When we sin, do we ever imagine that Jesus is standing next to us? I doubt it, I know I don’t, and that’s a big problem. Years ago there was a Christian fad of wearing bracelets with the letters WWJD on them, or “What Would Jesus Do”. As fads go, this was actually a very good question. But, it only works if you believe that Jesus is real, alive, and present.

Without that living awareness of the presence of Jesus, faith becomes an academic matter. Nothing but a series of questions regarding various propositions that we believe to be true or false. But when you have a living faith, in a living Jesus, you are living every day in the presence of Jesus. And with that active knowledge of his presence, most of the so called difficult decisions we face tend to get real clear real fast. So why don’t we live in that place of constant fellowship with Jesus? That is the more difficult question and the one I plan to work on today.

Jesus as an Idea

As I think about this it occurs to me that Jesus has been abstracted down from being a living person that is always present with us, to various sets of abstract ideas, or theologies, or practices, or cultures. We do this because these are the kind of things that we can consider from a comfortable distance as if we were shopping online. There are now so many flavors of Jesus to choose from. We can shop around from church to church to find exactly the flavor that pleases us. We can choose to have a certain kind of Jesus but on our terms, rather than the Lord Jesus on his terms. As Paul once told Timothy:

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching,

Now church hopping and “taste testing” is bad enough and I could fill this article and probably 5 more just looking at everything involved with that phenomenon. But I think the most destructive fruit of abstracting Jesus down from a living person to an idea grows in our private lives. We simply can’t have a relationship of any kind with an idea, you can only have a relationship with a living person.

Ideas don’t care and they don’t feel, but a person does. Ideas don’t get offended, but a person does. So if we understand Jesus as a person we need to understand our sins as offenses against an actual person. And not just any person but THE person who suffered beyond understanding and gave his own life to save us from the very sins we are committing.

Though you have not seen him,

Playing Peekaboo Jesus

When my grandkids were young they loved to play Peekaboo. And some of them when they covered their eyes believed that when they couldn’t see us we couldn’t see them. It was hilarious. But here’s what I am thinking, how often do we, or more importantly I, pretend that because we can’t see Jesus he can’t see us? And how often do we act as if he does not even exist?

The Psalmist understands this phenomenon and writes this song to remind us of the living reality of God.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?

This week

Why do we hide? I suppose that there can be many reasons ranging from pure evil to crippling shame. Maybe we like our sin and don’t want to think about Jesus, or maybe the shame of our past sin causes us to want to hide from Jesus. But either way when we do this we walk in unbelief. We don’t believe in the resurrection though we say we do.(which only adds to the shame) We don’t believe that he really forgives, so we are afraid to look into his face. No matter what our idea it’s a bad one. Jesus died to restore our relationship with God. Faith is believing his death was enough. Jesus rose again to give us hope. He poured out his Spirit on us to give us strength.

This week let’s encourage each other in the faith that what Jesus did was enough. Let’s walk in the revelation that not only can we now walk with Jesus and look into his face he desires it enough that the cross did not seem to him to be too high a price. And when we feel overwhelmed let’s remember that the same Spirit that was at work in creation is in us by faith, and let’s have a great week with Jesus.

And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me,

Have a great week!