In last Sunday's sermon, we mentioned that there are lots of places we search for intimacy in other than Jesus. Here's a few ways to help identify if you have intimacy issues. So here's 7 ways to recognize intimacy issues:
- Do you always need someone on the hook? Is there always someone you're trying to reel in? Someone you need to show an interest in you? This might not be someone you're dating or interested in dating, but just someone you want to be interested in you.
- When bored or lonely, do you start texting? On the more uneventful nights, do you shoot out some texts to different people of the opposite sex to see who responds first? Do you use texting as an escape from your loneliness?
- Do you look at porn? Porn usually goes deeper than sexual sin. It reveals a heart that desires intimacy without commitment.
- Are you a serial dater? Do you jump from relationship to relationship constantly? Do you always need to have a boyfriend/girlfriend?
- Are you a serial flirter? Are people constantly thinking you're interested in them when you're not, because you flirt constantly? Serial flirting usually reveals a heart that is looking for intimacy from anyone.
- Are you needy for attention? Building off of #5, do your actions and words indicate that you need everyone paying attention to you? Do your Facebook, Twitter, & blog posts cry out for someone to pay attention to you?
- Are you a totally different person around the opposite sex? Are your mood and mannerisms so different around the opposite sex, that your friends hardly recognize you? This is one more way to grope for attention.
Hope for Intimacy Issues The reality is we were all made to be loved, to be pursued, to be chased after. The problem is that looking for that solely in the opposite sex or in dating relationships almost always goes really bad. What we truly need is to have our intimacy issues dealt with by the cross of Jesus. Jesus gives us, in the gospel, what we're really looking for in the numbers 1-7 above. Jesus tells us that in Him we are fully known, and still fully loved, in such a way that relationships or flirting could never provide.
So if you're looking for intimacy somewhere else without first finding it in Jesus, then stop, repent, be overwhelmed with his love for you in the cross, and then look to show that love to someone else. If you reverse that order, it goes really bad.
Are you in college and want to learn more about dating and relationships?
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