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Intimacy with God
There are infinite examples of God ordering and sustaining every detail of His creation, from the smallest motions He inspires in atoms to the galactic processes by which stars die. We can be amazed how God forms our bodies for life, with hearts that beat without ceasing and our unique DNA coding every cell to identify and regulate so many of our characteristics. But how does God form eyes for our spirit to see Him? How does He soften our heart to feel His touch and know He is with us and in us? How does He sanctify and secure us in His grace, peace and joy?
God provides the most intimate way conceivable to know Him, by giving us the Spirit of His Son to live in us and transform us so that we, too, can live as His child. God’s way to Himself is God, Himself, in Jesus. In Jesus, God reveals His life of grace for us. The purpose of this course is to deepen intimacy with God as He reveals Himself in creation, in the Bible and in Jesus. We will incorporate psychological concepts and practices to help sharpen our apprehension of God’s ways in His constant and essential presence in our life
Classes will focus on living in the intimacy that is between God the Father and Jesus His Son
Class 1: God, our holy Other - Foundational to a relationship with God is knowing He is holy, separate and distinct from us. God reveals Himself as our holy Other, to form us in His image
Class 2: God’s way of faith - God reveals Himself to us through faith. We know God by believing in Him as our Creator and Deliverer. God wants to grow our faith in Him
Class 3: Hearing God - In Jesus’ Parable of the Sower, He taught the good soil hears and accepts God’s words of life (Mark 4:20). We receive from God by the unique hearing of faith (Galatians 3:2). God wants to pierce our ears (Psalm 40:6) so we can hear Him
Class 4: God in secret - God wants to be intimately with us in the secret places of our heart and life. Jesus calls us to commune with God in secret, apart from the masses (Matt 6:1-18)
Class 5: God in suffering - Every life has suffering. God wants us to know Him in our suffering where He softens our heart, purifies our hope and deepens our intimacy with Him
Class 6: God’s will in us - God’s will is in every aspect of our life. In Jesus, our life becomes a YES to God, a living AMEN to Him as He transforms our will into His
Class 7: God’s freedom, Part 1 - God's freedom is found in communion with Him. We will compare and contrast God's freedom with the isolating patterns of addictions
Class 8: God’s freedom, Part 2 - We will explore in greater depth the nature of both formal addictions and the more socially acceptable addictive tendencies we all live with. Our patterns become rigid in our circumstances or more at rest in God's sustaining faithfulness