Known by God

“What if we begin to center all conversation about love and sexuality on Agape as the wellspring and the beingness of all relational authenticity and respect? What if we reject Eros as false, as the objectification of the other for the erotic encounter in which the self is served? What if Agape is the ground of all authentic face-to-face intimacy, sexual and otherwise, and is a celebration of the flow of other-centered, self-giving love? Then knowing and being known make sense, and the depths of authentic relationship become essential to sexual expression.”   

By William Paul Young in Lies We Believe About God.

I totally agree with the author, William Young that as sin-prong humans we tend to think that God focuses more on decorum rather than our ability to establish an intimate relationship with Him. We think that God desires performance as an appearance of righteousness instead of reflecting on our innate ability to love. Even the Savior emphasized the ability to truly love when questioned about which commandment is the greatest by stating, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” (Matthew 22:37 KJV) What if we place our center of gravity on loving God instead of selfish itinerary that takes us further and further from our true divine purpose? Intimacy will drive us to spend more than a few hours of worship on Sunday and an hour or two on Wednesday night. Intimacy will move us toward an understanding of God’s existence in our current lives and shift us to comprehend our relationship with Him from an eternal realm perspective. For instance, William Young in his writing (Lies We Believe About God) described God as PERICHORESIS which means mutual interpenetration without loss of any individual person. Therefore, PERICHORESIS represents the nature of God as Three Persons in complete Oneness. Likewise, as beings created in the image of this oneness, we, too, can enable our ability of completeness by surrendering to intimacy with our Creator, simultaneously retaining our individuality or uniqueness.  Subsequently, this surrendering allows us to remain who we are without rendering to self-centeredness, leading to selfish intent. In other words, we can forfeit the “me, myself, and I” syndrome, and forsake the need to acquire everything with an unwillingness to share. Yet, intimacy with God will give us the ability to share the same intimacy with others. Then once we reach this state of completeness we will grasp the true meaning of "Then shall I know even as also I am known." (I Corinthians 13:12)

by Brina Baker