Have you ever fallen in love and become so passionately in love with the object of your desire that you want to mingle all of you with all of them? This is the essence of sexual attraction right? When we fall in love we desire to be one with our beloved. We want to connect fingers, toes, lips and every part in between to our counterpart in such a way that the line between us and them disappears. That is the consummation of intimacy.

Recently, not for the first time I heard Bethel’s Bill Johnson talk about the often quoted phrase people use when they want to say that they need to be more Christlike and less fleshly as they work for the Lord. They paraphrase John the Baptist as they say, ‘More of you Lord and less of me.’

Bill has a funny comeback to that phrase because he feels it is a misunderstanding of how God sees us. He says he imagines God hearing us say that and saying in response, “I don’t want less of you. I had less of you before I made you and I didn’t like it.”

This morning as I heard Bill say that, I had a realization that God is in search of greater intimacy between us and Him. To say that in love making I want less of me and more of my husband would be just weird. It would leave him ultimately alone and without the object of his passion. Not to be weird, but the same is true of our intimacy with God. To say more of you and less of me removes the “me” part of the relationship of intimacy that God is after.

I think God actually wants ALL of me and ALL of Him to co-mingle. He made me and you uniquely different from one another. When I give all of me and work together with Him in unity of Spirit, the result is unique. It cannot be reproduced by His union with anyone else. If I give of my true self and give ALL that I have to the work He sets before me, THEN He is satisfied and pleased at our union. He gets to enjoy the unique “me” He created me to be.

Similarly it has become a bit of a thorn in my side to hear fellow believers say, “Use me Lord” or, “I just want the Lord to use me…” Again if I apply this phrase to my relationship with my husband, it gets kind of weird in a hurry. I don’t think the Lord wants to “use” us. In this analogy of intimacy, that would be likening us to a prostitute, not a bride. I think the Lord loves to partner with us in our work for Him and with Him. He comes along side, He goes before us and behind us. He sets us up for success, and when we obey He calls it our win!

On the contrary, when I say less of me and all of You, I am waiting on God to fulfill both parts of the relationship and consummation is not possible.

If in human covenant the Lord designed us to desire oneness with the object of our love, is it too much to think that His love for us means that He desires to have His forehead to my forehead, His nose to my nose, His fingers to my fingers, His toes to my toes?

All of me and All of You Lord!