A guy is born. He gets his first tooth, walks, goes to kindergarten, loses his first tooth, first girlfriend, first heartbreak, sports, prom, homecoming, graduation, car, college, marriage, children, career, house. The list goes on. We have many firsts in our lives. It's all part of growth.
For the first thirty years of life we're anticipating the next step. After forty people tend to look back. It seems like most of our life is spent in the future or the past. For some reason we neglect now.
In the Baptist churches I grew up attending we often had a testimony time. I don't know where the tradition started, but wherever the church, it was usually the same formula. We start with a hymn or two -- always singing the first, second and last verse -- then two or three people would stand up to say how good God had been to them; it sounded something like this:
"Jesus saved me when I was (fill in the age). I asked Him into my heart. When I lost my (fill in the blank) I leaned on Him. Through all of my pain He's been there. God is so good!"It was followed by a few hearty Amens and a similar testimony.
In all of those testimony meetings, rarely do I remember hearing someone talking about God -- or Jesus, or the Spirit, for that matter -- like they would a close friend they had just run into that afternoon. Really, we tell people they can have "a personal relationship with Jesus" then freeze up when put on the spot to talk about our own "personal relationship" with him.
Throughout Scripture the relationship between the Lord and us is as a groom and his bride. Now, I know some couples who aren't close to each other as they ought to be, but really healthy couples have intimate moments over the years and special moments amost every day. They are, well, intimate. Too many of us -- myself included -- don't have an intimate relationship with the Lord.
For most Christians, we got hitched to the Lord some time in the past and go to church and do stuff here and there because we're Christians. It's not really much of a personal relationship when I think about it. If I spent my Christian life working around God and for God but never really with Him would that be a "personal relationship?"
I hear people talk about their Christian walk getting sweeter as the days go by. As I think about some sour-looking and mean-sounding people who call themselves Christians I wonder whether they have that daily walk with the Lord. I wonder what it would say to people on the outside looking in if people who call themselves Christians really had a "personal relationship" with the Lord that was growing sweeter each day.
2 comments:
Good insight in this post. I know what you're getting at. Sometimes that intimacy is there, sometimes not. Sometimes it can be hard in our humanity to cross that divide, even though there is the cross. Other times, in desperation (for me anyway) I can leap across and feel very close to my Father. It is truly a unique relationship that I have not 100% figured out but I know it's there and for that, I'm grateful.
Good post. I hope this is in a journal too - it's one worth looking back at!
Thank you for this writing. All the time, I challenge my Christian friends who are "down in the dumps" to try smiling and feeling some joy in their SALVATION - it makes the devil mad!!!! As a Christian, I want the song "Let Others See Jesus in Me" to be my testimony and sing it with a smile on my face. My smile reflects the joy in my heart!
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