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It's not about us.
It's all about Him.

Richness in Christ

Words That Burn in My Heart

Intimacy and Richness

Sometimes, as Jesus and I journey together, he just starts sharing. Such as, ...

"Chuck, journeying in richness with me requires intimacy, and my Word is a record of my yearning for my people to resume intimate relationship with me.

"I create my people for intimacy. I place my whole character and being within them, and I have promised that when their hearts turn cold and stony I will cast out their hearts of sin and put new and loving hearts within them. I will give them hearts of flesh and put my Spirit within them so that intimacy may continue forever.

"My desire for intimacy is why I stand at the door of their hearts and knock and if they hear and open I will come in and we will have joyful fellowship together.

"My desire for intimacy with you is why I wash not just your feet, but your whole being. I am the vine dresser pruning the branches-I am never nearer than when I am leaning over and pruning in loving, careful, intimate examination making sure that the dead is cut way and that the fruitful is nurtured to even greater richness and abundance.

"My desire for rich intimacy with you is why I call you to oneness with me-I in you and you in me. The Father calls us both to intimacy-so that He and I together can come in and make ourselves known to you.

"My desire to live in intimacy with you is why I went to the cross for you. People do not die for people they are not deeply intimate with or with whom they do not desire a great intimacy. Greater love has no one than that he lay down his life for another. The cross is the only way I could express to you the greatest and most intimate love there is.

"Intimacy is the only way that I can live in you and you in me; therefore, it is the only way that the richness of the kingdom of heaven can become real within you.

"Intimacy is why the veil in the temple was rent in half at my crucifixion-so that you could have unhindered access to me and live in richness with me.

"Marriage between a man and a woman is a visible expression of intimacy with me. Marriage is why I created man and woman for each other. The way to eternal life is to know the Father in the same way a man and woman "know" each other when they give themselves fully and completely to each other as they are joined together physically, spiritually and emotionally. "Knowing" requires intimacy.

Only in intimacy with Me...
...do I reveal myself to you.
...can you bear fruit.
...do you begin to experience a desire to please. The desire to please leads to a desire for obedience, and obedience leads to joy.
...can you adequately discern between darkness and light.
...do you begin to desire to come out of the world.
...can you be made pure and holy and therefore led into all truth.
... will you even begin to know the desire to lay down your life for another.
...can I love you as the Father loves me, and can you truly love each other. He who does not know the Father does not know love. Again, "knowing" requires intimacy.
...is oneness and completeness possible.
...can we give another our glory.
...can I keep on revealing myself to you and keep on loving you.

Intimacy is the difference between truly knowing and just being acquainted, between knowing another and using another.

Chuck, only as we are intimate...
...can we rest in each other and experience moments of quiet and peaceful awe with the other.
...can we refresh each other, drink of the overflow of each other's well, or know the pain in each other's heart.
...can we recognize and experience the highest and the holiest in the other.
...does the deep of my heart touch the deep of your heart.
...is there a peace that passes understanding, a knowing that reaches beyond the visible, and a future that stretches from this moment into eternity.
...does the ultimate truly become the ultimate.

Only those who are intimate with me...
...can enter into the Way, the Truth, the Life
...can see the Father when standing in the presence of the Son.
...will finish well.
...will live in richness with me.

"Intimacy with me is my gift to you. I bought and paid for this gift on the cross, I testified to the power of this gift at the open tomb. It's a gift. From me to you. Do you accept, or reject? Enter in, or stand apart?

"The gift is mine. The choice is yours.

"Richness is at stake."