In our day of continual public polling, we can get a very secure feeling if the masses are for us, and we feel we are doomed if they are not.

Against this unreality that has settled into our values, we are jolted into an ultimate reality. Does Jesus know us? In the most stripping and final of all presentations, we realize that Jesus can say He knows us or that He does not. In Matthew 7:23, we are faced with the terrible possibility from His lips: “Then I will declare to them, I never knew you…” and the curtain falls.

How can we pursue the WAY for getting Jesus to know us? I believe we need to AFFECT Him. The woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of His garment in a desperation that was clothed with faith (see (Matt 9:20-22; Mar 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-47). Crowds surrounded, but one touched Him. Power went OUT of Him, He said. He was affected. I believe He would know the one that affects Him.

Jesus spoke to the crowd the most lavish of all invitations to be known by Him and to affect Him in John 6. His almost-too-vivid invitation led many to discredit Him and no longer walk with Him. To believe upon Him became an invitation to eat and drink off Him, of His flesh and blood. Life indeed.

This type of belief is pictured as the woman with the issue of blood bringing her full hope of relief that leaned and pulled from Him.

Though we should think continually of Eternity, most Americans do not. We may believe we have entrusted our eternal souls to Him, and that is all that Jesus was driving at in John 6, yet rarely think of Eternity…

Are you pulling from Jesus? Are you affecting Him? Is He knowing that your daily life could not be lived without Him and the infusion of His being?

If you can appreciate this: what previously looked like daily troubles can become His crown to you. You are having to pull and draw out from Him unto an eternal relationship.

If God has orchestrated your life in such a way that requires His power to continually go out from Him to you, then LEAN as one of His beloved and chosen. Affect Him. May this blessed ebb and flow lead up to the final Day where He could not say anything but “this one is known of Me.”

“Oh, How…”

Dr John Williams, in his many times through Scripture, decided to reread the Gospels with a focus in mind: not only what Jesus said but HOW He said it.

As Mother Theresa’s life’s output taught her: it is not what we give, but how much love is in the giving.

When those standing by the raising of Lazarus beheld both the weeping of Jesus and Lazarus’ complete resurrection, their breathless realization could only exclaim: “Look, how much He loved him!” (John 11:36)

In our wordy lives and environment, our relationship with words suffers greater and greater disparity and separation from deep meaning with each passing day. Many words. Speed reading. Multitasking while listening. No depth. Much to cover. We must cover much. Plentiful and surface intake. We don’t take it in…or to heart. As with what John 3:16 has become to its many listeners, we are reminded: “God SO loved the world…”

David Crowder made popular a song in this decade that begs us to STOP and enter into the worth. He draws into entering the world of how, how much. Oh, HOW He Loves Us. The songwriter’s pace and imagery will keep us there until we taste of it. We aren’t going to move quickly over this without transformation. We are going to stay. Consider the pictures in this one mere song that begin to take root in our hearts when we will STAY and enter. His love means:
 a hurricane of mercy bowing the frail tree of us
 jealousy
 afflictions eclipsed by glory
 beautiful, great His affections
 we are His portion
 grace is an ocean, and we’re all sinking
 Heaven meets earth with an unforeseen kiss

As life keeps rolling on at more and more accelerated paces, can we see the destined goal is not in covering the expanse of words, not just getting the job done? It is coming to the reality of HOW (and that is in itself worship), and only there is transformation.

“Who taught you that?”

One of the most effective practices for parents of adult children who have not only departed the home, but apparently could depart the faith, resides in the reasoning of righteous Job. Job thought, “My children may have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” Job offered sacrifices for them daily (Job 1:5). What a prayer of grace for parents to give their adult children, one that depends only on the parents’ faith!
Job’s life was lived apparently before written Scripture. How could he come into a practice to know to do this? Who taught him?
Against a background of no media or input, this is a profound question.
The first such question came from God’s question to Adam and Eve: “Who told you that you are naked?” There were not too many others to blame. But the answer was spiritual.
Unfortunately with so much input coming into our children, we often hear a child blurt out something that surprises us. We quickly ask “Where did you hear that?” “Who told you that?” It could be 100’s of answers.
But when you are up against an environment of such limited input, WHO TAUGHT JOB to offer sacrifices for his adult children? Who taught him that it would not be useless to do so? Who taught him that he would be rewarded for earnestly seeking Him this way (Heb 11:1-2)? Who then taught him faith?
This takes us to something most lovely. This man lived with his God. God’s claim on Job at the book’s beginning before the Heavens and Satan was deserved. It was wrought in something we can hardly understand. He knew God by gut experience: question and answer, prayer and answered prayer. Such a relationship was cultivated that led him to faithfully and with anticipation offer sacrifices for those he cared the most: his children.

Wouldn’t you like to think you would go the way of Job without anything but God to direct you?
We now have the prophetic Word made even more sure in the Scriptures of our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, let us delve even more deeply into true relationship with Him and see it work for us a persuasion as Job’s. His was experiential. If a man without anything but God’s answers could grow to know His character of faithfully answering His pleas for his most beloved children, what can hold us back from cultivating this lovely relationship ourselves…and with more certainty!!