Hanging Out With Jesus
Frequently my place of prayer is the loveseat in our living room. Sometimes I find myself looking across at the wingback chair across from me and imagine what it would be to have Jesus sitting there. I mean, I know He’s there, but I imagine that I can see Him. There is nothing I want so much as to see Jesus and I want to go to heaven because He will be there. But if He suddenly appeared in that wingback chair, what I can imagine is falling on my face, breaking into tears or being dumbstruck and unable to say anything. So, the thought of well, me, hanging out with Jesus came to mind for today’s blog.
He was really here on earth, born in a stable in Bethlehem, and raised in a good, hardworking blue-collar family. Isaiah writes this about Him. “He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him” (Isaiah 53:2). He spent thirty of His thirty-three years on earth known as the carpenter’s son in Nazareth, a town people made derogatory remarks about. When I imagine Him in today’s world, I think He would have a pair of Carhartt tan pants, work boots, a tool belt, a flannel shirt and maybe a DeWalt hat. He made things for people, fitted doors and shutters. No doubt He had rough, callused hands.
He Calls Us His Friends
And when Jesus began His ministry, most of the twelve He called to be with Him were tradesmen like Himself. Daily, these men were hanging out with Jesus. They traveled together, enjoyed one another’s company. I don’t think that they were walking around feeling edgy around Him, because He is the Son of God. We are rightfully His servants but He calls us His friends (John 15:15). This is one of the reasons God became a man, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him” (John 1:18). So, God Himself was among us, anything He said would have been scripture, yet you could hang out with Him! How cool is that?
Don’t ever miss who He is, we still have the image of Him in Revelation 1:13-16. “In the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden sash. His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze, when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, and out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged sword; and His face was like the sun shining in its strength”.
John did what we would imagine, he fell on the ground like a dead man, but Jesus put His hand on him and said, “Do not be afraid” (Revelation 1:17). Something we must not miss. If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you have a personal relationship with God. And it does not depend on a big, spectacular vision of Him, we find Him in the joy of hanging out with Him, like I do in my living room. And I don’t need to see Him to do this, Jesus said, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (John 20:29). I would never minimize just who He is, but the invitation is always there, hanging out with Jesus is what HE WANTS me to do!
