If you were walking and talking with Jesus in the flesh, can you imagine his telling you that he’d really like to spend more time with the Father, but He’s just too busy today? Oh, the people who need me today…it’s just overwhelming! I just don’t have time to be still and know that He is my God. What He might instead say to you is, Oh, the people who need me today…it would be overwhelming were I not first to be still and know that He is my God!
Can you imagine Jesus telling you he has a secret sin, and no matter how hard he tries, he just can’t get rid of it? That could have been him since he was truly human. However, that is not who He was. It seems to me the reason he didn’t become that person is that he spent so much time with the Father.
Staying busy has been one of my “greatest” accomplishments in life. Could it be the evil one wants to entice me to accomplish “good things” under my own power? Perhaps in that way he can keep me too busy and distracted to become who God created me to be. Instead, I want my life to reflect the power of God’s love in my every thought, word, and action.
The only way for my life to be a reflection of His love is to continually listen to Him. If I stay too busy doing first one project and then another in a seemingly endless assembly line of projects, then I’ll have great difficulty listening to Him.
Jesus wants me to talk with Him and walk with Him and learn from that everyday walk how to be like Him. If I want to figure out who I am and why I’m here, I must first figure out who He really is and let Him transform me to be more and more like Him.
Jesus not only spent time with the Father, but he also spent a lot of time with messy people. We’re all messy people, but as we say in Celebrate Recovery, God can take our mess and turn it into His message! We’re not allowing Him to do that when we don’t spend time in His presence. Only when you and I are as serious as Jesus about spending time with our “daddy” and attuning our lives to His will—only then will we receive the power from His precious Holy Spirit to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of loving messy people.
Jesus is genuine, humble, loving, and kind. He shows true love to all of us even as he tells us things that are sometimes hard to hear. We can do the same for others but only when we take the time to talk with Him, to walk with Him, to let Him transform us into looking and acting just as He does.
This week post a card on your bathroom mirror with three simple items that will help you on this journey:
- Ask Jesus to give you a greater desire to become like Him.
And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 2 Corinthians 3:18 - Spend as much morning, noon and/or evening time as you can reading/studying God’s Word, even if that’s only a few minutes each day.
Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Psalm 119:97 - Spend time praising God and praying for the needs of at least three people every day this week.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. 1 Peter 3:12
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