Intimacy with God is what Jesus died for. So it is vital that we pursue it. Here are 5 tips on how to grow it:

1.We need to exercise faith daily that we have this access

^“Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus,by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain,that is, his body,and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings,having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water”.

Heb 10:19-22

This is true on every occasion. It doesn’t depend on how we feel. It depends on exercising our faith. We may feel tired, distracted or worried about many things but we can still enter God’s presence by faith.

2.We must believe that there is no limit to this intimacy

Paul prays for us “to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine…” Eph 3:19-20

We can build on this love, there is no limit to the extent of the intimacy with God we can experience. God says He will do immeasurably more.The full consummation of this will be in heaven, but the greatness of God’s desire for intimacy with us in this life is so huge as to be effectively limitless.

Jesus declared,“I am the bread of life.Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (Jn 6:35) Jesus wants to satisfy our greatest thirst.

Eph 5:18 says “Be filled with the Spirit” .The Greek is present continuous tense i.e. ‘Go on being filled with the Spirit’. There is always more!!

3.Keep yourselves in God’s love

Jude 21 urges us to “keep yourselves in God’s love” Why is this important? Because it is so easy to distance ourselves from His love and intimacy with Him through disappointment, bitterness or busyness. We need to maintain a constant pursuit of intimacy, whatever the difficulties we face in life.

4.Make a clear separation from worldly desires

Pursuing intimacy with God presumes separation from the world. Not in the sense of separating from real life, but from the sinful lusts and pleasures that draw us away from God.

Num 6 gives a good illustration of this. The Nazirite’ commitment was a double separation: first to God (long hair being the sign of this) and secondly from the world (e.g. had to abstain from alcohol).

Gal 2:20 says that we have been crucified with Christ. So we have crucified the desires for worldly things.

Walking with God in intimacy presumes we have done this. We cannot have both the world and intimacy with God because the world is contrary to God (Jam 4:4-5, 1 Jn 2:15-17)

5.Ask God for more intimacy with Him and make space for it

Firstly, we must patiently ask Him to give us more experience of intimacy with Him.

Secondly, we must back this up with making extra space and time for this to happen, so that God knows we are serious.

The Revivalist Evan Roberts did this as a young man and was rewarded with almost four months of visitations of the Lord every night!