One thing is clear to me: the temptation of power is greater when intimacy is a threat. Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead.
People who know God well—mystics, hermits, those who risk everything to find God—always meet a lover, not a dictator. God is never found as an abusive father or a tyrannical mother; God is always a lover greater than we dared hope for. How different from the “account...
Intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them and their response is "you're safe with me," that's intimacy.
Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God being present in the mess of our unfixedness. from Messy Spirituality
We are confronted by God's loving claim upon us--the most intense intimacy a human being can experience. To know this intimacy we have only to let go. Instead of relying on our own initiative, where we are in control, we discover that we are participating in what God...
I have the sense that part of what it means to be human is that, on this side of Jordan, even on my best days I will always feel a little homesick for intimacy with my Creator.
Only one thing really matters at a wedding: two people getting married. How sad it would be for someone to sit in wedding after wedding, critiquing the form, the style, and the appearance of the couples, yet never rejoicing in, never celebrating the mystery of a man...
If believers worship with gladness and passion, anyone not yet a part of the community certainly will be attracted to the One who is the object of their worship. But to focus the worship on evangelistic introduction deprives believers of deeper nurturing toward Church...
Being born-again is a new life, not of perfection but of striving, stretching, and searching—a life of intimacy with God through the Holy Spirit. There must first be an emptying and then refilling. To the extent that we want to know, understand and experience God, we...