Date with Jesus

For the last few years, God has had a habit of waking me in the middle of the night (aside from the times I’m awoken by a certain sweet baby of mine). I used to fight it, tossing, turning, thinking, and so on. Now, if I’m not asleep in about 10 minutes, I do one of two things: pray or meditate on the Word (usually both). I figure that God must need to talk to me about something so I should do some listening. The thing about the middle of the night is that it is quiet. This is a rare thing in our household. I love the quietness, especially since it makes it easier to hear what He’s saying.

I have learned a lot during our middle of the night meetings, so much so that I actually look forward to them. And the funny thing is that I have never found myself to be tired as a result of the lost sleep. God is good.

Last night on our date, He turned my eyes to the Sermon on the Mount. He preached it just to his disciples. I knew this but the knowledge reached down to my heart and changed it… He asked me: “Why do you think I preached it just to them?” I believe that it was because they were about to face challenges in their ministries. It would be easy to let the fame of following Jesus go to their heads. On the completely opposite side of the coin, they would face persecution as a result of Who they were following. Although none of us in this century are one of the twelve, if you call yourself a follower of Christ, there is a lot to apply from this sermon of His…

One thing that really jumped out at me was how often we put our lamps under bowls and attempt to turn out the street lights (even though we’re up on a hill and of course everyone can see us). Or maybe we try to deny our lights, descending into the valley of sin, or just want it to stay within our own four walls (because we certainly wouldn’t want to offend or draw attention to ourselves). We are not called to ignore the darkness… light can’t help but transform everything around it. The brighter it is, the more shadows are dispelled. American Christians have a tendency to say of “religion” that it is “a personal issue.” But who do you know that keeps the most important, life-changing, exciting thing in their lives all to themselves? Die-hard sports fans will try to convince you until they’re blue in the face that their team is the best. They talk about their sport whenever they get a chance. They take pride in their team and they think you should know it. If sports fans can behave like that about their team, shouldn’t Christians be so overflowing with His love that they can’t bear to just keep it to themselves? It’s not about proving everyone else wrong or showing the world how good we are (what a joke!). It’s about lives at stake and Glory to be given.