Intimacy is Written in Tears

We talk about intimacy a lot around Living Waters… in fact, intimacy with Christ is at the foundation of everything we teach and the overflow of that intimacy is where we believe our authority, identity, and the tangible expressions of all we have in Christ finds its source. Put in another way, intimacy is the “headwaters” of whatever life flows from Living Waters. 

When we talk about intimacy with Christ, no doubt many images or ideas may come to mind about how we cultivate that intimacy. For many of us, our “quiet time” with the Lord, sitting in a comfortable spot, coffee and bible at the ready, and the wee hours of the morning come to mind. But this last Sunday, I was profoundly reminded where I have discovered the greatest treasures of intimacy with Christ – in the wrestling. 

If you were there at service or watched on the stream, you may remember the moment…

I don’t think I will ever forget it. Pastor Steve Mickle of Westside Church in Bend, our guest speaker for the morning, invited me up on stage to help demonstrate an illustration.  Before it happened at first service I had no idea what I was going to help demonstrate, but as we stood there, one arm on his shoulder, one grasping his elbow, and forehead to forehead, the intimacy of the moment was jarring… but almost immediately the truth of what Steve was communicating flooded my heart and mind as the Lord brought memory after memory of intimate moments of struggle, desperation, and pain came flooding back. Some of these moments I have shared public from the stage, or in my book, but some are so tender and personal that they will probably always only remain between me and my Savior. 

A.W. Tozer wrote, “The Bible was written in tears, and to tears it yields its greatest treasures.” 

I have found those words, and the invitation they represent to be absolutely true. Intimacy with Jesus can be found in quiet, serene, coffee-laden moments drinking in the scriptures, for sure. But there is an intimacy that is profoundly deep that you only learn, arms locked, foreheads pressed together, in the wrestling. 

My prayer today is that we will know the beauty and the breakthrough possible with this invitation, and will willingly enter in. And as Steve whispered to us this Sunday, as one who knows this to be true, there are treasures there that only those who dare to go ever discover.