Intimacy with God: as seen through the life of Ezekiel

Last evening I taught at Kyle Laviolette and Jenny Brown's home group. I spoke on "Intimacy with God: as seen through the life of Ezekiel" (hence, the name of this post). It was a journey through the prophet's book, with examples that proved he led such a life of intimacy with God, that we, as New Covenant believers, should be envious! Ezekiel lived 600 yrs before Christ, before the fulfillment of the indwelling of Holy Spirit, yet he lived a life that is charactized by closeness with God that christians today seldom attain. There is something wrong with this picture. Anyways, here are my points I taught on (click on the scripture references to read):

1. Intimacy with God reveals the heavenly realm
1:1-28, 10; 37:1-14; 40-48; 43:1-5; 8:1-3

2. Intimacy recieves Divine revelation
16:49-50; 18:23, 32; 28:11-19; 44:19

3. Intimacy is a forerunner to radical obedience
3:17-21, 33:1-20; 12:1-11; 24:15-27; 36:6, 35:1-9; 4; 5:1; 20:45-49; 21:1-5

4. Intimacy hears God's heart (prophecy)
11:19-20, 36:25-27; 37:15-23; 33:33

As you can sort of tell, intimacy is a necessary part of our walk with God. In fact, you can argue that unless one walks in intimacy with God he does not even know Him. Hence, he has no assurance of even his own salvation. It's a hard saying. Intimacy can be defined as follows: feeling or atmosphere of closeness and openness towards someone else. Ezekiel portrays this as well as any other Old Testament figure.