Obedience may be the doorway to intimacy, but it's not intimacy. Jesus says in John 14, if you love me, obey my commandments. He does not say, "if you love me keep my commandments and then you will be loved." Our relationship with Jesus is based in His work on the cross and through His resurrection. We obey because it's who we are, not in order to be loved.
If I bring my wife flowers and she asks me, "Why did you get these for me?", and if I respond, "Because I know you expect me to do that for you from time to time," that's a quick road to no intimacy. I get her flowers because I love her. I get her flowers because it's who I am -- I am her lover and flowers are the "obedience" that I live in because I love her. The flowers are an extension of my identity and open the doorway for intimacy which I define as spirit to spirit connection. Intimacy is primarily spiritual. Certainly there are emotional and physical outgrowths of that, but if we try to connect through either emotion or physicality first, it will always fall short of what it was meant to be.
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Just read a Don Miller article in Chiristianity Today. One of the sections reminded me of this post.
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In one of his talks in Boston, Miller offers a parable about evangelical witness: A husband decides to woo his wife, so he takes her out to dinner and gives her a list of the things he loves about her. "All those things are true. Do you see that?" The wife nods. "Well, then, you know I love you." The wife doesn't swoon. "But everything on this list is true! If you believe the items on this list, then you should be able to accept that I love you!"
The Parable of the Foolish Husband prompts mmms and claps and knowing headshakes. Miller does not make anyone feel bad about harboring formulaic versions of God or of the gospel.
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