Do You Really Need Jesus?

How much do you need Jesus? Are you struggling with addiction? Are you still unemployed? Are you embroiled in a custody battle that is taking its toll on your children? Are you serving out a life sentence in prison? Are you serving a life sentence to cancer? Have you lost your mother? Have you lost your son? Do you expect me to say, "You really need Jesus!" You do, but the fact of the matter is you don't need him any more or any less than I do.

Here's the deal. We ALL need Jesus. We need Him, His blood, His redeeming work at the cross in order that we might be reconciled to God. We need His resurrection --His being the "firstfruits of many" -- to guarantee what awaits us. Got that, you say. But there's more! Once we've gotten to the place where we are trusting Him for salvation and anticipating our resurrection after death, He continues to do things for us --and not things that are dependent upon our circumstances. 

For instance, let's suppose I am saved, but I'm broke. Jesus doesn't materialize some long lost relative who wants to bless me with a million dollars or a lake front cabin. Or maybe He does. Either way, it doesn't mean I need Him more or less than someone --maybe that long lost relative --who has been born again and already has those things. What Jesus does is work in my heart, in my life; He blesses those who seek Him with spiritual wealth, not necessarily generational wealth. He is my example. He is my teacher. He is my intercessor and mediator. He is my friend who never leaves me or forsakes me. His will and His ways are the rock on which I build my life: His work at the cross has changed and continues to change everything about me! And whatever happens on this earth, whatever my circumstances may be, are at His discretion. That long lost relative of mine may just have everything I want, or I might have everything he wants, but so long as we both have Jesus working in us every moment of the day, we both have everything we need. 

So, the sun may sit high in the sky, the test results may return negative, our bank account may be full and our children may be happy. But none of these things negates my need for my Savior. I'm good, today, Jesus. Go help someone else and check back with me tomorrow. Maybe I'll have something for you to do. In the words of the Apostle Paul, God forbid! In Jesus Christ we live and move and have our being. Apart from Him we can do nothing. Jesus holds all things together. Imagine if You sent Him packing! There is no day, there are no circumstances in which we do not need this Savior of ours. Praise God, He has made Himself available to all who will receive Him! And we all really need Him. 

Midweek: The Body of Christ

Happy Wednesday! As someone who attends one of the many wonderful churches in our world, I'd like to share with you, by way of Frederick Buechner's thoughts, what I, too, believe is the "what the Body of Christ is all about." Originally published in his book, Whistling in the Dark, Buechner's characterization may just encourage you to get yourself to a fellowship sometime soon. I pray it does.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS or A.A. is the name of a group of men and women who acknowledge that addiction to alcohol is ruining their lives. Their purpose in coming together is to give it up and help others do the same. They realize they can't pull this off by themselves. They believe they need each other, and they believe they need God. The ones who aren't so sure about God speak instead of their Higher Power. 

When they first start talking at a meeting, they introduce themselves by saying, "I am John. I am an alcoholic," "I am Mary. I am an alcoholic," to which the rest of the group answers each time in unison, "Hi, John," "Hi, Mary." They are apt to end with the Lord's Prayer or the Serenity Prayer. Apart from that they have no ritual. They have no hierarchy. They have no dues or budget. They do not advertise or proselytize. Having no buildings of their own, they meet wherever they can. 

Nobody lectures them, and they do not lecture each other. They simply tell their own stories with the candor that anonymity makes possible. They tell where they went wrong and how day by day they are trying to go right. They tell where they find the strength and understanding and hope to keep trying. Sometimes one of them will take special responsibility for another—to be available at any hour of day or night if the need arises. There's not much more to it than that, and it seems to be enough. Healing happens. Miracles are made. 

You can't help thinking that something like this is what the Church is meant to be... Sinners Anonymous. "I can will what is right but I cannot do it," is the way Saint Paul put it, speaking for all of us. "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do" (Romans 7:19).  

"I am me. I am a sinner." 

"Hi, you." 

Hi, every Sadie and Sal. Hi, every Tom, Dick, and Harry. It is the forgiveness of sins, of course. It is what the Church is all about. 

No matter what far place alcoholics end up in, either in this country or virtually anywhere else, they know that there will be an A.A. meeting nearby to go to and that at that meeting they will find strangers who are not strangers to help and to heal, to listen to the truth and to tell it. That is what the Body of Christ is all about....  

~ Frederick Buechner

from Whistling in the Dark

John 3:16

Several years ago, a coworker helped her daughter pack up a tiny, fuel-efficient, affordable car, and sent her on her way to a university several hours from their home. It was the day of which they had both dreamed. My coworker had worked extra hours and saved to help her daughter reach for the stars; her daughter had studied hard, getting good grades and working to receive scholarships. All to lay hold of their dream. In the weeks that followed, her daughter struggled. Classes, relationships, living arrangements, even the foods which now were a part of her life were unfamiliar and unwelcoming. Additionally, she'd been victim to bullying in her dorm, bullying that invaded and corrupted what was supposed to be her safe space, her study space, her space for pleasant social interactions. This young woman was so hurt, so alone, and so discouraged; her mental and physical health began to decline. At the end of the first semester, my coworker jumped in her car, drove to that university, withdrew her daughter, packed her up, and brought her home. My heart broke for them both. I thought of them as I was reading John 3 the other day.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. ~ John 3:16

If you're of a certain age, you might right now be picturing the guy in the rainbow wig with the John 3:16 sign. Or you might be thinking of a football player known for painting John 3:16 in eye black on his cheeks. Whatever it is, take a moment, get those things out of your head and then, let's look at this verse with fresh perspective. There is much more to learn here than just what is written in black and white.

For one, God's love. We are so loved. Well, of course, the verse says that. But not just "so loved" as a child spreads his arms and declares, I love you thiiiis much! We are loved in depth, in weight, and in this manner. We are loved with a love that only a perfectly just, perfectly merciful, perfectly mighty God who is Himself love, can love. What we have here on earth, even the best examples --the cute little couple married sixty-five years who still hold hands and give each other adoring glances, the mother who cradles and weeps unconsolably over her stillborn child --a child whose voice she never heard or smile she never got to see, the doctor who leaves a profitable practice and treats communicable diseases in remote parts of the world --these examples pale in comparison to the love of Love. We are loved in this manner: God gave His child, gave Himself, and that Child laid down His life willingly so that those who mock Him, despise Him, reject Him, defy Him might never say they were not given opportunity, might never be without opportunity to live in His love forever. His love for us knows no bounds and is demonstrated by incalculable sacrifice.

Homesickness. Jesus, God's Son, left the heavenly realm in exchange for homelessness, persecution, sickness, the human frailty and limitations of growing up in this world under the authority of humanly frail and limited parents; He left His throne room for a front row seat to the jealousy of power-hungry elites who deceived the people He so loved, and being imbedded in enemy territory, surrounded by sin and those not yet reconciled to God, He walked among the sick and demon-possessed. Imagine how homesick He would become; but God the Father gave, and God the Son obeyed in full.

Hurt. "...that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." His life, given in exchange for us. His Father watched and grieved the punishment of One that many would be made righteous; the only sufficient Sacrifice, that mankind might be reconciled with the God from Whom sin had separated us. Jesus was betrayed and abandoned, beaten and bruised, slandered and humiliated, stripped and spat on, ultimately suffocating on a cross, a symbol of the world's judgment. In my place. In your place. Unimaginable physical and mental anguish.

Death. Of course, John 3:16 mentions death: those who believe do not perish. But what is not specifically noted is that Jesus died in body that we might live in spirit; Jesus was resurrected as the Firstfruits of many; a promise, a guarantee that we will be resurrected as well. Jesus knew death as no one else has, and He understands the death of relationships, the death of a loved one, the death of a dream.

As I mentioned, years have passed. My former coworker's daughter has embraced a new dream: marriage and motherhood, and she is thriving! We parents want to protect our children from the terrible and the painful; we want them to be courageous and go as far as their imaginations will take them --so long as things work out and they don't get hurt. But we can't always be there; we can't always ride in and pull them out. The greatest thing we can do is encourage them and pray them toward a relationship with a loving, sacrificial, relatable Savior God; One who carries us through those tougher times, those days we are homesick and hurting, those days when we watch our dreams die, those days when the love of God seems to be not so so. As your children begin to prepare for another school year, do not neglect prayer, do not neglect those times of easy conversation about the God of John 3:16, the God who loves so, the God who understands, the God who will be with them forever.

Photo Courtesy Steven Ganski, Jr.