The title of this wonderful new book by Ed Shaw reflects his diagnosis of contemporary life. The relationships in which we were made to thrive feature too feebly in our actual lived experience, and we settle for a pale, disconnected, unsatisfying substitute which we try to improve by looking mostly in the wrong places. ‘Intimacy’ is a much more pungent word than ‘relationship’ – sweeter, more desirable, meaning so much more than mere sex, capturing our longing for true connection, ultimately a meeting and melding of souls.
With typical wisdom, Ed picks each of the four key biblical aspects of intimacy, and writes simply as a fellow Christian struggling with the rest of us to grow and enjoy more deeply the life for which he was made, sharing deeply from Scripture and from his experience. In each section he offers realistic practical steps to take to fill the gaps he describes.
As you would expect, Ed starts with our foundational intimacy with God, describing far more than a forensic, technical innocence and exulting in what our innocence allows us to enjoy – God the father rushing out to embrace us prodigals, God the friend devoted to our good, ever-present and powerful, God the fiance anticipating his marriage to us. If you are not quite as excited about the Lord as these pictures invite you to be, this section alone, with its hugely practical suggestions for how to grow in such intimacy, will likely be thirty pages of deepest blessing.
The second intimacy is with ourselves – defined at the outset as “being at ease with ourselves, content as the woman or man God has made us to be, delighting in the body, the personality, the strengths and weaknesses he has made us with”. As Ed suggests, it does seem strange at first to think this way, but it fits with Scripture and with life as we experience it. How can we become more like those stable and mature individuals who are so at ease with who God has made them to be that they can give themselves to us in self-forgetfulness? These chapters will certainly help.
The third section covers intimacy with others, and will enrich any of us in our appreciation of and participation in truer and deeper friendships in many different directions as they reflect, refract and embody God’s love. The fourth is intimacy with creation, and it is a particular joy that Ed unites what is so often divided as we think about being human. Creation offers to feed our souls, speaking to us of the Lord. How much we miss if we never drink in its beauty – stellar, earthy, majestic and microscopic. Ed encourages us with our own creativity, helps us see the point of investing something in it, and provides great ideas as to how to begin.
Each of these aspects of life-giving intimacy is under assault from the world, the flesh and the devil – at least, this is the case in my life. These deficits threaten to grow into starvation. Ed gently shows us not only that each is lovely, and precious for a thriving human being, he gently leads me in ways to find them in God’s truly green pastures.
Dr Andrew Nicholls, a former Pastor, is currently Director of Pastoral Care at Oak Hill College and a Tutor at Biblical Counselling UK. He is a member of Grace Church Highlands.
