Bucket Full of Grace

Drawn:  Intimacy with God Intimacy is what we call the experience of really knowing and being known by another person. We frequently use spatial language when describing this experience like closeness or nearness . An intimate friend is someone we feel very close to; they know us at a deep level. If something happens that damages the intimacy with our friend, they feel distant from us. Or a person who doesn’t know us intimately knows us at a surface  level. But of course intimacy is not spatial but relational. We all know what it’s like to be sitting right next to a person and be physically near but we feel distant and we can feel close to a person who is four thousand miles away . What makes us feel intimate with another person? While there are many ingredients to intimacy and each close relationship we have has a different recipe, common to all of them is trust . We cannot be close with a person we don’t trust. Trust is at the heart of intimacy. The more we trust s...

TLDR: Video Link Background: Paul had traveled to the city of Thessalonica after being beaten and imprisoned in Phillipi.  You can read in the book of Acts, when in Phillipi, Paul and Silas had released a fortune teller girl from demonic possession and her masters were enraged and they beat Paul and SIlas with rods in the marketplace, humiliating them, then they were thrown in a dungeon called the Tullainium where the worst criminals were kept, their feet in stocks that stretch the prisoners feet apart, causing severe pain.  Did they give up?  Did they say, oh we must not be in the Will of God? No, an earthquake during the night broke open the jail, they stopped and witnessed to the jailer helping him and his family come to Christ, and they were released.  This is when they went to Thessalonica. In Thessalonica, it’s important to understand the type of place this is.  It’s like a political rally with all the parties vying for attention on every street-corner and...