Knowing that we are a complete mess, a jumble of our lustful self and yet bearing the image of God and found in His righteousness, I marvel that Christ can call us "friends." If I were a perfect, sinless One, would I chose to relate and become intimate with such sin-entrenched, unfaithful, utterly helpless creatures? From my perspective of being in God's shoes, I would see humans as a lost cause. What have they ever really amounted to? Imagine the incredible hope, love, faithfulness, grace that our God must possess to desire and seek intimacy with His creation, fallen as we are and desperate apart from Him.
Lately, I've been impressed to see the theme of God calling us to "know Him" through the entire Bible. In the old testament compelling the children of Israel to leave their worthless idolatry and return to Him. And, in the new testament, the mandate from Paul to "grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ," to grow in intimate, experiential knowledge of Jesus. Thus, the idea of centering on Christ, to fix our eyes on Jesus must be imperative in our daily walk. As Brennan Manning tells us:
"Let us never underestimate the power of truth unleashed in our experience of Jesus and magnified in our fidelity to seeking his face. In his last days, Thomas Merton wrote in his ASIAN JOURNAL that trust increases through our fidelity to the search and leads to 'a certitude which is very, very deep because it is not our own personal certitude, it is the certitude of God Himself in us.'
After the initial experience, perseverance in the life-long quest for greater intimacy with Jesus, no matter how often we stumble and fall, is not only the antidote to hopelessness and despair; it is the sure path to divine certitude that overcomes all doubts, anxieties, and worries" (Ruthless Trust, 105).
Related, two scriptures that have left a deep impression lately and have been food for meditation are:
2 Corinthians 3:18 (The Message)
We are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.
- I just love how in the process of seeking Him, the light and beauty of God start to enter in, change us, and we can't help but radiate it out through our lives. I am becoming awake to evidences of this in my own life.
Hebrews 11:1 (NKJV)
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
- Moving into the realm of faith and trust in Christ, involving elements of risk and jumping into what appears to be the unknown, somehow is substantive, though invisible and difficult to put into words. Just as somehow in the midst of praising God our joy is renewed deeply and abundantly, so it is true yet unexplainable to the human mind how we can firmly trust in things-yet-to-be as sure and done.
