- John 17:22-23 English Standard Version (ESV)
22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
So I’m pacing back and forth in my garage praying. Wondering how I’m going to write the “My Story” part for my new blog.
I’m not an especially gifted writer. I never know how much detail to go into. Will people even want to read it? Will it be captivating enough? Inviting enough? Will it draw people to want to seek Jesus?
Puffing on my cigar (one of those guilty pleasures I still hang on to), I am struggling to get my story right. For it to make some sense. To make a difference in people’s lives.
Then Jesus walks in (not unusual as he visits me often in my garage) and says, “Hey”. He reads my frustration and asks me if I want to talk about it.
I nod my head and he says, “Okay, sit a spell and tell me about it.”
I sat down and began telling him how I have spent a lot of time and effort trying to figure out how to best write my story. Should I share all the details of my tainted past? What about my anxieties and concerns for the future?
“Jesus, I’m stuck.”
He listened quietly, a faint smile on his face as I told him my clever ideas for how I wanted people to hear my story but that I just couldn’t put them into the right words.
He chuckled a bit (it always infuriates me when he finds humor in my most serious problems).
He said “C’mon son, the problem is you are writing your story. And that’s good. But you’re keeping me in the wings until you feel you need me. You always needed me”. He said, “Your story is my story. Remember I created you, you didn’t create me.”
Oops! Am I being woke?
Okay, being woke’s good, I guess. Although now I felt a bit like My Story was becoming God’s Story and that he wanted all the glory (what, my EGO was breathing hard now). Jesus knew my resentment was growing and he knew what I was thinking.
So he finally, somewhat irritated, barked out, “it is HIS glory, you doofus”. He probably didn’t say it that starkly but that’s how I heard it. I grew quiet. He was silent. Then there was what seemed like a long pause.
He drew closer to me. His arm touching my shoulder, he said in a gentle, calm voice, “Did you not know I was there when you were sexually abused at age 12? I have walked beside you through your addictions to alcohol and pornography.
I saw all your anger, your unfaithfulness in marriage, your cheating and lying.
I wept with you when you were in pain and laughed with you during your happiest times. I even saved you from death on more than one occasion.
“But remember this, my grace never left you. I always loved you.”
He anticipated my next question, “Couldn’t you have stopped those things from happening?” “No, because then I would not be God.”
“Keeping you out of those situations would have meant keeping you out of life. You are no longer in yesterday’s situations.”
But, I protested, “some of those events still haunt me today.” “Hmm, he said, “try to think of it this way….yes, you have scars today but the nails have been removed. I did that for you before there even was a you.“
“Now your job is to let me live in you and for you to live in me. If you do that, you will be able to deal with any past and future wounds and scars. Now pay careful attention, our job is to prepare a place for every person and every nation on this earth in my coming Kingdom.”
I could sort of see where he was coming from. Made some sense.
After all, here I was, nearing my eighth decade on the planet, standing before my God, my Jesus. His presence was so vivid and real. This was the living God, the God that brought the Israelites out of bondage, who gave them safe passage through the Red Sea.
Wow!
So maybe my story really is his glory (trying hard to kick my ego to the curb). Just as he brought his people out from the oppression of Egypt, he brought me out of the darkness of my bondage and pain and led me to a path of healing. Things tend to clear up when the fog lifts. When some light of hope is seen.
That encounter was the one that began to loosen the scales from my eyes. Just as Paul became woke when he met the risen Christ and was a changed man forever, I now, maybe for the first time felt a rising hope well up in me.
I wanted more of this.
I wanted more of God, of Jesus, of the Holy Spirit to fill me. It was not unlike the time in 1971 when I finally got sober. One of the first things I remember seeing, and I mean literally, was the vegetation that surrounded me-the trees, the grass.
How green and alive they were. Had I spent all those years never noticing what was always there?
I remember standing there in awe of God’s creation.
A glimpse of paradise loomed before me.
I have had several encounters with Jesus in my garage since then. Some of them were just me being quiet and listening to his voice. Some of them were spent praying and meditating. A few were near-mystical experiences.
(I may do future blogs on them. Probably should.)
He has told me things like all the scars that he bore should remind us that all the scars we bear from all the slings, arrows and nails that have pierced us can be healed by him residing in us. That I need to stick close to him. When I drift away, he tells me to do an about face and return quickly to his loving, caring arms.
When I allow Jesus to live in me, the scars remain healed. I am comforted so much by this.
But when I move away from God, I return to the precipice of that deep abyss that depression and uncertainty can take me. My inferiorities surface. Doubt and fear creep in. Anxieties and worries about what tomorrow may bring once again dominate my thoughts.
Fear is an animal that once it has its claws in you never wants to let go. I must remember that Jesus is the fear slayer, the doubt caster, the anxiety remover.