Are you ready for great intimacy in your life? You probably think I’m asking if you’re ready for sex, but you’d be wrong. What I’m actually asking is if you are ready to grow close to someone through mutual respect, caring, support, understanding, and increasing levels of acceptance? To put it plainly, are you ready for a real Godly relationship?
Are You Ready for a Godly Relationship?
Intimacy as defined above is something that takes work and practice to get better at. There are certain challenges that make true intimacy between gay men even harder, namely the lack of social acceptance, but fortunately, that problem is declining in most places in the world..
If you’re not sure if you’re read here are some questions you can answer to see if you are ready for a true Godly relationship.
#1 Do You Have Courage?
Specifically, do you have the courage to be vulnerable? The way you begin the process of building intimacy is to reveal personal information about yourself to your potential partner and he to you. Once you guys do this you will begin to have a sense of mutuality.
Over time this can lead to intimate bonding. If you’re not ready to be vulnerable then you may not be ready for a relationship.
#2 Can You Keep a Secret?
Most of us love to hear gossip but dislike those who gossip all the time. If you want a successful relationship then your partner must trust that you won’t reveal the personal information that he’s telling you.
Be mindful of what you are saying when you are speaking about another person. You may not think people don’t notice when you gossip but believe me they do.
Be careful what you say and protect your life. A careless talker destroys himself.
Proverbs 3:13
#3 Can You Show Concern for Their Sensitivities?
I remember I was talking to this girl and we were having a conversation about our past dating experiences. I told her a story about how I had been talking to another girl for almost a month via texts and voice calls. We finally decided to meet and it was decided I would travel to a city closer to her and we would spend the weekend together in the mountains.
Well, I didn’t manage to get there until 12 am and she didn’t get in until around 3 am. When she got in he wanted sex I told her that I was a Christian and couldn’t have sex until marriage (I told her this before) The next morning we ate breakfast and he told me he was going to store and would be back. Long story short I never heard from her again, she just left without even saying anything and it really hurt me.
The girl I was telling this to then quipped, “You got hurt just for that?!”. Suffice it to say it went nowhere between the two of us.
If we want to be in a relationship then we have to show concern for the sensitivities of others even if we don’t fully agree with them.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Ephesians 4:32
#4 Can You Be Lovingly Honest?
We all know that honesty is the best policy but some of us take it too far, myself included, and can be just brutal. In fact, learning how to be honest in an effective way takes practice. Let’s say the guy you are talking to is trying on a pair of butt ugly shoes, is just grinning about it, and he asks you your opinion.
You can say ‘those are the ugliest shoes I’ve ever seen!’ but that won’t win you any points now will it? But you also don’t want to say you love them when you don’t as that would be dishonest. The better way would be to say something like ‘Well, I really like those black ones over there’. Being lovely honest is a great way to build trust.
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
Ephesians 4:15
#5 Can You Act Dependably?
The guy you are talking to wants to see that you respect him. One of the ways to do that is by acting dependably. That means making sure you’re always on time for your dates, for example. I get that stuff happens but when you’re late its best to just apologize and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Please! If he points out that you’re late don’t point out that time he was late or just make excuses. The bottom line is you had an agreement (to meet at a certain time) and you broke that agreement. Even if it’s just a small commitment the best course of action is to just apologize and try not to let it happen again.
Just remember it’s the little things that can cause the biggest problems or lead to the biggest rewards.
But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
1 John 2:5-6
Wrapping it Up
The things I talked about above are the things that need to happen in order to intimacy to occur. Intimacy is the fundamental component of an effective godly relationship. As you can see intimacy takes work (more for some than others), hence the maxim relationships take work.
