"...in Jesus's name we pray, amen!" When teaching children about Jesus, I try my best to maintain a balance. On one hand, they need to see Him as a saviour, and yet on the other hand they need to see that He is even more than that, He loves us and is with us in a very real and personal way, far more than just Someone who died for you long ago, or Someone Who was nice and said we could go to heaven. I keep my own experience in mind. One of the things I realized when I was seeking salvation was that I had a weird relationship with Christ. I knew He was supposed to be my Saviour and Friend, but He felt strangely distant and unreal. I ended my prayers in His name but I didn't really like to talk too much about Him otherwise. I think a visit to a more 'contemporary' church when I was little made a bad impression on me of people throwing Jesus' name around and getting all gushy and undignified (here you can probably tell the kind of baby I was; intense eyes, observing everything, silently judging you, silently disapproving. At least I was cute.) After all, I always prayed to God. If anything God was the one I felt I had a real sort of friendship, or at least relationship with, a sort of strange mysterious friend whom you didn't really understand, and didn't really know, and weren't really sure how much they cared for you, but had always been there, and you found comfort from knowing they had always been there and would always be there. That is, when I wasn't thinking of Him as a Judge. Then that was scary. I knew the Gospel, but Jesus still seemed rather superfluous to me--as it clearly would to someone who was not convicted of my own sin. Even after I was converted, Christ remained rather distant--someone I was in awe of, and respected, and cared for, but not in a personal or intimate way; it was still at a stage where I felt I wouldn't dare. It was like claiming to be best friends with a national hero just because He had saved your life along with a ton of other people's during some crisis. Jesus, I loved You--respectfully, from a distance, with sincere and deep gratitude, but mostly awe. It took me a while to see Him not only as a Saviour but as a Friend, in the realest sense of the word. God had brought into my life a family who would become and stay dear friends even years later, despite being in different countries, despite not having seen each other since then, despite not even having regular correspondence. They were Americans who, unlike me, were very much in touch with Christ as a friend, and who often spoke of Him as such. They were an eye-opener to me, and their relationship with Jesus came to my mind afterwards many times over the years, forcing me to see that this was an area I lacked, this was something I needed to think about. It took me years. It took me books like Greg Gilbert's What is the Gospel and Steve DeWitt's Eyes Wide Open, it took me books like Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamzov and C.S Lewis's Narnia series which wrung and warmed my heart, and even the overwhelming evil in the world, a frightening glimpse of His absence-- to unfold knowledge, one leaf at a time, about Him. Not just 'knowledge'--Jesus Christ--Son of God--Saviour; like those impersonal words on your identity card; but real knowledge. Like memorizing your mother's smile. Lip synching the words to your favourite song. The little freckles on your best friend's hand, or that passage in a book you love so much it falls open naturally at that place. And after knowledge, love followed, naturally, simply. I often regret it took me so long to love Him as a friend. But love for Him should always be based on His relationship to us as our saviour. If we love Him only as a friend, it places Him on par with other things, in the same way we can have many friends; and puts us in danger of not seeing clearly how our relationship with Him is so different from a mere guardian angel-mortal friendship. He is so much more.
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