What Kind of Jesus Do You Want?

It has never been any different: everyone want Jesus to be what they want Him to be.
Right from the beginning the Jews wanted Jesus to be their political Conquerer, overthrowing the oppressive Roman government. To the medievel Church Jesus was sometimes a means to maintain economic control over whole countries. Today, some nations use Jesus to get 'the conservative vote' when running for office. And on an individual level, the liberal theologian describes Jesus in terms of pure love with few lines between right and wrong and the conservative theologian can sometimes use Jesus as a way of defending harsh judgements of black and white morality without allowing the grace and love Jesus to satisfy the biblical saying 'mercy triumphs over justice'.
You and I want Jesus to help us to hurt no more and we long for him to bless us--sometimes to the point where we have difficulty listening to what HE wants to teach us about himself.

We need to stop, really stop, and make room for Him to reveal to us who He is, what is His heart and how He wants to be known.

True, we have been given the Bible as revelation, but the Bible itself teaches us that we still need the Holy Spirit to 'teach us all things', which says to me that we need to have God's Spirit reveal to us from those pages what we should know.

In Rev. 22:13 Jesus says 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, Beginning and the End'. Here is a good place to start in knowing who Jesus is! We need to remember not to interpret His nature through our political, economic or even personal need first--we need to remember that all existence begins and ends with Him! He is power incarnate and as such deserves our praise and worship. He is most certainly not someone whom I should think that I can manipulate for my personal agendas. Lord, keep us humble....

He is the beginning of my life and will be the end of all life as we know it today. A new life will emerge in human history when the time comes for Jesus to 'make all things new', a promise that He intends to keep!

Jesus- as we live out our daily lives and we begin to be overwhelmed with our circumstances, please forgive us when we forget who you really are when we try to make you into someone we want you to be.

We declare to you today that we trust you enough to believe that you will teach us your true identity and also that who you are is more than we could ever imagine or desire.

We welcome you Jesus--thank you for calling us 'your friends'--it's an honor we can never repay.

BT
Brian M Tysdal
Lead Pastor
Rock of Ages Church
Saskatoon Sask.
374-1707 (Church)
291-3308 (Cel)
pastorl.therock@sasktel.net