How Intimacy With God Affects Your Relationships Positively

In our relationships with others, a lot of give and take is required. We make ourselves present and available for others, listening to and supporting them. In healthy relationships, others reciprocate and do the same things for us. Being in healthy relationships with others requires that each individual is healthy; otherwise, the relationship can turn toxic and undermine their well-being.

There is a saying that we can only give to others what we have. There’s a lot of truth in that because we can only share from our store of wisdom, experience, compassion, and understanding. When we lack these things, or when we lack the capacity to express these things, they won’t show up in our relationships. What this means is that we need to find ways to be emotionally and mentally healthy people so that health can flow into our relationships.

One of the key ways to be emotionally and mentally healthy is to be rooted in a deep intimacy with God. When our relationship with God is healthy, it impacts other areas of our lives, including our relationships. Intimacy with God can and does affect your relationships positively, making cultivating that intimacy a priority.

Cultivating Intimacy with God

Is it possible to come to know God as you know a close friend? The writers in the Bible seem to think so, as many individuals throughout scripture, from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others as diverse as Elijah, Samuel, David, Moses, Deborah, Hannah, Mary and her sister Martha, and many others all knew God and related to Him as a friend.

John 17:3 (NIV) says, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” Knowing God the Father, and Jesus, whom God sent, is what it means to have eternal life. Eternal life is abundant life, it’s the life of the age to come or the life of the fullness of God’s coming kingdom, and we can have it here and now. This is the life God desires to give His people.

A Christian from long ago wrote that God created us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. We find our deepest satisfaction, joy, and sense of purpose in God.

That’s why Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30, NIV). It’s only Jesus who can give us rest from our wearying search for meaning in worldly things.

To cultivate intimacy with God means getting to know who He is, and what He desires for our lives. Earlier in that same passage in Matthew, Jesus had said, ^“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27, NIV).

So, if you get to know Jesus, you get to know His Father and His will for your life. One of the main ways to get to know Jesus is to learn His words, see His example, and experience His grace as expressed in the Bible.

How Intimacy with God Affects Your Relationships

How exactly does cultivating intimacy with God through immersing yourself in the Word affect your relationships? One way that it affects you is that you come to understand what God wants for you from your relationships.

The greatest commands are about love; loving God with everything we have and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:34-40). Our relationships are meant to be marked by love. This love is practical, active, concerned for the well-being of the other, and eager to do good to benefit the other (1 John 3:16-18, 1 Corinthians 13; Romans 5:6-8).

God demonstrates for us what love looks like, and that demonstration shapes our understanding of love. That filters into our relationships as we stop looking out for number one and become eager to serve others and be present in ways that benefit them.

God’s love fills us up, it models what true love is, and then empowers us to love others with the love we’ve been given. If we can only give others what we have been given, then drawing from what God has given us by His grace to give to others is necessary for our relationships to flourish.

Additionally, when God finds us and we find our rest in Him, it means that we stop searching for our sense of meaning in other places, including our relationships. God created us as relational beings in His image, and that’s one reason why relationships are so important to our flourishing.

However, when things aren’t in their proper orbit, we can turn to our relationships with others to complete us, to give us meaning, and they simply cannot. It puts enormous pressure on other people when we try and make them our world.

Our relationship with God can save our other relationships because we can approach those relationships from a posture of understanding their limitations as well as our own. For instance, in codependent relationships, one person tries to meet all the needs of the other, but that is impossible. This is why codependent situations are so exhausting and frustrating; because one is taxing the relationship beyond what it was designed to achieve.

Lastly, our intimacy with God can help our relationships by challenging us to move beyond our hurts toward healing. Left to ourselves, we might not be willing to move toward others to heal a rift in a relationship.

Being reminded, however, that God, in Jesus Christ forgave you, and in the same way you ought to forgive others (Ephesians 4:32) can move you to forgive your friend, parent, spouse, or neighbor when they have wronged you. God’s grace empowers us to go beyond ourselves to help our relationships along in those seasons of hardship.

When God finds us, He binds up our wounds, including our relational wounds that affect how we deal with others. He helps us understand what love is, and what it means to consider others as important.

By His Spirit, He curbs our instincts to prioritize ourselves over others in harmful ways and produces fruit such as love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in its place (Galatians 5:22-23). These are the things that healthy, successful relationships are made of.

Finding Help

Your relationship with God might be something you haven’t given much thought to. Or perhaps your life story is one where you have been familiar with God, but something has happened along the way, and it has shaken your faith. These realities can include the loss of a loved one, facing challenges in one’s health, financial and other pressures, the loss of a job, experiencing trauma, or having a near-death experience that brings about existential anxiety.

Whatever the situation you find yourself in, you can grow in your intimacy with God, and with a deepening understanding of how God’s love can transform you and your relationships. This journey isn’t one that you have to understand on your own.

With the help of a spiritual coach, or by walking with a Christian counselor, you can receive the guidance you need to help you navigate your spiritual life and learn how to use resources such as Scripture and prayer to enrich your life and relationships.

If you desire deeper, more meaningful relationships, speak with a spiritual coach or a Christian counselor to create room for your relationships to flourish.