Romans 5: 6 - 8 NKJV
I know a man who, whenever we are to meet, will count the minutes that pass if I happen to be running late. There have been plenty of times where I have walked in just as he was about to leave. Now, he never does this out of spite, he simply has things to do I'm thinking. I thought about my friend the other day as I was contemplating my own relationship with Jesus. That is, how many times in my christian life have I left Jesus there beside me...waiting on a friend? Even though I am well aware that Christ now lives through me, I am equally aware that this wasn't always the case at all. What was He doing in those times where I had yet to realize His truth in me? It seems like a good question for someone who might not know the truth of Jesus, but I'm guessing that I should already know this...right? Jesus...where were you when the world around me held more pull over my life than you did? If I am to trust in His word, then I know in my heart that He has never left me {Deuteronomy 31:6}. So, the entire time that I reveled in the behaviors of this world, Jesus has been in the same place He's always been...just waiting on His friend. One of the key points of our own knowledge of Christ in us is that He is always be there with us, but that we simply don't realize that He is. All too often we fall for that institutional church hogwash that we are somehow seperated from the very one who has proclaimed that He would never leave us. Tell me again how that works. There have been many sermons I have sat through where the central message was that I needed to be more like Jesus. Folks, I ALREADY was like him! I just did not realize at the time my true identity in Him at that time.
1 13“Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. 14“You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. 15“No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you."
John 15: 13 - 15 NKJV
I have told a friend of mine on more than one occassion that it would have been much easier for me if I had known the truth of Christ in me from a earlier age. Maybe, but then perhaps I wouldn't be the seasoned christian which I am today. See, there's a reason for which we go through the trials that we do in life. The apostle Paul speaks to the believers in Corinth that when he was a child he spoke, thought and reasoned as a child. However, when he became a man, he gave up such childish things. Sound advice indeed. Paul must have known, as most mature christians today do, that we often graduate from a childs understanding of God to a more mature understanding in our own walk. Some come to this realization sooner or later than others. From my time working with sunday school age kids I can understand the view which they often had of God. They sing songs and read stories of a God who they see as somehow seperate from them. Be good, we tell them, and God will look upon them with favor. Can you imagine a sunday school class where kids are taught that they live as Jesus? The pastor might just see a group of unruly heretics running around hell bent on destroying his message. We couldn't have that could we? Then agian, how many sunday school age children possess the maturity to realize such a thing as living as Christ? Don't worry, in time they will give up childish things. If I were to go back as a sunday school teacher the message I would like to instill is that Jesus is closer to us than we will ever know. I think even the youngest child could undertand that Jesus is near to them waiting on His friend.
11When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
1 Corinthians 13:11 NKJV
~Scott~
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