What rates highest in a long-term relationship? Passion is important, certainly, but intimacy rates highest. Most couples long for intimacy in relationship. What is needed to experience intimacy as God intended? GOD! Without an intimate relationship with God, you will lack intimacy with one-another. Intimacy is the sense of another person fully knowing you and loving you because of who you are—as well as in spite of knowing you. This requires honesty and allowing yourself to be vulnerable.

There are a host of practical things that might be suggested, both eliminating negative things, as well as rediscovering some positives. Consider turning off the computer, television, video game, cell phone, and tablet when you are together. Spend time talking, sharing, and looking at each other. Agree to spend quality time with one-another once you are both home. It can be hard to find time together as a couple. Having children in the home can often magnify that difficulty. Make time for deeply emotional conversations. Even an hour of quality time for the two of you together is a positive start. A weekly date night, or lunch together, regular walks around your neighborhood can allow for valuable together time. It is also vital to balance between “Self and Couple” time. The strongest marriage relationships have two inter-dependent individuals as partners. Each one has meaningful, healthy distinctive lives that are to be experienced. Too much “togetherness” can be a bad thing, if it deprives the relationship of the energy and experiences that inter-dependence brings.

The key to healthy inter-dependence is the security of trusting each other. Although your hobbies and professional life may be different, sharing the excitement of what God is working in each other, enriches the marriage relationship, knowing you are in union and yet distinct.

It is also vital to spend time in pursuits you both enjoy doing together. These shared pursuits help to build precious memories, while strengthening emotional intimacy. Be aware and care-for each other’s physical needs and healthy. Guard against over committing yourselves to outside projects that may rob you of together time. Plan on and look forward to great sex.

Sex was created by God and intended to be the highest form of intimate expression in a marriage. Above all else, PRAY together! Nothing will cultivate intimacy in a marriage like prayer. Praying together where you both open up, becoming vulnerable before God and each other in His presence, is the highest form of intimacy to be realized.

Intimacy is the sense of another person fully knowing you and loving you because of who you are—as well as in spite of knowing you. This requires honesty and allowing yourself to be vulnerable.

Intimacy must be “practiced” and “practical.” God designed marriage to be the closest relationship on earth. No friendship or parent-child relationship should surpass the level of intimacy in marriage. When God created man, He made us body, soul, and spirit (1 Thess. 5:23) Paul prays, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Because of this, married couples must cultivate, the body, the soul, and the spirit to develop the level of intimacy in marriage that God designed.

Think of it this way:
Physical Intimacy = the body
Friendship = the soul
Spirituality = the spirit

In order to have a “Christian marriage” Jesus must be active in both partners, thus, creating a spiritual relationship of oneness. One-flesh union. A man and a woman, in whom the Spirit of Christ lives and functions, and draws into unity with one another and with the triune God. The “two become one,” not essentially (for he is still he, and she is still she), but relationally in a single unit of spiritual oneness.

In “one spirit” union with Christ and with one another, a “Christian marriage” becomes a “yoked temple” of the Holy Spirit, where they “together express union” (intercourse, of spirit, soul, and body) as no other relationship on earth can do. This is Intimacy “practiced” and “practical” as God Intended.