The People's Choice

 

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. 

John 17: 3 NKJV 

As I related in a recent post, I have gotten away from making the traditional New Year's resolutions.  I figured I could set goals anytime of the year anyway.  However, that has not stopped many others from making their end of the year plans for the year to come.  Each year, millions of people vow to change everything from their health to their finances.  Yet recently something interesting happened.  A survey by New Life Research found that a significant number of people were resolving to...know God.  You heard right, 29 percent of those surveyed had made resolutions about their relationship with God.  Also, those ages 18 - 34 and 35 - 49 were 35 percent more likely to make faith the subject of their New Year's resolutions.  Forty eight percent of Christians who attend a traditional worship service at least four times a month claimed to have made a resolution about their relationship with God.  What can we take away from all of this?  Well, traditional New Year's resolutions are usually made with the intent of changes one can make to their lives in the year ahead.  So, when an American Christian resolves to work on their own relationship with God in the coming year, what are we supposed to take away from that?  Are people no longer being "fed" in our traditional brick and mortar churches?  Has the church "system" we've come to know bypassed those it has been tasked with serving for the sake of the bottom line?  I'd say both of these statements are true.  I can imagine thousands of Christians sitting through another mundane church service and wondering to themselves, "Why am I here?"  I can imagine it because I've been there.  I've been in the pew longing to hear about the life of Jesus but getting nothing from the pastor but another sermon on the virtues of tithing.  I get it.  I look at these survey numbers and the first thing that jumps out at me is that Christians want to know God.  The other thing I notice is that there has been a huge disconnect between the traditional church and believers.  This also can be evidenced in the numbers of Christians leaving their churches.  It seems that more and more people are searching for God.  

Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.

John 14: 6 NKJV 

Back in the 1970's there was a movie titled Oh God, starring George Burns and musician John Denver.  In it a supermarket manager (Denver) is visited by the almighty Himself (Burns) in order that he might spread the good news of the Lord.  God wanted His people to know who He was.  Well, as you can imagine, the Lord's messenger runs into his share of roadblocks as he attempts to do as God had told him.  In the end, however, God delivers a brilliant oratory in a crowded court room before making His exit once again.  God desires for His children to know Him.  As we can see from our recent survey, there are a good number of Gods children who desire to know Him as well.  Not the church where we've been told that God abides.  Not in the words of the pastors who have been tasked with relating God to the people.  No, people desire more and more to know the one true God.  Well, we're in luck, because that is the desire of our Lord as well.  The prayer of Jesus in the garden before His crucifixion reveals that Jesus desires that we would be one with He and the Father {John 17:21}.  How much closer of a relationship with God can we have?  But this is not simply the desire of Jesus, for through His finished work on the cross, those who believe in Christ are now one with He and the Father.  The apostle Paul speaks to this as he relates that it is Christ Jesus who now lives in him {Galatians 2:20}.  When it is revealed that Christ Jesus lives in us, then we have surely become one with the Father.  We can have a relationship with God...without the New Year's resolution.  

"That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me."

John 17: 21 NKJV 

~Scott~