Relevance
Relevance
Knowing Jesus and walking with him daily bring relevance to every thought and intent of the heart. I have walked with him nearly five decades now. Even as I say that, I find it almost impossible to believe. When I think of the self-rejection and alienation I felt before and the incredible worth God has placed upon my life, I am humbled by his call. When I think back to the things I hated then and love now, the contrast is unimaginable. I hated reading. Today I can hardly wait to get to the books I so dearly long to read, the history of thought, of philosophy of religion, but most of all, to those books that draw me nearer to God.
Indeed, the great mystics fascinate me as well. I recommend the finest volume I have read that pulls together the best-known Christian mystics, a book titled Water from a Deep Well by Gerald L. Sittser. From Bernard of Clairvaux to John of the Cross, there is a gold mine here for thought, for reflection, for example, and for sensing God’s near and dear presence. One statement in the book that caught my attention is: “The prayer of silence is not natural. Our attempts to pray this kind of prayer will expose how trivial and superficial our thoughts are, how noisy our world is, how inattentive we are to the reality of God’s presence.”3
The message of Jesus is totally relevant in connecting the greatest distance in life—the distance from the head to the heart—a journey that each one of us must take. The intellectual rigor of the gospel does not rob us of the mystical and mysterious depths of the very person of God. Charles Haddon Spurgeon said this:
The proper study of the Christian is the God-head. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the doings, and the existence of the great God which he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in the contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity. Other subjects we can comprehend and grapple with; in them we feel a kind of self-content, and go on our way with the thought, “Behold I am wise.” But when we come to this master science, finding that our plumb-line cannot sound its depth, amid that our eagle eye cannot see its height, we turn away with the thought, “I am but of yesterday and know nothing.”4
Knowing this God and having him work in us is the difference between life and death.