I want to follow up a concept I brought up in a previous post, this idea of grappling with the person of Jesus. Again, I believe that what you believe and think and internalize about who Jesus is will have a disproportionate influence on who you become as a Christian. Who you know Jesus to be will have a shockwave effect on how you live out your Christianity.
2 Timothy 2:8 tells us to do something simple and powerful: "Remember Jesus Christ..." I am convinced this is the central concern of Paul's life and of his second letter to Timothy. The word "remember" in this verse is stated in the present imperative and has the idea of continual rehearsing or revisiting. In other words, another paraphrase that may help you to grab hold of this simple phrase would be "constantly keep revisiting Jesus Christ..."
Why? Why constantly keep revisiting Jesus? Because you can't possibly ever finish getting ahold of the holy, immeasurable life of Jesus. The greatest danger to your spiritual life is to arrive at a Jesus that you are comfortable with. Jesus invites you back to Himself over and over so that through the Bible and through the Spirit and through prayer and through spiritual community you would keep being overturned in your comprehension of Jesus.
This doesn't mean that you do what some have done and rewrite His actual history. Every historical detail of Jesus' life before during and after His earthly ministry stands in the Bible without man's editorial control. But, your understanding and internalizing of these truths does not. Your view of Jesus needs constant editing; it always has flaws. This means that you go back to the real history of Jesus' life found in the Bible over and over so that it can keep bringing renewed clarity to who He really is. This is a lifetime process.
Do you get bored when a familiar Jesus-story crosses your path? That's not good. You may need to reengage your heart, realizing that you have not yet arrived in your grasp of Jesus... not even close. Arrival will insulate you from the holy, wild, powerful living presence of Jesus.
John put it this way: "There are so many other things Jesus did. If they were all written down, each of them, one by one, I can't imagine a world big enough to hold such a library of books." John's point--"I've only scratched the surface". This from a guy who lived with Jesus day and night for 3 years!
Let me preview my Sunday message and repeat myself by challenging you: "constantly keep revisiting Jesus..."
Recent Comments