Real Relationship. Real Discipleship.

Jesus said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”   Luke 5:4b-5

What does it mean to be in real relationship with a living, and personal God? What does it mean to be a real disciple of Jesus? We catch a glimpse of this reality in the short passage above. First, what does it mean to be in relationship with a real, and living God who desires personal relationship with you and I? Consider this: If I were to never allow my wonderful wife to contradict me, would we have a real loving relationship? Of course not; she would simply have to comply with all my ideas, and always say yes to my demands and views, and in that would experience hell on earth. To have a real relationship is to allow the living God to contradict your ideas, life experience, and understanding. Peter was faced with this above. Peter no doubt grew up fishing, and was a commercial fisherman. He knew when, where, and how to fish. He had experience. And the first thing that Jesus does, is contradict him, and his experience. So the first step in growing in real relationship with Jesus is to allow him to contradict your ideas about what it means to live, to love, and to thrive. Do you readily accept some parts of God’s Word (the Bible), and reject others? Do you catch yourself saying something like, “Oh, I know this isn’t right, but God understands.” What you have simply done is created your own God, and not allowed the true and living God to contradict you. We all do this in different areas of our lives don’t we? And this is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus: When Jesus comes into your life, like Peter above, He always will contradict you in some fashion, and like Peter, cause you to choose; Jesus, or your own experience? What areas in your life do you not allow God to contradict you? Do you recognize that by doing so, you are simply creating your own God that is submissive to your ideas and personal experience? Do you want to grow more as a disciple of Jesus? What do we do then? We, even in the face of doubt like Peter above, submit to His word, and repent of our idolatry, and allow God to be God. You’ll find that as Jesus takes the helm of your life once again, that you’ll experience freedom and a closeness that your heart yearns for!

Here’s to allowing the living and eternal God to contradict us, and make us more and more like His Son Jesus Christ as we repent, and submit to Him!

Prepare The Way

And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight...’”   Luke 3:3,4a

If you and I could be transported back to the time in which John begins his prophetic preaching of repentance and judgment, what kinds of things would we see God’s people doing, and involved with? You would see a nation lacking repentance, a corrupted priesthood, a lack of sound doctrine, routine useless worship, divorce was widespread; social justice was being totally ignored, and God’s people generally could care less about one another, let alone the world around them. Sound familiar? How did this happen? 

You see, the Jews John was exhorting to repent had, as Paul would put it, “The appearance of godliness, but denied its power.”  (2Tim 3:5) You see, these are a people who have been exposed to God, His Word, and have built for themselves forms of godliness that contain no power. The reality is, that exposure to God’s Word does not mean experience of God’s power in your life practically. You can go to church as the Jews above were doing. You can worship. You can listen to teaching after teaching, exposing yourself to God’s Word. But exposure doesn’t equal experience. So how do we gain, and experience the reality of what God’s Word says? It’s the same thing that John says, and Jesus will say, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand!” 

The only way to really experience God’s power in your life, is to live a life of repentance of sin, turning away from the sin, and allowing the wondrous grace and mercy of Jesus Christ to overwhelm the heart and constrain the actions. 

So the question for you is this: “What forms of godliness in your life is Jesus pointing out that need to be repented of?”  Paul would go on to say about the people in the last days that they are, “Always learning and never able to arrive at the knowledge of truth.” Have you spent an inordinate amount of your life simply being exposed to God’s Word, and have thought in error that it equates to experience? The word to us is repent. Seek Jesus today. Seek to experience the reality of what His Word declares!

Prepare the way if the Lord!