The Day I Met Jesus – 9/17/2017

WARNING PREACHY…

There are certain things that will change the course of our lives in an instant; a marriage, the birth of our children, a near death experience, or a debilitating illness.  Then there are other things that slowly change the course of our lives such as education, community influence, social norms, and the like.  Each will drastically influence our beings and make us become what we become.

I am not devoid of such influences.  I know that I am a direct-result of the parenting that did or didn’t go into me, a product of my education and social influences, as well as a montage of messed-up ideas beat into my psyche by Hollywood and other media influences.  If I act like my parents raising me in Michigan’s thumb and being educated in a blue-collar community didn’t influence the trajectory of my life, I would be a fool.  In fact, try as I might to change it, I can’t seem to completely transition from a blue-collar mentality into a while-collar one; it’s jsut too deeply rooted into my blood.

But there was a time in my life when I was completely, and permanently, changed: the day when I met the Jesus.

When I met Jesus, I mean really met Him, I met the most kind and gentle person ever.  He is one of those people that you can’t help liking.  Just being with Him is comforting, sort of like how I felt safe knowing that nobody would get through my earthly father to cause me harm when I was a kid.  And He is gently-firm, sort of like how a dad demands a child’s best when they learn a new sport and a mother who comforts the child as they feel the pain of diligent practice.  He is also faithful, mainly faithful (possibly), sort of like how I used to come home long after a night of gluttonous intoxication and kick the dog before I passed out only to awake to find the dog snuggled close awaiting my return to sobriety.  His attributes are too many to list and will take more than the rest of life time to explore but when I met Him, really met Him, I was utterly and forever changed.

Colossians 2:9-10

⁹ For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, ¹⁰ and in Christ you have been brought to fullness.

The day I met Jesus I learned one very important lesson: He is not really like what I had always been told that He was like.  What I appreciated most was that He was not as petty as most of the Christian people in my life were.  I know this because I learned that He is not as petty as I often am.  And this makes me happy.

Want an exercise?  Write down on a piece of paper all the attributes of Jesus as you can think of in one column, then in the next, read the Book of Colossians (Only 4 Chapters) and write down all the attributes of Jesus that the Apostle Paul attributes to Him: then compare both lists.  Odds are you will kdiscover that you have never really met Jesus before.

And when you are finished, take the time to seek Him, the Jesus that Paul introduces to you.