Knowing Him

In Philippians 3.10 Paul wrote, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death..”  Several times I have been at a place where I knew that I knew that my relationship with Jesus was lacking.  I knew God and the Holy Spirit so much more than the Son.  There was a longing in my very being to understand, to know, Jesus in better ways than I did. 

This is not to say that I had skipped the Gospels or overlooked the prophetic words written about Jesus.  But I felt a deep, almost empty hole where I should have been filled with Him, that friendship that comes through time spent together really trying to know someone.  I knew of His miracles, His suffering, His resurrection, but I wanted MORE!  So when I found myself finished with reading through the Bible several months early, I decided to do make my own “red letter edition” of Jesus’ words.  I started in Matthew and worked my way through revelation.  I do my Bible reading online, so I was able to copy and paste passages that contained His words.  Then I would go back and change the font color to red on all the words Jesus actually spoke.

As I did this, I got to see Him interacting with people and His Father more intimately.  I also made notes about what I observed.  Some of my observations were…

·        Jesus knew how to have a good time and recognized that there was a time for fasting, too.

·        One of the things Jesus did while He was here was show the God-flavors and God-colors in our world.

·        Sometimes Jesus made remarks out loud that I don't understand why He did, like when he said in Luke 9.41,   “What a generation! No sense of God! No focus to your lives! How many times do I have to go over these things? How much longer do I have to put up with this?"  I guess He got frustrated just like me.

·        "I can’t do a solitary thing on my own: I listen, then I decide."  Jesus got to decide what to do with what the Father told him; so do I.

·        Jesus expressed how powerful our words are, "The simple moral fact is that words kill."  I love that!

·        Jesus liked the beach and mountains. :)

If you want to try this simple way to focus in on Jesus, you can go to www.biblegateway.com, pick the version of the Bible you want to read, then start your journey in the book of Matthew.