The Cost Of Intimacy

 I was reading through Daniel this morning. It's always a great time in Daniel. Many people look at his life in amazement and consider key moments like the lion's den for life lessons. But the lion's den was only the fruit of something more incredible.

I am always amazed at his visions and how he moved about and interacted in these key spiritual moments. His visions/dreams were astounding and much was shown to him. His fame was because he was a dream interpreter, but it was the Lord who explained to him the dreams. But this too is only a fruit of something even more incredible.

There are people who wish they had the same ability to interpret dreams and receive such incredible visions. There are others who wish they could have the strength of faith that Daniel demonstrated. People wish for it but are not willing to pay the price.

"Pay the price" isn't really the best way to say this but there is a cost involved with having the intimacy with Yahweh that Daniel had. The cost is time. Friendship requires an investment of time. Daniel spent a lot of time with Yahweh in prayer and this relationship created sensitivity toward Yahweh.

Daniel's experiences were the fruit of his intimacy and intimacy developed with the time he spent "hanging out" with Yahweh. If we want intimacy, sensitivity, openness with Father it will require one of the greatest sacrifices in this age : time.

This is our great challenge because our society has been very good at developing distractions. There are many "minute robbers" throughout the day. Little things of little value that eat up our time so we have the sense of being busy, convincing ourselves us that we do not have time for Father's priorities. These priorities are simple to understand : love him and love each other. It is hard to love the things we do not value enough to give priority to.

I'm talking to the man in the mirror here. It is so easy to give priority to the distractions without knowing we are doing it. If we kept track of a day in our life and figured out where we were using our time, we may discover that what we value does not match up with what Father values. It may match in our thinking but not in our actions and it requires actions to move into the intimacy we desire.

If we really desire the awareness of the "oneness" that Jesus spoke about, we would start with a simple change of blocking out more time to "hang out" with Dad. Start there and see what it leads to.