The Jesus I know

by Rev Keith Drury

 

 

 

 

The Jesus I know isn't normal, and with those six little words some are already revving up their heresy Geiger counters. However I'm making it official: the Jesus I know isn't normal.

 

If you met God for coffee in a downtown café he wouldn't order regular, nor would the conversation be regular. He might ask you the most searching and revealing questions about yourself, and yet strangely you would find yourself wanting to answer.

 

For me, I had been a Christian for just over 20 years before I really began to get to know him in a new way. Only when my marriage broke up did I find myself urgently needing a Jesus who made sense, a Jesus who really was there and a Jesus who would hold me while I cried.

 

At times I looked to the Church, and found disappointment, at times I looked to friends and they didn't know what to say, others were wonderful, but it was Jesus who took up the challenge to make sense of a broken life and to light a candle in the midst of my darkness. However, I have discovered the most abnormal thing about the Jesus I know are the people he uses.

In 1Cor1:27 God says he chooses "to use the foolish things of the world to shame the wise ..the weak things of the world to shame the strong ..the lowly things of this world and the despised things - and the things that are not - to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him."

 

If God was setting up shop, his sign would read, "We specialise in weak, lowly and despised things."

 

God uses ordinary people like Davy. I call Davy 'the man who couldn't walk but who taught me how to fly!' Davy has great difficulty walking due to a birth defect, but he taught me two very simple yet important life lessons.

 

Davy had learnt that what people called his disability was his opportunity. He had learnt his weakness, as others saw it, was there for God to shame the strong. He used to chuckle as he would say, "I can say things for Jesus that others can't and get away with it, because it's hard to scold someone in a wheel chair"

 

The other lesson he taught me was, all people are disabled, as he would say, "the only difference is you can see mine!" He is right, most of us have psychological disabilities, memories that haunt, regrets and past failures that refuse to slide from our rear view.

 

That got me to thinking recently, "What if our greatest God opportunities happen to be our disabilities?" That could explain partly why the church struggles to be effective. Imperfection is no better tolerated in the church than it is in society.

 

 

We grow up in a 'well world' where Cinderella's slipper always fits, but we know in reality it is usually a size too small, no more than a dream, and as in all dreams, is designed to shatter at first awakening. Society feeds the dream;, skin blemish? Pick a concealer shade. Wrinkles? Pick a rejuvenating cream.

Wrong shape? Pick the right style of trouser. Face too narrow? Get the right hairstyle, but whatever you do, don't admit to it, instead try to hide it.

 

Sadly in my experience the church only adds to the whole crisis and makes life worse for people, because not only are we still expected to look right, sound right, have the right job, be at least middle class (whatever that is) but in the church we are also told we have to be perfect. Under the surface, somewhere, it preaches that all have sinned, but I don't know many churches where it's safe to come out of the closet and admit them!

 

Altogether that's a lot for people in church to live up to and under every suit and hat and seemingly charmed life lurks a person just longing to be accepted for who they are, warts and all.

But my question still begs to be asked ? What if Davy is right, what if our greatest God opportunities happen to be our disabilities?

 

What if our God isn't normal and doesn't choose to use only the skilled and masterful. What if he prefers to use shepherds over gladiators to slay giants?

Sadly for most of us in the church, if our glass slippers don't fit by midnight, we sit down, have a good cry, leave our church, curse God or else, like most of us, we hobble around pretending the slipper fits and wear long trousers to conceal the fact it doesn't.

 

Davy also tells, tongue in cheek, the story of how he got his wife. "I sat behind a table and didn't stand till she fell in love with me!" Humorous yes, but disastrous when applied to Christians pretending to be ok, when we are not. If the church was truly a safe place to be sinner, a safe place to fail and a safe place to have problems, just maybe we would find a Jesus who could use us better and bring more glory to himself as well as in passing give people more self worth in who they actually are.

 

It has taken a long time for me to catch on to this fact, Jesus doesn't run on the inside track but always goes wide, because that's where he finds the injured, the sidelined and the rejected - the kind of people he can use best (read Isa 61) and yet still reserve for himself the glory.

 

I believe that is the Jesus I know. I never cease to be amazed, at the number of people whom God uses mightily who don't come up to scratch! Jesus uses the irregular armies in our churches, the kind of people who feel desperately normal or even a little south of normal.

 

 

..And for me with all the baggage of one failed marriage behind, a ton of regrets and unfulfilled dreams, I found myself for the first time getting to know a Jesus, who smiled and whispered in my ear, now I can use you!

 

That's the Jesus I know, and I know that's the Jesus I need.