Week Sixteen Question

Week Sixteen Question:

What is the sign of a friend? Have we ever let God tell us any of His joys, or are we telling God our secrets so continually that we leave no room for Him to talk to us?

“The things that make God dear to us are not so much His great big blessings as the tiny things, because they show His amazing intimacy with us; He knows every detail of our individual lives: - Chambers June 3

My Response:

Getting up close and personal with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit – this is why He came.

John Eldredge says it best in his book Beautiful Outlaw:

“The records of Christ are written so you can experience him as they did, this intimate connection with the Father and the Son. John says that you can enjoy the same friendship with Jesus that he knew (refers to 1 John 1:1-3). For this Jesus came.

So, if you do not know Jesus as a person, know his remarkable personality – playful, cunning, fierce, impatient with all that is religious, kind, creative, irreverent, funny – you have been cheated.

If you do not experience Jesus intimately, daily, in these very ways, if you do not know the comfort of his actual presence, do not hear his voice speaking to you personally – you have been robbed.

If you do not know the power of his indwelling life in you, shaping your personality, healing your brokenness, enabling you to live as he did – you have been plundered” (12).

Lord Jesus, do I know my friends better than I know You? Have I excluded Your personality from the equation and reduced You to a pristine statue – hollow and void of emotion or to a distant, universal something? I pray the prayer that Eldredge inserts in his book after the above passage:

“Jesus, show me who you really are. I pray for the tru you. I want the real you. I ask for you. Spirit of God, free me in every way to know Jesus as he really is. Open my eyes to see him. Deliver me from everything false about Jesus and bring me what is true.”