When a lot of us hear the word ‘intimacy’, we automatically conclude that it refers to sex and sex related acts. Well, that may not entirely be wrong, however intimacy is much more than sex.
Intimacy when broken down simply means ‘Into -Me -See’. It means being able to see into and understand your spouse beyond the superficial. It involves real and true knowledge of your spouse with whom you are meant to be intimate.
Many of us take intimacy for granted, not knowing that it is one of the keys to unlocking the greatest potentials of our marriages. Intimacy involves knowing your spouse in every sense of what it means to know an individual. What makes them happy, sad, cry, ecstatic etc. It means taking time to be a student of your spouse, just as you would study a course or a language.
It means understanding what feelings, actions or reactions you can ignite when slot A goes into slot B. It means knowing them even better than you know the back of your hands.
It means leaving behind the safety of your world and your ways to intentionally understand who your spouse is. Immersing yourself in their world, sharing their world and relinquishing your natural urge to judge and correct, while embracing without judgment, the person whom you seek to know better.
Does it stop at simply knowing who they are? By all means, it doesn’t. Intimacy also involves taking the knowledge you have gained and translating them into actions that will benefit your marriage.
The relationship between husband and wife is so deep that it can never be truly understood without first understanding the relationship God wants to have with us.
At different times in the Bible, God refers to Himself as ‘husband’ and ‘bridegroom’ in relation to his Chosen people, and refers to His chosen as ‘wife’ and ‘bride’. (Isaiah 54:5-8, 62:1-5, Hosea 2:14-17, 19-20).
It speaks of a strong desire that God has to be intimate with us, He wants to be our everything. He never wants to share us with any other god or idols. He opens His arms constantly, forgiving us constantly regardless of how far away we drift or how many times we go astray.
He gives of Himself over and again. He encourages us to ask Him for whatever we want and He grants it. He defends and protects his own and speaks about how He would give up nations to save us just because of how precious we are to Him.
Imagine mirroring that sort of fierce, protective and all-encompassing love in your marriage.
Except for our relationship with God, there is no closer, or rather, there should be no closer relationship than the relationship between a husband and wife and God knowing this, countless times uses that relationship to mirror the kind of relationship He desires us to have with Him.
That my friend, is the starting point to understanding what true intimacy is. For we can never truly understand how to be intimate with our spouses without first developing intimacy with God.
Just as you cannot give what you do not have and you cannot replicate what you haven’t learnt. True intimacy begins from being intimate with He who created us. Then and only then, can we mirror that intimacy in our marriages.
Regardless, of if you are single or married, it is never too late to commence an intimate walk with God in order to enable you replicate that intimacy with your spouse or the spouse you will one day have.
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