RADICAL INTIMACY

Radical Intimacy

The Illusion of Distance
By default, many of us have this view of God where we're distinct. We're down here on earth. We're trying to pray up to God. It's a bit of a one-way prayer. We're shouting. We're hoping he's going to catch it. We're hoping he's listening. He's up there somewhere. He's dealing with other stuff and we're down here dealing with our stuff. But actually, that's not reality. It's just a perception that we have. And I actually think it's probably wrong teaching that many of us have had growing up.
So prayer becomes a struggle to bridge a massive gap. Separation though feels safe. It feels orthodox and it feels reverent. It's a reverent thing to stay separate. But the Bible teaches something different. It teaches indwelling is the reality. It's a mutual indwelling too. So existence cannot happen outside of God. Estrangement is real, but it is a rupture in relationship, not an absolute metaphysical absence. So, while we might feel God is distant from time to time, we'll talk about that. In reality, he's not distant.
Paul at Mars Hill
Paul went to Athens and he preached on Mars Hill and that's what it looks like today. But it didn't always look like that. This is an architect's impression. So, you can see the Acropolis up top and you can see Mars Hill. That's that platform down the bottom. It wasn't like a marketplace or place where people gathered, just ordinary people. This is where the courts were and the council and all the philosophers. And this is where they had the big debates about reality and the spiritual world and whatever deity they might worship. This is where Paul preached. And I might just get Zara to come up here and read what Paul actually said. So she's going to read out of Acts 17:16–28.
Reading of Acts 17:16–28
While Paul was waiting for Silas and Timothy in Athens, he was deeply troubled by the idols he saw everywhere in the city. He went to the synagogue to reason with the Jews and the God-fearing Gentiles, and he spoke daily in the public square to all those who happened to be there. He also had a debate with some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. When he told them about Jesus and his resurrection, they said, "What's this babbler trying to say with these strange ideas he's picked up?" The others said, "He seems to be preaching about some foreign gods."
Then they took him to the high council of the city on Mars Hill. "Come and tell us about this new teaching," they said. "You are saying some rather strange things and we want to know what it's all about." It should be explained that all the Athenians as well as the foreigners in Athens seemed to be spending all their time discussing the latest ideas.
So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: "Men of Athens, I noticed that you are very religious in every way. For as I was walking along, I saw many of your shrines, and one of your altars had this inscription on it: 'To an unknown god.' This God whom you worship without knowing is the one I'm telling you about.
He is the God who made the world and everything in it. He is the Lord of heaven and earth. He doesn't need man-made temples and human hands can't serve his needs, for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything. He satisfies every need. From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall and determined their boundaries.
His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way towards him and find him. Though he is not far from any one of us, for in him we live and move and exist. As some of your poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'"
God as the Environment of Existence
Quite an incredible statement. And if you look at Paul, who had the ministry to preach to the Gentiles, whenever he spoke to the Gentiles, this is probably the clearest preaching we hear from Paul or from anyone in the New Testament, preaching the gospel to the Gentiles. He ends with, "We are all his offspring." He's talking to people who never heard about God. Certainly not the God we worship. They worshipped all these other gods. We're all his offspring. Incredible statement.
When Paul speaks to the philosophers in Athens, he doesn't describe a god who occasionally visits from afar. He describes a God who is the very environment in which humanity exists. Life never exists outside of God. For in him we live and move and have our being, our very existence. We don't exist without God. We are in him and he holds us all together. This is quite different from the view that God's up there, we're down here, and we're completely separate.
And in fact, it's not just Paul who talked about this. This is a consistent thread throughout scripture. And it follows in several dimensions. There's the cosmic dimension, the entire universe. There's the sustaining dimension, where all things are being sustained in him. And there's the personal dimension. And this is the one that we want to actually realise and be awakened into.
Scriptural Dimensions of Divine Presence
In the cosmic dimension, quoting Jeremiah, God said to Jeremiah: "Am I a God at hand, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord." He fills heaven and earth. He's everywhere. We can't escape.
If we look at the personal dimension there, as David is speaking: "I can never escape from your spirit. I can never get away from your presence. If I go up to heaven, you are there. If I go down to the grave, you are there." So, it doesn't matter where we are, what state we're in, whether we're here on earth, whether we've passed away, God is always there. And we don't cease to exist when we pass away.
And in fact, in Revelation 14, Jesus is even present at the lake of fire. So, we think, "Oh, lake of fire. No, they've all been rejected by God. They're absent from God." It's in the presence of the Lamb and his angels. That's what's happening at the lake of fire. So, I'll let Paul talk about that more when he gets there in Revelation.
And then sustaining: Paul writes in Colossians 1:15–17, "Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation. For through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can't see, such as thrones, kingdoms, rulers, and authorities of the unseen world. Everything was created through him and for him. He exists before anything else, and he holds all creation together."
So Paul brings us directly to Jesus Christ. Christ is the divine glue actively sustaining every atomic particle, every subatomic particle, every human heartbeat...everything. There is not this idea that we're separate and individual.
Distinction Versus Separation
I just wanted to make some crucial distinctions here before I go any further, because there are some confusing ideas out there. It centres around the difference between distinction and separation. Where is God?
There is a New Age teaching which says the creator and creation are identical. There's no distinction. So the creation is God and God is the creation and they're all the same. That's obviously false teaching because there's no distinction there.
If we look in the middle, the classical teaching is that there's a separation between God and us, and we have to figure out: are we good enough to get to God? Will he be interested in me?
And then on the right-hand side, the whole of creation exists within a distinctly greater God. We are distinct. Creation is distinct. It isn't God, but it's held together by God and exists within God.
I just want to really make sure there's a contrast that's understood here, because biblical union does not inflate the self. It requires the death of the false self to live in harmony with the truth. Remember from last time I said there is no resurrection without crucifixion. The death to that false self is required.
New Age spirituality ignores sin and avoids accountability, whereas God exposes sin as a rupture in the shared life of God. It skips the cross and dismisses absolute truth in the New Age view. But the biblical view is centred entirely on Christ, the cross, the resurrection, and surrender from us. There's a stark difference. On the surface, they might seem similar, but they are actually opposites.
Analogies of Indwelling and Distinction
How can we be fully in God yet distinct from him? Here are some analogies to help understand this a bit further.
The mind and the thought: a thought exists solely within the mind and depends on it completely. But the mind is far greater than a single thought. Without the mind, the thought doesn't exist at all. I think no analogy is perfect, but that's not a bad one.
The ocean and the wave: the wave is completely distinct in form, but has no independent life or substance apart from the ocean that sustains it. You can't have a wave without an ocean. You can't have us without God.
The author and the story: characters exist entirely within the author's imagination and sustaining presence. Yet, the author is not trapped in the book. The author isn't the book, he's not the characters, and the characters aren't the author. This helps us keep things in context and distinct. Even though we're not separated, we are distinct.
The Revelation of Participation
It goes even further because we often don't just view God as separate; we view ourselves as isolated individuals. But in Ephesians chapter 4, it didn't say that. The New Testament insists that shared human life is more fundamental than our divisions, and it's within Christ.
Modern Western teaching is very individualistic...what your truth is, is your truth, and it is the truth for you, but it's not the truth for me, and all this sort of stuff. What scripture teaches is that the body is one. The body within Christ is one and has many members. We are one body in Christ and individual members of one another. Paul writes this to the various churches in Rome and Corinth, and it's a theme throughout scripture. Even Jesus talked about it, and I'm calling this the revelation of participation.
If we look at Jesus' public ministry, he announced the arrival of the kingdom, and in Mark 1:15 he says, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is near." Repent doesn't mean think about all the sins you did, say you're sorry, and promise not to do them again. Repent is turn towards God. We're turning away from the old man, turning to the new man. This is metanoia, turning towards God.
Jesus stopped there in his public ministry. Until people repented, they couldn't move on to the next step, because the next step is the private revelation that Jesus gave to his disciples, which required repentance. Unless you've turned to God, you can't actually enter the next step, which is revealing that the life inside this kingdom is defined by mutual indwelling and shared divine life. If he tried to preach that to people who weren't even in the mindset of turning towards God, it just wouldn't make any sense to them. 
Woven into the Trinitarian Life 
In John 17, Jesus didn't simply pray for moral harmony or a corporate framework that's out of the flesh. He asked for humanity to be woven directly into the Trinitarian life. He prays that they may all be one...all of us being one. "Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us." That's pretty profound.
John 14 says, "On that day"...and that's the day of Pentecost Jesus is talking about..."you will realise that I am in the Father, and you are in me, and I am in you." There's a mutual indwelling: us in him and him in us. I would encourage you to go and read from John 14 through to John 17, because there's a whole slab of scripture there that is just mind-blowing.
I've cheekily put us inside this diagram that's often used to represent the Trinity, because I'm not saying we are God at all. I'm saying we can participate in being in him, because Paul writes to the Corinthian church and says he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. There's this inclusive language that we're just not used to. 
Then this brings us full circle back to John 3:16. What is the gospel? That you can have eternal life. Jesus tells us what it is: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. That is eternal life. This is eternal life: full communion with God, being with God and God being with us. It's not just going to heaven one day and staying there forever. 
The Origin of Felt Distance
If we live in God, why do we feel so distant? We've all felt that God is distant. Scripture speaks of alienation and outer darkness. But sin is not relocating completely outside of God's existence. It's a rupture in relationship and perception. It's living out of the illusion of perception.
The old self comes into play. We become self-dependent. We view ourselves as independent from God. We decide what we want to do and set ourselves up as a little god in charge of ourselves. We lack that communion with God, and we're blinded by it.
In Ephesians 4:17–25, Paul captures this: "You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practise every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbour, for we are members of one another."
It's very inclusive language. It's a matter of waking up so we don't feel that alienation. We have to gain those spiritual eyes by taking our focus off ourselves and putting it onto him.
The Paradigm Shift
There is a paradigm shift required here.
In prayer, instead of calling up to the sky to reach a distant god, we need to tune into the divine presence that's already holding us together.
In discipleship, instead of trying hard to obey the rules of a far-off boss...the Ten Commandments...it is about waking up to the reality of the vine and allowing his life to flow through you. That is why you don't want to murder somebody: because you aren't harbouring anger toward people.
From the perspective of love, instead of maintaining a moral to-do list..."be nice to others because that's what I need to do; I really don't like those people, but I have to be nice to them"...it is living in harmony with our shared biological and spiritual reality. We are members of one body, and Christ is all and in all.
Prayer is no longer an attempt to project your voice across the empty cosmic void. It is the practice of sinking into the sustaining presence that is already holding you together...moving from reaching to abiding. 
Spiritual growth is not a frantic effort to close a gap, but a peaceful yielding to the faith of Christ already at work within you. How do we allow the faith of Christ to flow? Through our faith...we turn that valve on the tap to allow the faith of Christ to flow in us. 
From isolation to communion, we cease viewing faith as a purely private endeavour and begin viewing every human interaction as an event happening within the shared life of God. This is another dimension of how we participate in presence prayer.
The Present Kingdom
The good news is already here. The gospel isn't a roadmap for how to reach a distant, reluctant God. It is an invitation to participate in life itself through Christ. The illusion of separation is shattered, and we are invited to wake up to the presence that has held us all along.
Where is the kingdom of God? It is within us. The kingdom of God is not up there somewhere. Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world." The kingdom is within us through the Holy Spirit. That is the reality we have been given.
I'll now play a five minute video which brings all this together…

A Deeper Perspective on Union and Panentheism
Most of us grew up with a very specific geographic assumption about how the universe works: God is up there completely outside of the world, and we are down here separated by a massive, unbridgeable gap. This worldview is often called classical theism. It paints a picture of a creator who is completely separate from his creation, looking down on reality from a safe distance.
That perceived distance takes a real emotional toll. When God feels far away, prayer starts to feel like trying to place a long-distance phone call into the sky, hoping the signal somehow reaches him. It also turns the entire concept of salvation into an escape plan. The ultimate goal becomes abandoning a doomed earth so we can cross that cosmic divide and reach a distant heaven. Under this framework, the spiritual life devolves into a relentless, exhausting exercise. We spend our days striving, reaching, and trying to close the gap between ourselves and a completely unreachable entity.
Because we are so used to that distance, introducing words like oneness, indwelling, or union makes a lot of Christians immediately uncomfortable. It is easy to see why. For many, that language sounds uncomfortably close to New Age mysticism or eco-spirituality. It triggers a fear that we are simply glorifying the self. The deeper theological concern is that embracing oneness compromises God's holiness. It feels as if we are blurring the line between the creator and the creation, pulling God down to our level.
What if our extreme caution has a massive blind spot? What if avoiding these mystical-sounding words means we are accidentally rejecting the language of the Bible itself? In our desperate attempt to protect a safe, distant orthodoxy, we might be ignoring what the scriptures literally say about the nature of our reality.
The Biblical Case Against Separation
The moment you look closely at the text, the idea of a distant god starts to crack. Take Paul's speech to the philosophers in Athens in Acts 17. Paul uses incredibly specific, radical language. He tells them that God is not far from any of us, stating plainly that in him we live and move and have our being. He doubles down on this in Ephesians 4, describing one God who is above all and through all and in all. God transcends creation yet is intimately present inside every part of it.
Jesus takes this even further in John 17. The night before his crucifixion, he prays for his followers, asking explicitly that they may all be one just as he and the Father are one. The Bible explicitly portrays a reality where humanity exists inside God's presence. These are not isolated metaphors; they completely dismantle the concept of a detached "man upstairs."
This dynamic illustrates panentheism: the universe existing entirely within God's sustaining presence. Contrast that with pantheism, which collapses the distinction, claiming creator and creation are identical. To grasp panentheism, think of characters existing entirely within an author's imagination while the author remains infinitely greater and distinct from the narrative. This framework balances the biblical text. It preserves God's absolute holiness and distinction without requiring him to be physically distant from the reality we live in.
The Illusion of Disconnection
This raises a glaring question: if we exist entirely inside of God, why do we experience such profound feelings of isolation, darkness, and sin? The answer lies in the difference between distinction and separation. We are distinct beings, but never truly separated from the one holding us together.
Sin isn't physical separation from God. It is a rupture in our relationship, a distortion in our own perception, a life turned away from the truth. Sin is the tragic illusion of living as if we are completely disconnected from the very source that is currently sustaining our existence.
Recognising this ongoing presence dictates how we must interpret Jesus' public command to repent. The original Greek word he used is metanoia. It requires a total shift in perception and a completely new way of seeing reality, rather than a simple moral clean-up.
Jesus explained this intimately to his disciples when he called himself the vine and us the branches. A branch lacks independent life. Its entire existence relies on a shared, participatory connection with the vine. The gospel is not an evacuation plan to a distant heaven. It is a radical invitation to wake up to the divine reality that is already surrounding us here and now.
This awakened state extends directly to how we view each other. If every single human being exists within the exact same sustaining presence, then ultimate isolation is a physical and spiritual myth. We are, as Paul wrote, members of one another. This gives entirely new weight to the command to love your neighbour as yourself. This directive goes far beyond simple advice for getting along. Loving others is not a moral checklist; it is living in perfect alignment with the physics of reality, recognising that we all share the exact same source of life.