The Urgency Of Intimacy With God — Gary Wiens
Many of us as believers in Jesus who have a growing desire to follow Him in a focused way find ourselves stymied by a fundamental issue. It’s an issue that, if unaddressed, will render us ineffective in prayer and frustrated by the circumstances and events of our lives. This issue is the need for deepened intimacy with God as our Father, and with Jesus as our Bridegroom-King, in the place of personal and corporate prayer.
Each of us has our own story of how Jesus laid hold of our lives, and most of those stories involve some sort of rescue process. Like the Biblical Esther, the refugee girl who became the Queen and ultimately the effective intercessor, we were held captive by the power of the enemy until the King summoned us. We were invited into the process of being prepared for His pleasure, and we found that the initial blessings of the King’s house were far superior to the depressing and defeating atmosphere of the refugee camp. We were rescued and brought out of darkness into the light of Jesus’ presence and power. We received healing for our spiritual and emotional wounds, perhaps for our physical bodies, and our hearts were restored to a measure of wholeness just by being in the King’s house.
This is the point at which many of our stories bog down, and we find ourselves in an increasingly stale position. We’ve been redeemed from death, snatched from the enemy’s fire, yet we have not laid hold of the compelling reality of our destiny. We have unrealized hopes, unfulfilled prophecies, and fading dreams, and we are not sure how to get past the spot we’re in. The faith that seemed so alive when we first encountered Jesus is now dormant and barely smoldering, and we live in the constant temptation to pretend that our lives are vibrant when in fact we know they are not.
How do we find help to get out of these spiritual ruts, to escape the spiritual boredom that opens the door for all sorts of wrong stuff? The answer is in the story of Esther, who used the pressure of a difficult circumstance to drive her to her appointed destiny as an intercessor, as a partner with her King in the salvation of her people.
In Esther’s story, she was quite content to live in the Queen’s quarters, and to have occasional access to the King at His bidding. Her needs were met, her circumstances were blessed, and she was infinitely better off than she had been in the refugee camp. However, she did not comprehend that her destiny was to hold a much higher position of authority. God had a design for her life that was far beyond her expectation, that involved a place of authority and influence that she could not imagine. In addition, she had a secret that would prove to be detrimental in her own self-perception. She was Jewish, a fact that had not been made known to the King, but that would play into her role as the intercessor for her people.
The key component to this story is the introduction of pressure in the person of an enemy of God’s people. A man named Haman emerges with great authority in the King’s house. He is an evil man who hates the Jews because of a heritage of war and animosity between his ancestors and the people of God. Haman uses his place of authority to contrive a strategy against the Jews, his goal being to exterminate them. In this story, Haman is a prophetic picture of the anti-Christ, a real man who is emerging at the end of the age, and who will personify evil beyond any character in history. God’s purpose with Haman and His purpose with the anti-Christ is the same: to drive the King’s Bride into her destiny of authority, and to bring judgment on evil in the world.
As Haman publishes his plan to annihilate the Jews, Esther is forced into the center of the drama. It becomes clear that she is the only one who can turn the King’s heart to change the situation in favor of the Jews. Esther’s problem is that she has this secret identity. She herself is Jewish, and that identity condemns her by law. She has a secret that by law and in her mind condemns her, that separates her from the King. She is being required to expose her secret, to test the King’s heart, and to risk everything she is and has in order to appeal to the King. Under any normal circumstance, she would not do this. However, the circumstances are no longer normal. There is a serious threat, a death sentence that will be carried out unless she comes forward and takes the authority she is meant to have. There is an urgency of intimacy that forces her into a place she would not go without the pressure.
This is what is happening to many of us as followers of Jesus. The pressures of life at the end of the age are increasing. It no longer seems possible to approach our lives in a “business as usual” kind of way. Drastic measures are required, and we are being driven into a level of intimacy and authority that none of us ever imagined. There is bad news and good news to this. The bad news is that the pressures are going to continue to increase until we respond and take our place of intimacy that leads to authority in prayer. The good news is that we will indeed respond and step into the identity and destiny God has prepared for us.
But it always boils down to personal choices that must be made in the crucible of daily life. Will I take the time to make intimate friendship with Jesus the top priority of my life? I mean this not merely in a theoretical sense, but in the real day-to-day choices of how I spend my time, energy, and money. Will I turn away from things that separate me from the King? Will I dress myself in righteousness and truth, and trust the King’s heart to love me in a way greater than His law?
Esther made these choices, and the result for her was that the King’s heart was powerfully moved by love to protect her and to rescue her people. Esther stepped into her rightful place of authority, and the enemy was completely defeated in the process. She became glorious in her maturity, a full partner in the King’s act of redemption. We can make these choices as well, and we must make them. There is an urgency to intimacy in our time that goes beyond our own comfort and drives us into our destiny. God is allowing the pressure to grow until we take our place, and He will not relent until we come to the glorious fulfillment that He designed us for.
Press into the Lord. Make your time with Him the first priority of your life. Disclose yourself fully to Him, for you will never know the ecstasy of unconditional love until you let Him know who you really are. Learn to listen to and obey His voice. Speak back to Him the things He shows you in His Word, and order your life around what He says. You will find that your intimacy with Him will increase, your joy will deepen, and your authority in prayer will expand. It is urgent that we do so, and we’ll be glad that we did.
