Personal Jesus
We have almost made it to the holiday season! Time has flown by here in Massachusetts. We are coming up on 20 weeks since we moved from Arkansas. Even though Massachusetts is becoming more of a home to us, I don’t think that you will be hearing any Boston accents from us when we come to AR for Christmas! We are still in touch with our southern ways ;)
I have been wanting to write a post for a while now. I’ll get started with something, stop, revisit it later and decide to start all over again. But nevertheless, here I am. Being here, I think God has awakened a new love of writing that I never thought I would have, which I am not the best at, but I believe it helps me process. I have my Bachelor’s in Journalism, but I never thought that I would actually get to use it since I made the decision to be a missionary. In my quiet times, God has been pressing me to write. To write my prayers to Him and tell Him my heart. To write down testimonies, small to large. To write about the hard times and the good times. Ever since God first called us to Boston, we have wrote down every single sign from God, every single detail and testimony because we knew there would be days when we would need to look back and remember a few things: 1) That God has called us. 2) How He has been faithful every step of the way. 3) He has a plan for the people of this city and for us.
I have been trying to make writing a daily discipline every day. Today God spoke to me in such a sweet way that I will never forget. This morning I was praying/journaling and I had just wrote down the word “neither.” Thinking about how people say it differently, I thought jokingly “Jesus, how would you say it?” And He said, “I say it like you do.” I was blown away, not because of how he says that word, but I was blown away because I feel like that revealed an intimacy that I haven’t quite wrapped my mind around. I am going to do my best to explain my thoughts, but it may not make sense. When He answered me like that, I felt that Jesus looked like me and that He sounded like me. He reached me in a way that spoke to me louder than any other image I had of Him because I felt like He came down to my level. A personal level, over something quite silly, but yet it resonated with me.
To explain more, later Garrett and I were watching a documentary about a missionary/musician who spent some time Iraq. He was sharing with the children in a refugee camp about the story of Jesus. He was explaining to the children what a manger was & where Jesus was born. The children got excited and immediately related to Jesus. They said “He is like us! That is like where we were born!” Garrett and I had to pause the documentary because we couldn’t stop crying. Jesus is like us. He is so personal to me, to you. He doesn’t always sound proper or like this person who is unrelatable. He can relate to everyone. These children were born into a hard world, in the midst of war, with ISIS hunting them down. They had seen horrible things, yet they could relate with our Savior because He came into this world as a servant. Born in a manger with small beginnings.
“Therefore, it was essential that He had to be made like His brothers (mankind) in every respect, so that He might [by experience] become a merciful and faithful High Priest in things related to God, to make atonement (propitiation) for the people’s sins [thereby wiping away the sin, satisfying divine justice, and providing a way of reconciliation between God and mankind].” -Hebrews 2:17 AMP
“So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.” Hebrews 4:14-16
What a good King. I feel so loved, so seen, so taken care of by Jesus. It all started with asking a silly question, but Jesus heard me and spoke to me in such a deep way today that makes me fall more in love with Him. It makes me want to know Him so much more intimately than I have known Him. And I am excited because we have a lifetime to know Him. Ask Him questions, even the silly ones. You will not be disappointed.
