This past week a few friends came to visit and we had such a thought provoking conversation on how our personal journeys and lives up to this stage, had contributed to our communication of the gospel … or so we thought! It is obvious that if we have shared experiences, that such common ground can create opportunity to connect with others. Looking for something you have in common with someone else is a great strategy in making contact or starting a relationship. Sharing parts of you live, your personal journey, can also be a great way of testifying to the love of God and we should never discount the value of an honest account of God’s goodness in our lives.
Testimonies are great as a means of pointing towards the substance. However, the substance of our message is more than our personal journeys in life and more than God’s personal dealings with us. Ultimately, the substance of our message is an introduction to the person of Christ or our message has no substance at all. This gospel is more than the story of God’s involvement in my life so far, or your life so far. God wants to overwhelm us with the reality of His presence to such an extent that the past becomes irrelevant! Even the good memories, the testimonies of God’s goodness can become stale if our awareness of His very present reflection within us, is somehow lost.
There is a place of awareness – Paul called it the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord – that makes every other type of knowledge, discussion or perceived wisdom, irrelevant. Yesterday, today and tomorrow do not add or subtract from who He is. God is, long before time as we know it began. We may use the temporal and stories from our lives to point towards Christ, but he will always be greater and better than what the temporal can contain. He is Himself the content of the gospel and as such the gospel is more than stories about Him, it is the power of God unto salvation.
When Jesus prayed one of the last recorded prayers before His certain death, His words were not nostalgic regarding the past nor were they simply focused on the future, but the power of His testimony was found in its relevance to this moment. Hear what He said and notice the immediacy of His thought.
I have given them the glory You have given Me.
May they be one as We are one.
I am in them and You are in Me.
May they be made completely one,
so the world may know You have sent Me
and have loved them as You have loved Me.
Father, I desire those You have given Me
to be with Me where I am.
Then they will see My glory,
which You have given Me
because You loved Me before the world’s foundation. John 17:22-24
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“He disappeared from our midst that we would return to our hearts and find Him there” …He is not far off, let us encounter Him – right now, He is a present reality!
Today, please listen,
don’t turn a deaf ear . . .Heb 4:7
His reference to Moses was not, the many magnificent miracles He performed to save them from Egypt, nor the attraction of Canaan, but “I am!”
He is our great reward its really all about Him . Jn 17 is the invitation to be lost in Him.The fellowship of the Godhead is to be lost in one another .I in them , you in me that WE All maybe ONE….Fellowship the highest form of prayer where we find ourselves in the focus of Another….
Awesome. Once one has intimately known Him, no form of religious activity or for that matter, any activity, can compare.
“A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, But to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet” Pr 27:7
John 10:10 – The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
Hi Alan
Abundant life – reminds me of Eccl 5:20 “God deals out joy in the present, the now.” (MSG). Another translation says: “You will not think much of times gone past for God will keep you busy with the joy of your heart”