Getting Personal

I sat looking at the sky through the huge window at the front of our church in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was Easter Sunday, 1991. At one point in the sermon, Skip Ryan asked a question that travelled like an arrow from his mouth to the center of my heart:

"Are you having a relationship with Jesus Christ, or are you having a relationship with a set of facts about Him?"

I wanted to avoid the answer, but I could not deny the truth. I loved Christianity more than I loved Christ Himself. I loved it as the Truth. I loved it as the perfect solution to mankind's estrangement from God. I had a zeal for Christianity as a system of belief. But that isn't all I had. I had experienced God's power at work in my life. He had healed me. He had led me. He had drawn me. He had empowered and used me to teach others. Sometimes I even heard God speak to me - not audibly, but deep within my spirit. But for all of this, there was still a disconnect with the Person of Jesus.

Growing up with a believing mom and an unbelieving step-dad had not been helpful. Mom faithfully took us to Sunday School and church each week. These were solid, Bible-believing churches that talked about "inviting Jesus into your heart" and "having a personal relationship with Christ." But from Sunday afternoon until the following Sunday morning, Jesus was absent from our lives. We did not talk to Him, not even before meals or at bedtime. Nor did we talk about Him. The only time I heard His name mentioned was as an expletive. I had no example for bringing Him into my normal, everyday life.

As a result, Jesus never rose from the pages of my Sunday School literature. I thought of Him as the person who had lived hundreds of years earlier, the one who healed and fed people, then died on the cross. Although I celebrated Easter every spring, and understood that He had risen from the dead and ascended to heaven, I never thought of Him as alive. He was a character in a story. A story that, on one level, I believed to be true and had defended passionately as the only truth.   

Even after that Easter sermon in 1991, I spent many years avoiding thinking about Jesus too specifically. I clung to control over my life, hoping I could serve God while keeping Him at a safe distance. Maybe this is easier to do psychologically if God is only Spirit. Jesus suffered. Jesus died. Jesus is the One who calls me to do the same. Jesus is the One I will stand before face-to-face to give an account for how I have lived. For this reason, Jesus is a greater threat if I am not surrendered to Him as Lord.

I am learning to know and love Jesus. I am beginning to relate to Him as a real person. I am praying daily that God will continue to work to bring the knowledge and the experience I have of Him together in my heart and mind. I have by no means arrived, but I am incredibly grateful to have begun.