The way out

I have a problem from time to time: I forget who Jesus is. I also sometimes forget who I am.

It’s dangerous, you know. It’s one of the reasons I started doing drugs. Had I known, had I really understood the Gospel, I wouldn’t have felt the enormous weight of guilt and shame from which I was trying to escape because it wouldn’t have existed. I’d have known that Jesus loved me anyway, that he bore all that weight so I wouldn’t have to, that I’m actually and finally safe/accepted/loved. And I did, in my head. I knew it. I just didn’t believe it.

How did it happen, you ask? How in the world did I actually start believing it so that things changed? So that I changed?  Well, as I said, I still don’t believe it all the time; but the way I sometimes catch the fleeting glimmers I do is by listening to him, to Jesus.

Somehow, I developed this habit over the years of always reading about him. The Bible was more like a history book instead of Words That Are Alive. From time to time, I would have experiences while reading where it felt like it was really real, but those were few and far between. (To be honest, they still are.)

But when I remember to read as though the things about which I’m reading actually happened, as though Jesus were actually a person, things begin to change. I sit down to read and I imagine the whole scene: there he is in the middle of a crowd, walking from person to person, looking into their eyes and smiling at them, healing them and loving on them, trying to teach them things which most of them totally miss, and this young guy wearing a three-piece suit made from Italian wool and some expensive-looking leather loafers comes up to him, hands in his pockets all casual like, and he says, you know, Hey, I like what you’ve got, so what do I need to do to get it? And Jesus looks at him with that piercing gaze of his, cocks his head to one side, and says, Love God and love your neighbor. And this young, successful, arrogant guy inflates his chest a little and says, Yeah I’m doin pretty well with that actually.

I’m not gonna tell the rest of the story because most of you know it. I’m just trying to say when I read it like that, when I’m listening to him, he’s different. He says stuff that doesn’t make sense. He rarely answers questions directly.

But that’s just it: we know too much. I mean we know, don’t we, that he was answering their hearts, answering their real questions, or what their questions should have been. That’s what you were thinking as you read that last bit, wasn’t it? Try and forget all the stuff you know and just listen.

There was an exercise we did at Wayside – the fifth and final rehab I went to – in which we went through the Gospel of John and summarized every chapter, wrote it down in our own words. That’s when it happened for me. That’s when I met him again.

So my submission to you is that if you find yourself having the same problem – you’ve forgotten who he is, or you just want to change so badly but you can’t – try it. Even if you’ve done it before, do it again. You’ll start to believe he can actually change things. You’ll start to believe he wants to. And actually, he’s so good that you’ll start to change just by getting to know him better.

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.” That’s from the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth, and you know what comes right before it?

“…where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”