Can we be friends? ♡♡♡

"Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." - John 14:6-7

Hey everyone, it's me again. Happy new week, happy belated Easter (I know I'm super late with this) and I'm sure you're all looking forward to continuing the celebration into Mother's Day that is coming up over the next couple of weeks.

This Monday, I'd like to follow-up from my wife's stupendous post from last week with a bit on an introspective reflection. It was a subject that popped up during a discussion between Seun and I, one that I've been carrying and mulling over for the past few weeks. It's a pretty important subject too, one that I think relates to all of us as Christians and self-professing followers or disciples of the Lord Jesus. In fact, I would go so far as to say it's pretty critical to our Christian growth and development, shaping in large part not only the trajectory that our lives take, but also who we are and will eventually become in this our short time on Earth.

It really boils down to a simple question... Who are we following? - Of course our knee-jerk reaction to this will be "Christ" or "God", but if we're to be really honest with ourselves and if we're courageous enough to dig a little deeper, I think for some of us at least, we might find a very different answer to what we initially thought.

Many of us will know well this passage of scripture [see focal scripture] and I'm sure on the surface, all of us would stubbornly insist that we believe it wholeheartedly. And I'm sure that is true in a large part. But for some of us, if we really start to be honest with ourselves, we will recognise that perhaps we haven't really grasped the truth of what Jesus is saying here; especially in verse 7. Many of us through the many years of living as believers, reading and studying vigorously the Holy Scriptures, will have a very strong knowledge of the bible, and we will know of God and the many incredible things He did as recorded in the historical texts of the Bible. Many of us will be able to recite many passages of scripture by heart and even quote the book, chapter and verse of any scripture we hear or read. But if we honestly sit down and question ourselves, can we really say we know God?

The children of Israel thought they knew God. They thought they knew God more than all of the other nations and peoples of the world; as God's chosen people, they were destined to be special in God's sight and eventually even on the world stage. Which is why at the time of Jesus there was so much anticipation for the coming Messiah, the Anointed One of God, who was prophesied to come and deliver Israel out from their affliction under the iron rule of the Roman Empire.... Or so they thought.

...and that's kinda the point. They thought they knew God, they thought they knew everything there was to know about God such that they were able to accurately identify His messiah when the time came. And yet, lo and behold, when the time came, not only were they not able to recognise Jesus, in their jealously and hatred, the Jewish leaders persecuted and eventually killed him.

You see, the fact is that we can also be like this. We can get so caught up in our religiosity, that we replace the inspiring and life-giving adventure of getting to know Jesus through a loving, intimate relationship with him, with ritualistic works that are wholly done to make us feel more accepted by God; all the while professing to believe the scriptures that tells us God's love and acceptance of us is not predicated on our works but the singular work that Jesus completed on the cross for our sakes because of his great love for us.

For some of us, it's not even just ritualistic works that rob us from the enrichment of getting to know the Lord on a personal level. For some of us, it's just plain outright idolatry of a kind, wherein instead of us following Jesus, we expend our every effort on all things pertaining to our faith in God, following a natural (fallible) human man (or woman) that we esteem or admire.

The Apostle Paul recognized this in his first letter to the young church in Corinth. He also corrected it:

You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarrelling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere human beings? What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. - 1Co 3:3-6

So why then do so many of us wax lyrical about our favourite preacher or minister of the gospel or father in the faith, more so even than we do about Jesus and how much he's done for us? My wife challenged me with a powerful quote this morning. It goes like this:

                              "Some of us talk more about Jesus than we do to him"...

Wow! So true, right?! And equally, I would expand this to add that some of us speak about Christian men and women in the faith, and the very human words they speak, more so than the very blessed and life-giving words of our Lord Jesus. We've gotta admit, it's a little tragic, but it can be true for all of us from time to time.

It's funny too, because in this, we're not unlike the children of Israel, who not only were guilty of this in Jesus's time, but even long before that in the old testament. Let's take a look:

When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as Israel's leaders. The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. But his sons did not follow his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice. So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, "You are old, and your sons do not follow your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have. "But when they said, "Give us a king to lead us," this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: "Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. - 1 Sa 8:1-8

The prophet we all know as Samuel, was actually the last in the line of Jewish political leaders who presided over Israel, as what they called "Judges". These were the people who governed the affairs of the nation of Jewish people. The judge at this time was in effect a prophet who led the people as Moses did, hearing from God directly and administrating the affairs of the nation in line with God's leadership. - 

In rejecting God as their leader, the people instead wanted to place themselves in service to an earthly king. And even in the church today, we can be like this when we start to place people in the position of a shepherd over the affairs of our lives.

With Jesus's victory over death, his ascension and provision of the gift of his Holy Spirit, Jesus dismantled the old protocol that required a priesthood to stand "in the gap" between God and the people. Jesus suffered excruciating torment during both his journey to and time on the cross so that through the Spirit, you and I can have direct access to God the Father through the Son, Jesus.

So why would we ever want to forego such an amazing gift, and replace that with a human surrogate or even worse, lifeless religious works that only result in us feeling more empty inside? Let's return to our first love, brethren. Let us give Jesus his proper place in our hearts and begin to actively and daily cultivate a continuous conversation and ultimately friendship with the God-man, our saviour and the lover of our souls.

              Have an amazing week walking alongside him and resting in his loving embrace.

Love.

Wale...