How Can Believers Deepen Their Intimacy with the Lord？

Thank you for that question, and I believe the answer is given from God himself in 2 Chronicles 7 verse 14. And there he said, humble yourself and pray, seek my face and turn from wicked ways. And unfortunately, this matter of humility is often misunderstood. Humility is actually strength to deal with issues where we don't let pride invade us, where we don't let a superior thinking invade us, and where we look to God. And he gave an example in the Bible that is the Lord Jesus Christ, and he spoke about a poor sinner, and he spoke about a person that was high in the religious establishment. And one prayed and said, look God, all the good I'm doing, and the money I'm giving, and the status I have. And he was not justified before God. And the other one beat his breast, and he said, be merciful to me, a sinner. And so for us to realize that we fall short of the glory of God is an important part of our Christian life, not to get us down, but to help us realize that we are yet imperfect. And when you look at the various aspects of the Bible, you might say, well, I'm a good Christian. May I ask you, have you shared your faith today, yesterday, the day before? When have you led someone to Christ, or have you never led anyone to Christ? Are you lukewarm, or are you hot for God? Because he said the two greatest commandments were to love your God with all of your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength. And the second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself. So we must do these commandments of God. And if we don't, then we have to humble ourselves and say, Lord, help us. We got to cry out to him. Help us, because we cannot do it on our own. And so there are other Christian sins that are not often talked about, such as lukewarmness. You know, is the football game more important for me or the prayer meeting? And the football game wins more often than it should. Should we have in a church bingo on prayer night? Should we turn our backs on God and pursue video games all night? How does my time compare in prayer and in the Bible with all other activities that I do? Are there any questionable activities that I do that Jesus would not do? If they're questionable, I really ought to step back from them. And so for this matter of intimacy and prayer life, I think it is most important to ask God to help us to do that and to humble ourselves and to realize who we are. Yes, we are born again Christians. Yes, we are ambassadors for Christ at the same time, but we also still fall short so often. And so we need to start with humility and repentance. And then the second step really is to pray, to cry out, and then to seek the Lord. Now, when I speak with you, you can see my face and I can see your face. And God wants us to see his face. But what he really means with that is that we know his heart, how he feels about sin, how he feels about leaving him for hours upon hours to do our own thing, because he loves us so much. He has emotions. And do I truly pursue to please him? It's more the other way. I demand of God to please me. And if he doesn't, then I might turn from him. But this is not the way of God. He said, humble yourself, pray, seek my face, come close. When I come close to your face, you can probably discover some lines in my face. You maybe can see that I'm substantially older than you are by my outside face. And this is the same with God. However, he not only sees the outside, he sees the heart. And the closer we get to God, the more we can see ourselves with impurities, with falling short. I drove my car the other morning with the sunlight shining on the car, the car was washed. But when the sunlight hit it, there were streaks, there were spots of impurities in that windshield. And I thought I had washed it perfectly. But the only washing that can truly make us white as snow, and we have so much snow today, is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He can make us clean. And so we must go every day also to God and even use the Lord's prayer and say, forgive us our debts as we forgive those who have incurred a debt against us. And so this is from my perspective, a way to God to draw near to him, because then he promises if I draw near to him, he will draw near to me. So thank you.