relationship with each other. The first thing God did for us was create Man for the woman and Woman for man. Are we thankful? Hmm..Maybe if God didn’t have her moan all the time, then I would be thankful’ Or God I’d be thankful if I could at least get to sleep at night instead of him snoring’.’God, I wish he would put the toilet seat down and not leave his shoes in the way and at least notice I’ve had a new haircut today..then I would be thankful!’
Well, maybe we’re focusing on our wants, listen the principle for a relationship was that God saw the need ’ Adam was alone, he needed a helper, a friend, a lover, he wanted him to understand how it felt to love, what it meant to love. At this point it was only Adam and God and the love God wanted Adam to have was a love he could influence on someone else. He would not deprive man of such a beautiful sensation, and physically, emotionally, spiritually, God knew how important love could shape us and make us. Being loved, being appreciated, being understood makes us into better people, our worth and esteem, our confidence rises. God understood the effect and impact it would make.
God created Adam in His own image. He saw his need and not his want and made for him someone, not an object, an animal, not 2 woman or another man. But someone that could share his most intimate feelings and emotions, ’a woman’ a person he could understand, how to love and appreciate with his heart.
Read Genesis 2:21-23
What’s amazing is that God doesn’t create Eve separately, he makes her part of Adam and Adam part of Eve. He makes them one. Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. When you’re one with someone you are responsible and accountable in 1. Your body belongs to that person 2. Your marital love is only for that person 3. Your growth and family are within that person = The first part of serving someone is choosing to love someone. Loving someone when they expect it and when they deserve it is easy. When Eve and Adam sinned against God, they were separated from God. I don’t know how angry Adam was with Eve, I mean one day they were in the ’Garden of Eden’ the most beautiful place ever and next they were cast out into a pain stricken and suffering world.
At that point in time true servanthood was demonstrated when God chose to love when they least deserved it and expected it. He sacrificed a animal for their sin and clothed them with the animals skin because they were ashamed from their nakedness. I don’t believe man loved woman like he did the first time he saw her with his almost gulping mouth..Wow, who is this..thanks God!. But true servanthood is choosing to love someone when you are hurt and unappreciated. You choose to serve, like God chose to serve man and woman and it was at the point when his heart had been broken. It was a time he was most hurt, he had to let them go. It was painful when God had to say bye to love, his friendship had been betrayed and his walks and talks and times of true intimacy with Adam and Eve was broken!
The concept of the world is to force love, to buy it, to abuse it, mistreat it. God never forced his love he made them like Him, with a mind to think and a heart to choose. Sometimes we forget that true love is with no cost, you cannot force someone to love you, but you can wait for it patiently if you are giving without conditions. In Song of songs it says do not arouse or awaken love before it so desires, love is stronger than death. In many cases, I’ve heard people say ‘If you do not love me and appreciate me, I’m off! If you don’t do what I say, then you don’t love me. 1 in 5 marriages end in divorce, there is staggering rise in separations.
People don’t understand what love means, it gives unconditionally. God saw them naked, he dressed them even after they hurt Him. Did he expect anything back? No, it was purely out of love..Adam and Eve then chose to love God because they realised what they had done. And for many, mistakes will be made, we can be hurt, we can suffer but one day they will realise. Continue to love for it covers a multitude of sins.
When it hurts the most, choose to cover mistakes with love.
Max Lucado in "A Love Worth Giving to You at Christmas" says If you knew that only a few would care that you came, would you still come? If you knew that those you loved would laugh in your face, would you still care? If you knew that the tongues you made would mock you, the mouths you made would spit at you, the hands you made would crucify you, would you still make them? Christ did.
His greatest service to the world was whilst he was dying he chose to love when you least expected it and deserved it, remember he took all of your sins, meaning it was every time we hurt someone we loved, rejected, despised, ignored, mis treated. Every hurting word and action. Christ chose to love you when you did that, are you able to do the same?
Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it.
Verse 28- So men ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loves his wife loves himself.
Christ gave himself to his bride, totally and unreserved. His bride was not clean, not pure not in white. But it became pure and chaste at the time when Christ chose to love when we least deserved it, we were captivated and changed by his amazing sacrificial love. And it was his humble words as a servant king to say ’I forgive you, because I love you’
Just like it was at the very beginning, Jesus brought us back to where we belonged – back to intimacy with God!
