The God I Know

I get the sense that many these days believe that God, if there is a God, is far off, not personal. Someone that we must appease by living a good life and doing good deeds. A gatekeeper at the entrance to heaven with a scale ready to measure good versus bad. With this conception, it doesn’t surprise me that many are rejecting God, or at the very least, are not interested in finding out if he is real or wanting to know him. I would reject this God too. But this is not the God I know.

 

The God I know said this, “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15). In Jesus we have a God that calls us friends. This is beautiful and amazing. A friend is not far off. A friend is with us during good times and bad. A friend takes joy in helping us succeed. When his disciples were struggling to catch fish, Jesus helped. “He said, ‘Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.’ When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish” (John 21:6). When they got to the shore Jesus had a fired prepared and they ate together. A friend mourns when we mourn. When his friend Lazarus died, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). He wept alongside Lazarus’ sisters. He wept even though he knew he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. This says something important about Jesus. He cares about the struggles in our lives. He cares even if they are momentary. He’s not afraid to step into those challenging moments with us. He is not far off; he is near and cares. He cares a lot. I know this because he said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And then he lived it by dying on the cross for us – his friends.

 

Whether we realize it or not, we are influenced by our friends. While we all have had friends at times in our lives that have probably not been the greatest influence, in Jesus we have a friend that will never lead us astray. Indeed, we should aspire to be like Jesus. I’m afraid though that some stop here. They just try to be like Jesus. Doing so though overestimates us and underestimates him. When we just try to be like Jesus, or even for those that aren’t trying to follow Jesus but just want to do good and be good people, we find out that we can never quite measure up. We always feel that we could be doing more. We feel guilty. What’s most frustrating too is that, at times, we see the vision of where we want to get to and how we want to live. But it’s an elusive mirage. A mirage that will always exist unless we realize that Jesus is not just our friend, he is our God too.

 

Friends tell us the truth – even if it hurts sometimes. In Mark 7:21-23, Jesus said, “For it is from within, out of a person's heart, that evil thoughts come – sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” There’s the problem. Our gaze is off. While we are staring at the mirage of the good we want to do and feel we should do, Jesus tells us that we should be looking at our hearts. We don’t need to try harder to do good. We need our hearts to be changed. If Jesus was friend and role model only, we would be desperately in trouble. But he’s God too. And he performed the heart transplant we need by dying on the cross and rising again. Furthermore, he offers us his Holy Spirit to live within us and enable us to live the life we aspire to but cannot create on our own. 

 

Having Jesus as friend and God and allowing him to change us. This is what being a Christian is. A quote that I love that speaks to this comes from Michael Ramsden, “I don’t know what you may think being a Christian is, but if you think being a Christian is thinking certain things, experiencing certain things, or doing certain things, you haven’t got to the heart of the gospel. Being a Christian is meeting the person of Jesus Christ. It is encountering him. It is allowing him to change us, that we then become a new creation in him. He changes us.” Will you let him be your friend? Will you let him be your God? Will you let him make you into a new creation?