+DEV+ Pt 9. Soul Care: Quality Time Produces Intimacy

Date: December 25, 2014 9:35 PM

Topic: +DEV+  Pt 9. Soul Care:  Quality Time Produces Intimacy

Pt 9 Soul Care:

QUALITY TIME PRODUCES INTIMACY

. . . .It is quite possible for two people to spend large amounts of time together over the course of years and never really know each other - never have achieved intimacy - because what they spent was not quality time.

One summer evening during our church retreat, an elderly woman came to me for counseling and prayer.  She told me she had been married for fifty-four years to a man she considered a kind husband and good provider, yet she felt that she did not really know him.  Although they had spent a lot of good times together, raising their children, fishing, gardening, and enjoying other mutual hobbies, she said, "He never shares with me what is really going on inside of him.  There's never been a time when we both sat down and shared from the depths of our souls."  She expressed an emptiness, a void in their relationship.  They had not spent enough quality time together to experience a true intimacy.

Married couples often come to me for help in salvaging what remains of their shattered relationship.  We usually discover that if any real communication ever existed, it died years before.  First I begin pushing the partners to be open and honest with each other (and with me).  Then I help them understand how to be open and honest with God.  Once they begin, a floodgate opens and a wonderful discovery of themselves and each other takes place.  This is intimacy in process.  It represents each soul moving toward growth, health, and maturity.

Intimacy is a process, not an event measured by the clock.  We must be honest, open, and vulnerable with each other, but first this must happen with God.  We must not only give God so many minutes, we must open our inner, hidden being to him. . . .

~~~

From the book: 

'Soul Care'

By Peter Lord

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