Walking in Christ Intimacy: Overcoming Syncretism and Boredom

Intimacy with Christ is essential for believers to abound in thanksgiving and experience genuine spiritual fullness. Deepening one’s relationship with Jesus forms the foundation for true gratitude, enabling a life marked by obedience, trust, and closeness to Him. This intimate walk with Christ is an active process that involves being fully subject to His authority and living in continual submission to His lordship.

The command to "walk in Him," as outlined in Colossians 2:6-7, serves as a blueprint for cultivating this intimacy. Walking in Christ means being rooted, built up, and established in Him—metaphors that describe a deep, ongoing relationship. Being rooted in Christ involves immersing oneself in His Word and truth, drawing spiritual nourishment directly from Jesus, much like a tree planted by streams of water ([53:12]). This rootedness ensures that faith remains strong and resilient, not easily shaken by false teachings or worldly philosophies.

Intimacy with Christ also means finding sufficiency in Him alone. The fullness of Christ’s deity and the completeness believers have in Him negate the need to seek fulfillment through other means. Attempts to supplement salvation with additional religious practices or to diminish Christ’s deity represent syncretism, which undermines the sufficiency found in Jesus. Recognizing that believers are "filled in Him" affirms that no political ideology, social gospel, or material pursuit can satisfy the soul as Christ does ([42:32]). Trusting in His sufficiency causes hearts to overflow with gratitude, as all needs are met in Him.

A secure identity rooted in Christ’s work—His death, resurrection, and forgiveness—further deepens intimacy and fuels thankfulness. Understanding that believers have been spiritually circumcised, buried with Christ, and raised to new life anchors them against the drifting effects of false teachings and worldly distractions. This identity in Christ is a source of profound grace and victory, inspiring continual gratitude ([01:19:00], [01:20:18]).

Walking in Christ—being rooted, built up, and established—empowers believers to overcome boredom, syncretism, and the temptations that threaten faith. This close, personal communion with Jesus is the only true path to satisfaction and overflowing thanksgiving, as Paul exhorts in Colossians 2:6-7.

This article was written by an AI tool for churches, based on a sermon from Crossing Community Church, one of 7 churches in Newtown, PA