Kingdom Disciples With Tony EvansSample

A Deep Intimacy

To know someone intimately encompasses much more than just knowing about the person. To truly know someone intimately involves engagement, interaction, and understanding that go above and beyond cognitive realities. 

Have you ever seen a married couple who has been married for four or five decades? Each one can finish the other’s sentence. Or consider two dancers. They spend hours, days, weeks, and months practicing together to know each other’s moves and moods just by being close to them. They not only anticipate the next step but also know how to bring out the best in their dancing partner.

The best linebackers in the NFL are those who’ve worked so closely together that they can predict one another’s moves simply through a shift in weight or a change in the placement of a hand. With the crowd roaring and tensions high, these linemen don’t have time to talk to the others to find out what they’re thinking. 

In John 15 when Jesus teaches us to intimately abide in Him as His disciples, He’s imploring us to enter an experiential connection with Him. As His disciples, we’re to know Jesus so deeply, fully, continually, and intentionally that our every move aligns with His in an unplanned cadence of connection. That’s what it means to know Christ. It’s more than simply talking with Him or about Him. That’s a start. But intimate fellowship is much deeper than that. And only intimate fellowship leads to a productive, fruit-bearing life as a disciple.

For example, no wife can get pregnant by having a discussion of sex around the breakfast table with her husband. Yes, she can talk about it with her husband every single day, and he can even make some pretty powerful points. In fact, both of them can talk about it for years. The length of time they talk makes no difference at all because no wife is ever going to get pregnant from a discussion of the subject or from her knowledge of sex. There has to be an accompanying level of intimacy, an experiential knowing, in order to bear new life.

Similarly, abiding in Christ calls us to a depth of intimacy as His disciples that Jesus illustrated through a branch and a vine. This relational connection with Christ and the fruit it produces are the cornerstones of being a kingdom disciples.