"Father, I'm like Your Son's early disciples who believed what He said but as soon as He disappeared from sight went fishing (John 20:2-3). I want to live a life I'm good at, a life that let's me protect myself from unavoidable pain and feel good in available pleasures. But You want me to live a life I can't live" (Larry Crabb)
"Don't look at your inability. Look at My Son's ability. As you read/study John's Gospel account, see yourself pausing before a portrait Rembrandt could never paint. Notice-Take Note; no miracle Jesus ever performed served His well-being, that no teaching He ever presented was designed to win popularity, and that in no conversation in which He ever engaged did He maneuver things to His advantage, but always to Mine. As you gaze at My Son's portrait (as John alone could present-because of his deep friendship with Jesus), let Me point out only four brush-strokes from My hand through John's. There are many more, so many more that the whole world could not contain the paintings needed to depict every one.
1. "First," My Son is the only human being who was with Me before He was born. He came to reveal all that He knew of Me that you could absorb or imagine. He came to 'exegete' Me --that is the word in John 1:18 translated 'made Him known.' It means to make visible what could be seen in no other way. See My Son.
2. "Second," My Son revealed what He had personally seen and heard in the unseen and unheard world from which He came (John 3:32). Jesus had seen perfect community from the inside, Three Persons living life as it was meant to be lived (What are some of the distinctives of living life as it was meant to be lived?). And He heard the plan We same Three Persons had made to throw a party for forgiven sinners whom My Spirit would teach to dance, to really live--people who would become fully alive with the exact life that My Son revealed in everything He said and did.
3. "Third," My Son confronted and contradicted every lesser understanding of what it really means to really live, every understanding that centrally defines life as less suffering and more happiness. Real life, the life that My Son and I and Our Spirit have always and will forever enjoy is the joy of loving. We give to each other. You bear Our image. Your deepest desire is to love as We love. Your deepest need is to be loved. I love you! Your need is met. You are now free to do what you most want to do, what I created you to do, to live life to the full, to love, to love Me and other's as My Son did during His time on earth and still does.
4. "Fourth," many who were at first dawn to My Son turned away when they realized what He was saying. Like so many today, they heard His teachings as 'hard' (in John 6:60, the word hard is a translation of skleros; (offensive, not merely difficult or obscure). To love with nails in your hands and to love those who put them there captures the essence of what it means to really live.
Look fully into His face today. See what He alone makes known. Take that seeing and knowing into every uncertainty of this life. Ron Ross
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