My Jesus Syndrome
My
Jesus Syndrome
Revelation 1
Colossians 1:15-19
John 1:1-18
John 13: 13-14 “You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say
well, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher,
have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
Romans 10:9 “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and
shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt
be saved.”
Syndrome: a
group of signs and symptoms that occur together and characterize a particular
abnormality or condition
As reported, President Roosevelt would not
shoot the little bear when he was on a hunting trip. So today we have Teddy Bears. They have become cute, snuggly things our
children take to bed with them. My dad chased
a bear out of our camp while we were on canoe trip near Canada. At the Ely, Minnesota city dump they used to
work as scavengers. I saw a man shoot a
grizzly bear on YouTube. Horror stories can fill the papers as campers have met
these ferocious beasts on hiking trails.
Bears kill people. Teddy would
be more life-like if they drew red fangs on him.
Do we put the fuzzies on
Jesus as we do Teddy? In our recent push
for the Church to know Her savior as their personal God, have we softened Him
up? Little Jesus stays in the manger as
our children remember Him this way. The
terrible image of Revelation 1 is not shown.
John fell down and with good reason.
If Jesus were soft, a malady
of ills would follow. A syndrome of
symptoms would stem from such a poor understanding. Oh, He is our big brother conqueror who will
come to our aid, but what of the other days of the year?
Jesus said to know Him as
Lord. We are to confess Him as
Lord. We are to understand His power to
create everything and hold all things together.
To get snuggly with Him takes extreme understanding. I recently got a new boss. All is ‘ok’ if we have one
understanding. He is my boss. I call him sir. If he says ‘jump’, I say how ‘how high?’ Once we have this relationship, then we can
kid around knowing he has the ultimate say.
Do I kid around with
Jesus? Certainly! We laugh together. I kid and tell the Father that if He was a good
father, He wouldn’t let the food burn on the stove. Sometimes I walk out my house door and yell
up in the air, “Hey, I didn’t order rain!”
We can joke. He is Lord. Yet, there are other times I cautiously
approach His thrown in prayer becoming aware of His ‘bigness’ and my ‘smallness.’
He is the God of lightning,
tornados, hurricanes, and what Elijah saw from his cave’s mouth. God can rent rocks then melt them to
flow. He is a terrible God demanding
respect even from His children. When I
know He gives spankings, the mushy syndrome of milk toasty discipline is driven
far from me.
Hebews
12:6 “For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.”
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