Principles to Live By: Spiritual Intimacy, Pt. 1

The key to serving God with passion and effectiveness is having an intimate relationship with Him. God desires us to know Him and spend time with Him.

Principles to Live By: Spiritual Intimacy, Pt. 1

"Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment.'"

(Matthew 22:37-38)

I am grateful to God for the opportunities He continues to give me to teach His Word and reach people with the good news of Jesus Christ. When I was 19 years-old, I surrendered my life to serve Jesus in a wheat field in Corvallis, Oregon. I was preaching in cities in both Oregon and Washington as part of a revival team from the Baptist Student Union (BSU). It was a wonderful nine weeks in the summer of 1985. My wife, Ashley, was also part of a BSU team serving in Fresno, California. Ever since then, almost 40 years ago, I have been either studying for ministry or actively engaged in some type of service to Christ. As an evangelist, I have seen this call manifested as an itinerant evangelist, a professor or evangelism, and currently as a pastoral evangelist and president of an evangelistic association. Yes, evangelism is a big part of my life and calling!

The key to serving the Lord with passion and effectiveness is most definitely having an intimate relationship with Him. God desires us to know Him and spend time with Him even more than He wants us to do works for Him or in His name. I learned this profound lesson when I was a student in seminary. The professor, Dr. Leafblad, was a godly man who challenged all of us in his class to be more intentional in our devotional times with Christ. He called those times "trysts", meetings between two lovers. Jesus is the ultimate lover of our souls, and it is imperative that we spend time with Him in prayer and Bible reading. That class literally changed my life. I went from spending about five minutes a day with God in devotional time to about an hour a day. God has been so very kind to me. He has allowed me to serve Him for almost four decades, and the key has been His power poured out on me as I spend time with Him daily. All glory to God! I would still have a shallow walk with God like I did in my early twenties had the Lord not showed me a much better way.

We are taught early on that as soon as we receive Christ as Savior and Lord of our lives, we need to begin having a daily quiet time with Him. That is sage advice! We will never mature out of having a quiet time. Meeting daily with Jesus is essential to having an intimate walk with Him. Most Christians who drift in their relationship with Jesus stop having these devotional times with the Lord. I have heard it said, "If you feel distant in your relationship with God, guess who moved." The Lord is awesome, and He desires for us to go to Him daily. Proverbs 8:34-35 describes the importance of coming consistently to God for His wisdom:

"Blessed is the man who listens to me,
Watching daily at my gates,
Waiting at the posts of my doors.
For whoever finds me finds life,
And obtains favor from the LORD."

I am calling this week's devotions, "Principles to Live By: Spiritual Intimacy". I got this concept of life principles from Dr. Charles Stanley. He had 30 of these life principles, and each one is profound and worthy of our consideration as a follower of Jesus. More about this tomorrow. Let me encourage you to spend time with Jesus daily and throughout the day in prayer to Him. Take some time every morning to read the Word of God and feed your soul.