Ever find it difficult to communicate your heart to someone you care about? Ever been completely misunderstood by a friend or spouse? Well, of course, at times all of us have found ourselves completely bewildered at another human’s inability to understand us and we can feel equally bewildered as we try to understand them.

Good communication is a necessary component of every significant relationship, but how often do we find ourselves scratching our heads in bewilderment or stomping our feet in frustration because someone else has totally NOT understood us or heard our hearts.

Misunderstanding. Miscommunication. Emotional responses. Sinful responses. Personal history. There is an entire array of reasons that make intimate knowing so difficult. Yet at the core level, every human longs to be truly known. To be understood. We crave the satisfaction of knowing that someone really “gets” us.

While most of us have experienced moments of this deep knowing of our hearts, this level of knowing, this intimacy, requires hard work because each of us bring all of our past and all of what we believe to be true about life, others, God, and ourselves into every exchange.

Yet despite all the frustrations that we may encounter, we were designed for intimate sharing of our hearts and lives with God and with others.

Just as Adam and Eve both had a personal relationship with God before they knew each other, we also are made for intimacy with God as the primary relationship of our lives. This intimacy provides a foundation for us to have intimacy with others.

Psalm 139:1 invites us into the truth that there is One who really does know us. “You understand my thoughts afar off.”

Oh, what a glorious truth! God understands my very thoughts! I don’t have to interpret myself to God. He “gets” me! That is fabulous because I often don’t even “get” myself!

The Psalmist David spoke these words describing his intimate relationship with God. Over and over, David pictures his intimacy with God…”You’ve searched me…; You’ve known me…; You know..; You comprehend…; You are acquainted…; You know…”

And while this may make some of us feel frightened or condemned, it is intended to do quite the opposite. David, who had spent multitudes of hours lying underneath the stars while he shepherded his father’s sheep, was comfortable with God. He knew that his own heart was not perfect, yet beyond that, he knew that God adored him. God loved him. God loved being with him.

David had so experienced God’s love that he had been transformed through the joy and pleasure that came from deep communion with God. How intoxicatingly beautiful it is to know that God completely understands our hearts and pursues our whole hearts because He longs to experience intimacy with us.

David invited God to search his heart because his relationship with God was based on an inner-knowing that God really did love him as he was. Therefore David felt safe inviting God to search him and help him. He was not afraid of His heavenly Father. He trusted God with his thoughts.

Open your heart to God and allow Him to bathe you in His love.  Trust Him with your thoughts. He is kind and loving and is pursuing the best for you. He is offering intimacy to you. Intimacy with Him. And He longs to teach you how to be intimate with those you care about.

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Intimacy is often framed as a physical, sexual relationship we have with another, but many sexual relationships are anything but intimate.  While two physical bodies may be touching, there can be miles between the two hearts. Thoughts, feelings, secret motivations, hidden agendas, unmet needs, the list is endless.

What is intimacy really?

It began at creation. God created a man. The man, Adam, had a relationship with God where God knew Adam and Adam knew God.

Then God created a woman. The woman knew God before she knew Adam. She was in God’s presence before He brought her to Adam and Eve had her own experience of knowing God and Him knowing her.

Then God brought the man and woman together, and they knew each other (Gen. 4:1). The Hebrew word “knew” indicates much more than sexual oneness.  Adam and Eve were ‘naked’ in each other’s presence (Gen. 2:25), and there was no shame in their mutual nakedness.

Intimacy is really a deep knowing of another. It is not confined to marriages or other relationships which involve sex. It is much more than sex.

Intimacy is when we bring all of ourselves to another within the appropriate boundaries of that relationship. A married couple’s intimacy should include sexual intimacy, whereas a parent-child relationship has different boundaries, a friend-friend relationship has yet another set of appropriate boundaries.

Intimacy with my husband means that I am willing to bring all of my heart, mind, and body to him, while yet retaining my uniqueness, my own ‘self’.  Back to the Garden of Eden, God created a man and a woman who were both unique individuals and had their own sense of identity before they knew each other.

Intimacy in marriage was never intended to wipe out our individual selves. Yes, we become one, but just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have three distinct roles and separateness, so it is to be in marriage.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are not in competition and neither are we when we, as two individuals, walk in the full glory and intentions that God created for us individually.

In the Garden, a place where Adam and Eve were intended to have oneness and uniqueness, intimacy was lost when manipulation, blaming, accusation, and invalidation entered the hearts of Adam and Eve and separated them from God and from each other.

Intimacy is hard work. Our flesh resists the true intimacy. While our hearts yearn for intimacy because we were created for it, at the same time, we fear and resist it.

While our stories are all unique, certain things are common to our resistance to intimacy. Just as in the beginning, our own agendas can separate us from each other and hinder our intimacy. Our woundedness can hinder our intimacy.  Yes, spiritual warfare can hinder our intimacy.

Recognizing these hindrances is the first step to moving them. Sometimes we can’t name the hindrances without help. The Holy Spirit helps us by speaking to our hearts and speaking through the Word. He also speaks through others, such as a trusted friend or counselor.

Intimacy is risky. Giving all of our hearts to another gives them the ability to hurt us, and in truth, we will be hurt in all our human relationships to some degree or another because we are all fallen and fail and disappoint one another in many ways.  Yet the rewards of intimacy include being truly known by another human and loved, valued, and accepted because of who we are.  Such knowledge is powerful in its effect.

Intimacy with God involves bringing all of our hearts to him. This includes being willing to be truthful with Him about our anger, disappointment, and other feelings that we have toward Him and others. Read the Psalms. David, a man the Scripture says was ‘after God’s own heart’, expressed the full range of emotions to God. He did not feel unsafe with God. He knew God was not fragile. God was able to experience all of whom David was.

We say and ‘know’ that God knows all about us anyway, but we live and act as if we can fool Him. He doesn’t want us to live this way. There is no value in hiding our hearts from God.  He wants us to dare to bring all of our hearts and souls to Him in truth.

Jesus said we could know the truth and the truth would set us free. Inherent in this teaching is the idea that God operates in truth. Yet we often try to hide our hearts from God, others, and even our own selves, as if in doing so, makes our struggles less real. In fact, just as in the Garden, hiding our struggles gives them more power.

We are not to pursue the same level of intimacy with everyone. It is not healthy or appropriate to give our hearts, minds, and bodies away in wrong ways, but there are healthy ways that we must pursue intimacy.

Intimacy. It’s hard work.

Intimacy. We were created for it. With God and with others.

Will we be hurt if we pursue it? Yes, but to live without it is to live as an empty shell.

Will you honestly evaluate your more important relationships in regards to intimacy? Do you need to work on bringing the truth of who you are into those relationships?

One day, the Scripture says we will know even as we are known. Intimacy. Until then, the hard work of intimacy pays huge dividends as we experience a little heaven on earth.

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As I sat at the table with other Christian women leaders, I was surprised that they were such fire balls! They apparently had lots of anger! I, on the other hand, scored “anger avoidance” as my style of dealing with anger. I didn’t really think that was such a bad thing. I mean, after all, I was a godly woman. I was extremely patient. I almost never spoke sharply to anyone and had lots of grace for others. Well, as it turns out, I had a lot to learn about how to deal with my anger and what healthy anger was.

Just a short time later, my world crashed. I was drawn into a whirlwind of pain, gossip, betrayal, fear, threats, and just plain lack of people skills and Christian love, and my anger style kicked into overdrive!

A couple of months later, I sat with a counselor who gently poked and prodded and tried to help me express my anger. He encouraged me to throw something or raise my voice or whatever might be an appropriate expression of my anger. I could not do it. I was unable. Tears streamed down my face, but I couldn’t say anything.

Months later, my unexpressed anger had turned inward and led me deep into depression and suicidal thoughts. It literally took me more than a year to begin to express my anger and much longer than that to really accept my feelings. It is still somewhat of a challenge for me to learn to recognize anger, act on it, and let it go in healthy appropriate ways.

I have since begun to understand that I had adopted this anger style from my earliest days. There are many anger styles or ways that people handle their anger, from hidden styles to explosive styles to chronic styles.

My style, anger avoidance, represents people who are partly or mostly unaware/unaccepting of their anger. Explosive styles represent those who periodically demonstrate their anger and aggression through dramatic outbursts, and chronic styles are used by people who have developed long-term anger patterns that keep them angry, bitter, and resentful (Letting Go of Anger by Ronald Potter-Efron).

I have learned that my anger is a signal that is worth listening. Many women have learned, just as I had, to silence their anger, deny it, or express it in ways that leaves them helpless and powerless. I now know that the things we bury alive inside us, whether anger, resentment, fear, or any or an entire range of emotions, never die but are still actively affecting how we act, think, feel, and react to life.

What does God think about our anger?

Here are some thoughts for your consideration (some of which comes from Pierre Wolff’s thoughts):

1.      1. God is a God of communication. He speaks. He invites us to speak with Him.

2.      2. Without communication, we cannot have a real relationship with anyone.

3.      3. Indifference and neutrality kill communication and relationship and makes us feel that we do not exist and that people do not care.

4.      4. Anger is a form of communication.

5.      5. If we don’t deal properly with our anger, it will consume us- not the person with whom we are angry.

6.      6. Undealt with anger, hatred, bitterness, and unforgiveness make it impossible for us to see clearly      (Matthew 7).

7.       7. It can be helpful to appropriately express anger to the one who caused it. Doing so can bring healing. At times, this is inappropriate or impossible. God is able to heal our hearts. The more intimate the relationship, the greater the need/possibility for a real conversation about the hurt.

8.      8. To express strong negative feelings (appropriately) to another person, demonstrates our faith that the relationship can endure the truth of who I am and how I truly feel because my feelings of hurt (the root of most anger) are there because I care about the person who hurt me.

9.      9. We must be led by God for the timing, the place, the tone of our voice, and the intelligent expression of our heart as we express our anger.  It is usually a good idea to pray a while before we react.

10.  10, An honest encounter, even a fiery one, with the person we are angry with is more healing than talking to a hundred people who don’t really understand and who can’t totally put themselves into our place.

11.   11.God invites us into this kind of honest relationship with Him. His Word gives us the examples of Job, David, and Jesus himself, who express honest questions, complaints, and negative emotions to God.  Pierre Wolff, in his little book May I Hate God?  (written for those in pain, struck by tragedy, etc.), says that “The main question in my prayer life is not whether I am right or wrong, whether my words are good or bad. It is simply whether I love my Father enough to tell him everything in my heart, whether I believe in the immensity of a love which can understand and welcome any expression of my sorrow.”

Honest anger can deepen your spiritual life. It can be a key to intimacy and freedom with God and others.

How honest are you with yourself? With your spouse? Your friends? God? 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on your anger style and any questions you might have!

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