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The Intimacy Deficit

Fully Enjoying God, Self, Others and Creation

Ed Shaw

9781783599486
192 pages
SPCK Group
Overview

The biggest problem facing humanity is a lack of intimacy - the relational intimacy we were created to need and enjoy in the very beginning. This intimacy can be best understood as an experience of oneness with our Creator God, with ourselves, with others, and with God's creation.

Life is often unhappy and frustrating because we lack this true intimacy in one (or more) of these 4 key contexts, and then go searching for it in wrong relationships and places where it was not meant to be found. Among many other things, our culture's religious consumerism, identity politics, porn addiction and mental health crisis can be traced back to the intimacy deficit we are all experiencing in different ways today.

Wired for Intimacy
1 The intimacy deficit
2 Intimacy defined
With God
3 Intimacy with God
4 Through biblical meditation
5 Through biblical prayer
With ourselves
6 Intimacy with ourselves
7 Through rejoicing
8 Through repentance
With others
9 Intimacy with others
10 Through spiritual friendship
11 Through spiritual parenting
With creation
12 Intimacy with creation
13 Through work
14 Through play
Living with intimacy
15 The intimacy quadrant
Appendix 1 The intimacy quadrant and pornography
Appendix 2 The intimacy quadrant and anxiety

Author Bio
Ed Shaw is Pastor of Emmanuel City Centre Church, Bristol, UK and on the editorial team at www.livingout.org. He authored the bestselling The Plausibility Problem: The Church and Same-sex Attraction (IVP). Published in the US as Same-sex Attraction and the Church, this was the Gospel Coalition's Top Book in its Christian Living Category. Ed loves family and friends, church and city, gin and tonic, music and books. He is a member of the General Synod of the Church of England and part of the Archbishop's Pastoral Advisory group.