Getting in the way of Jesus
This book I am reading, ‘Blue Like Jazz’ by Donald Miller had a good line in it this morning while I was reading it. The author was describing how a friend of his came from not wanting to know Jesus, to becoming a Follower. In the initial stages, she was very skeptical but wanted to give it a go just to find out once and for all. She says,
“I wanted to see if this whole Jesus thing was real. I still had serious issues with Jesus, though, only because I associated Him with Christianity, and there was no way I would ever call myself a Christian…
We started reading Matthew…I found Jesus very disturbing, very straightforward. He wasn’t diplomatic, and yet I felt like if I I met Him, He would really like me. I can’t explain how freeing that was, to realize that if I met Jesus, He would like me. I never felt that about some of the Christians on the radio. I always thought if I met those people they would yell at me. But it wasn’t like that with Jesus. There were people He loved and people He got really mad at, and I kept identifying with the people He loved.”
It goes on, but it just struck me again how important it is for Christianity (us, the church, etc) to reach out to the world around us. People are always reading us, and how they view us completely influences how they relate to Jesus. So if churches are old, cold, heartless places, how do they view Jesus? If church seems only for rich well-dressed people, how do they view Jesus? If church is full of big religious words and meaningless activities, how do they view Jesus?
And the same goes for us as individuals.
What can you do today to reveal the true Jesus to someone who doesn’t know him?
