Growing in knowing does mean starting from a place of not knowing.
This is a reassuring truth. It’s a truth that should keep us humble. It should keep us humble because we are not in charge of the knowing or even the growing. All we’re ever really in charge of is our attitude to the process. Will we receive it with the desire to learn, or will we approach it in defiance, or disdain or disinterest?
This is a lesson I continue to learn when it comes to considering Jesus.
Jesus was presented as a good man that was here to save me. Save me from what? Oh save me from the wrong that I did. So I should approach Him as a Saviour.
OK, I can get my head around that. I can see why He deserves a lot of praise for that.
Then after that, He’s also the Way, the Truth and the Life and no one can come to the Father but through Him. So as life is about connecting with our Creator, Christ is crucial for that process. I cannot know the Creator without knowing Christ. Not only that but Christ reveals who the Father is. So if I want to know the Father, I look to Jesus.
OK, I think I’m getting my head around that. God is the great one. I got to know God. Yet He’s is so mighty and beyond me that He has revealed Himself through Jesus.
So far I’m looking in one direction – and that’s up. Up to know who God is. Up to see that I know who God is through Jesus.
Then, however, something remarkable happens. I am presented with a mirror and encouraged on a regular basis to answer the question, “Who do you see?” That’s a plainly ridiculous question, because all I see is me. Warts and all. Sure there may be one or two decent points, but I’m also only too aware of those flaws and failings.
What’s this? I’m not looking properly? What do you mean I’m not looking properly?
Because Jesus is supposed to be seen in the reflection. Not only did He present who God is to me, He also lived in a way to show what it meant to be truly human. When God made man in His own image, Jesus is here to present that for me to behold. The idea being as I behold the image, so I become more and more what I see in the mirror. And who I see in the mirror is not supposed to be that old me at all. What I’m supposed to see over time as the light of Jesus shines through me is Jesus Himself expressing true humanity in me. All the help I need is given through His Spirit generously poured into me, to fill me and lead me and direct me. Everything necessary is at hand.
It is just for the daily ongoing commitment to rely totally on Jesus, so I can experience the reality of true humanity. The reflection of the Creator in whose image I am made. It is just for that to take place and incrementally for that transformation to be worked in me.
Hmmmmmmmmmm … that’s an even bigger deal than the other two because it is to say that there are clear implications to my daily living. Thanks to the Saviour, I no longer have to live in captivity. Thanks to God, I am set free from everything that previously hindered me. What glorious news about such glorious freedom. Yet the even more amazing deal is that I have been liberated to grow in knowing Jesus and that type of knowing is with the understanding that Jesus shows me who God is and exemplifies for me what it is to be truly human.
Wowsers.
It’s going to take a while for that to really sink in. Like a lifetime.
Which is why it’s good that this life is thing is about growing in knowing.
(Photo by Jiri Rotrekl on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 