Jimmy On The Go!

WAITING & SEARCHING:

BETTER THAN A STIMULUS PACKAGE

Sometimes hearing God speak to us is just a matter of waiting and searching.  In a world where we expect our barista’s to spit out “orange mocha frappuccino’s” like a machine gun, this can seem like a excruciatingly time-costly thing to do.  But none the less, it must be done.  May we never forget, He is GOD after all.  We ought to work around His schedule not expect Him to work around ours.

Besides, if we do not invest the time to wait and search His voice out in our lives now, in the future it’ll cost us a heck of a lot more than what we think we might be losing out on by spending that time today!

In fact, it could cost us our relationship with God!  Let me explain.  There are some parents who live in complete regret because they were too busy with work and other things to spend quality time with their kids.  Now that their children are all grown up their relationship with their children is weak and even non-existent.  They can’t communicate or relate to them because time and effort were not invested beforehand over the years to develop those things.

God loves us so much.  He is in fact jealous for our time and attention.  He beckons us to seek Him with all our hearts.  Not so that He can waste our time, but so that we can “find” Him, know Him, and develop our relationship with Him!  There is joy even in waiting on God, and as we mature in our faith we see that even the “pain” of desire and desperation spent in waiting for Him to speak is a type of joy as well!

*As a word of practical application, I advise start searching and waiting on God to speak by reading and studying His Word!  Go here for some great personal bible study resources: bible study resources.  In future posts I hope to elaborate more on the different ways God speaks to us.

VERSES FOR FURTHER MEDITATION & STUDY

Jeremiah 29:13 (The Message)  “When you come looking for me, you’ll find me. “Yes, when you get serious about finding me and want it more than anything else, I’ll make sure you won’t be disappointed.” God’s Decree.

Psalm 27:8 (English Standard Version) You have said, “Seek my face.”My heart says to you, “Your face, LORD, do I seek.”

JESUS: GOD INCARNATE AS A REAL PERSON

A very convicting point that Stephen made was about how most of us that profess to believe in Jesus are not emotionally moved by the Passion account.  The main reason being is because Jesus is still largely not a real person to us.  He is a distant “God” and past “Savior” but not the living God, the living Man who is present with us today.  The one who is more real than the person next to us, more present than all the air around us.

As it would stand in our “earthly” relationships, to not intellectually AND emotionally identify with the incarnation of Christ – one of the greatest pillars of our evangelical doctrine – is symptomatic of  a degenerated relationship with God.

Now, to say you are not an “emotional” person is not a very good excuse.  Imagine if your loved one, your husband, wife, dad, mom, sister, brother, or friend went through what Jesus went through.  What if they were punched in the face, beaten with a stick, whipped mercilessly, had their flesh torn off their back, a crown of thorns forced through the flesh of their head, mocked, taunted, spit on, and then nailed on a cross, naked and exposed for all those that pass by to abhor and call cursed?

Yeah, we would be moved emotionally.

If not, there would be something wrong with us.  Even the person that goes numb with shock is still giving a kind of emotional and psychological response.  In such an event, you simply cannot have no emotional response at all without being considered seriously emotionally dysfunctional.

With that said, for most of us, if something like the Passion happen to a loved one we would experience the heights and extremes of human emotions in ways unimaginable from wrath and anger to sorrow and torment, guilt and powerlessness, to utter, utter remorse and brokenness.

I know that I do not fully know Jesus and His Passion this way yet.  But, I WANT to know Jesus like this.  I WANT Him to be that real of a person to me because, while He is yet God, He IS that real of a person.

He is not conceptual or distant.  He is not a theory or a mere belief.  He is a real person.  He is God, who became a man and loved me more than life itself.  I WANT to be moved to tears and great emotion just at the mention of His Passion.

The Passion of Christ is not a one day, “Good Friday” thing.  It is more than just a day.  It is a life-long journey and relationship of getting to know God.  If we desire maturity and genuineness of our faith, we will think this way.

PHILIPPIANS 3:7-16 [ESV]

⁷But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. ⁸Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— ¹⁰ that I may know him and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. the power of his resurrection, and ¹²Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. ¹³Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴I press on toward the goal for call of God in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. ¹⁶Only let us hold true to what we have attained.

TRAGEDY IN THE CHURCH

It is tragic and of great concern that the average Christian in the West cannot recount in detail the events of  the Passion and yet profess that they “love Jesus.”  Perhaps they do love Jesus, but I am convinced that it cannot be complete or mature without a full knowledge of His passion.

Some people may argue that they are not “detail” oriented when it comes to the Bible.  I think their error, at least in part, is to treat “knowing Jesus” as an academic thing we’re talking about.  That’s not what this is at all.  This is a relationship thing.  Imagine a conversation between a guy and girl that are in a relationship this way:

BOB: I love you Mary.

MARY: I love you too Bob!  Oh, I wanted to tell you about what happened to me today!

BOB: Oh, well, you see Mary, I’m not much of a “detailed oriented” kind of person.  Maybe you could tell Mickey your story later, ok?  Let’s just hug.”

Yeah, again, not good.

When a Believer puts off knowing the Passion story in detail, it is much like a spouse not wanting to know details of the most important stories of their loved one’s life.