Starting the New Year with Jesus

Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. (John 17:3)

So call me late, tardy, belated. I just happened to finish Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz for the first time yesterday and it was a great way finish the first of January and start the next 365 days. The last five chapters of the book happened to be appropriately and respectively on money, worship, love of others, love of self and concluding with Jesus. 

A few years ago, I began listening to Bill Johnson out of the Bethel Church in Redding, California. I would follow the podcasts and have even seen him speak a few times. But one thing that has always stuck with me about Bill is when he speaks of Jesus. It's not the kind of thing where he just reads stories about Jesus in the Bible, but when Bill speaks of Jesus, tears come to his eyes, he chokes up and he reaches the point where he pauses and can't speak like his Adam's apple has gotten stuck in his throat. All because of Jesus. 

I remember thinking to myself, I want that. It has happened every now and then. But in the last few months, I have been secretly on this journey with Jesus to reach that place. Because He is that loving, that good, and that in love with me and all of us.

Don Miller writes in Blue Like Jazz, "I think the most important thing that happens within Christian spirituality is when a person falls in love with Jesus". He goes on to say that Christian spirituality is like jazz music—it's about feeling and loving Jesus is something you feel, "difficult to get on paper...but no less real, no less meaningful, no less beautiful". Good for me because I love jazz and to watch and hear the spontaneity of the melodies, rhythms and musicians all coming together to create something different every time.

The thing is, Jesus is alive, not dead. God even chided me recently for reflecting too much of this image I had in my head of him on a cross. In that moment, He wanted me to realize He was alive and engaging my life, right now. And He's doing the same with all of us. It's a present-tense journey we have with Him. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, the Bible is a history book of our faith, full of past-tense stories of our faith, but we aren't to rest there and leave it there because Father, Jesus and Holy Spirit are meeting us today in the hear and now.

I hope I can encourage us all to fall in love with Jesus. Maybe we have to fall in love again or maybe we are about to do it for the first time. Just remember, while I want what I see in Bill Johnson, this kind of love is not about shedding tears, tearing our clothes and doing whatever it is we do to feel religious. Real love of Jesus come from the realization that He loves you, me and the annoying neighbor, the rude co-worker, the lesbian couple that can't keep their hands off each other, the meth addicts who always asks for money outside the post office and the modern-day pharisees ready to crucify Him all over again. 

I want us all to know Jesus this year. If you haven't done it in awhile, pray and talk to Jesus. Ask Him to become real to you. Ask Him to forgive you of self-addiction. Ask Him to put a song in your heart. Much love and blessing to us all on this journey into 2010.

"All great characters in stories are the ones who give their lives to something bigger than themselves. And in all of the stories I don't find anyone more noble than Jesus. He gave His life for me, in obedience to His Father. I truly love Him for it. I feel that, and so does Laura and Penny and Rick and Tony the Beat Poet. I think the difference in my life came when I realized, after reading those Gospels, that Jesus didn't just love me out principle; He didn't just love me because it was the right thing to do. Rather, there was something inside me that cause Him to love me."
(Blue Like Jazz)