my journey with jesus essay

How To Describe Your Personal Relationship With Jesus Christ

Welcome to our comprehensive guide on how to describe your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Building a personal relationship with Jesus is a deeply meaningful and transformative journey that has the potential to bring immense joy, purpose, and peace to your life.

In this article, we will explore the key aspects of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, discuss the benefits it offers, and provide you with practical tips to effectively describe your unique connection with Him.

Whether you are just starting out on your spiritual journey or seeking to deepen your existing relationship, this guide aims to equip you with actionable advice to express your personal experiences with Jesus Christ.

What Do We Mean by a Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ?

When we talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we refer to a profound and intimate connection with Him as your Lord, Savior, and spiritual guide. It goes beyond mere religious affiliation or adherence to doctrines.

It entails a consistent commitment to know Jesus on a personal level, inviting Him into every aspect of your life, and experiencing His presence and guidance in a tangible way. A personal relationship with Jesus is characterized by a deep faith and belief in His divinity, acceptance of His teachings, and a heartfelt surrender to His will. And there exists a very clear 10-step process to know if you have a relationship with Jesus .

Key Aspects of a Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ

To understand and describe your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, it is essential to explore the key aspects that contribute to its depth and meaning. Let’s delve into these aspects:

#1. Faith and Belief

At the core of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ lies faith and belief. It involves acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God, your Savior, and placing your trust in Him. This unwavering belief in Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection forms the foundation of your relationship with Him.

#2. Acceptance and Surrender

A personal relationship with Jesus Christ requires acceptance and surrender. It means embracing Jesus as the center and authority in your life, relinquishing control, and yielding to His divine will. By surrendering to Jesus, you open yourself to His transformative work and experience His love and grace more fully.

#3. Prayer and Communication

Prayer is the vital channel of communication in your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is through prayer that you establish a direct and intimate connection with Him. In prayer, you can express your thoughts, concerns, and desires, and seek His guidance, strength, and comfort. By fostering vulnerability in prayer, you invite Jesus to work in your life and deepen your relationship with Him.

#4. Scripture and Study

Engaging with the sacred Scripture is an integral part of nurturing your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The Bible serves as a divine revelation, offering insights into His teachings, character, and plan of salvation. Regular study and reflection on the Word of God help you understand Jesus’ ways, align your life with His principles, and deepen your knowledge of Him.

#5. Worship and Fellowship

Worship and fellowship play crucial roles in your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Worship is a heartfelt expression of adoration, gratitude, and surrender to Him. It involves praising His name, singing hymns and worship songs, and acknowledging His majesty.

Participating in a community of believers, engaging in corporate worship, and sharing experiences with fellow Christians provide opportunities for growth, encouragement, and mutual support.

#6. Transformation and Discipleship

A personal relationship with Jesus Christ is transformative. It calls for a willingness to be changed and to grow in His likeness. As you follow Jesus’ teachings, you embark on a journey of continuous spiritual growth and discipleship. By cultivating virtues such as love, compassion, forgiveness, and humility, you reflect His character and become a living testimony of His love.

#7. Guidance and Empowerment

In your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you can rely on His guidance and the empowering work of the Holy Spirit. Through prayer and seeking His will, you can tap into His wisdom and discernment to navigate life’s challenges. Jesus provides strength and empowerment to live according to His purpose, equipping you to make a positive impact in the world.

Benefits of A Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ

Having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ offers numerous benefits that enrich your life and bring deep spiritual fulfillment.

These benefits include:

• Forgiveness and Salvation
• Peace and Comfort
• Guidance and Direction
• Transformation and Growth
• Hope and Purpose
• Strength and Empowerment
• Relationship with God

Let’s look at these.

#1. Forgiveness and Salvation

In a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you receive the gift of forgiveness and salvation. Through His sacrificial death on the cross, Jesus offers redemption from sin and eternal life. By embracing Him as your Savior, you experience the liberating power of His forgiveness, and the assurance of a restored relationship with God. Salvation is often cited as one of the main reasons why it is important to have a relationship with Jesus .

#2. Peace and Comfort

Jesus brings peace and comfort to your life. In the midst of life’s challenges and uncertainties, He offers a profound sense of tranquility and assurance. Through your personal relationship with Him, you can find solace, rest, and a deep-seated peace that surpasses all understanding.

#3. Guidance and Direction

One of the significant benefits of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is His guidance and direction. As you seek His will and align your life with His teachings, Jesus provides wisdom, clarity, and direction for your decisions and choices. He becomes your faithful guide, illuminating your path and leading you towards a purposeful life.

#4. Transformation and Growth

A personal relationship with Jesus Christ brings about personal transformation and growth. Through His presence and the work of the Holy Spirit, you are empowered to overcome your weaknesses, develop virtues, and experience positive changes in your character and behavior. As you continually abide in Him, you grow into the person He intends you to be.

#5. Hope and Purpose

In your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you find hope and purpose. Jesus offers a meaningful and fulfilling life, filled with divine purpose. Through Him, you discover your unique calling and how you can make a positive impact in the world. Jesus provides hope even in the midst of challenges, reminding you that He is always with you and that He has a plan for your life.

#6. Strength and Empowerment

Jesus empowers you with strength and enables you to overcome challenges. Through His presence and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, you receive the strength and courage to face trials, persevere in difficult times, and live a life that honors Him. His empowering presence equips you to fulfill your God-given purpose.

#7. Relationship with God

Ultimately, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ restores and deepens your relationship with God. Through Him, you enter into a loving and intimate connection with your Heavenly Father. You experience the joy of being known and loved by the Creator of the universe, enjoying unrestricted access to His presence and experiencing His fatherly care and guidance.

Tips to Describe Your Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ

Effectively describing your personal relationship with Jesus Christ requires thoughtful reflection and intentional expression. In that sense, it is not that different than describing your relationship with God . And if you’re really bold you could even try and describe your relationship in a single word .

Having said that, here are some key practical tips to describe your personal relationship with Jesus Christ and convey the depth and significance of your connection with Him:

• Reflect on your Journey
• Identify Key Beliefs
• Describe Prayer and Communication
• Share Scripture and Insights
• Express Gratitude and Worship
• Discuss Personal Transformation
• Talk about His Guidance and Presence
• Highlight Relationships and Community
• Explain the Source of Hope and Purpose
• Emphasize the Personal and Intimate Nature

Let’s look closely at each of these.

#1. Reflect on your Journey

Take time to reflect on your spiritual journey and how your relationship with Jesus Christ has evolved over time. Consider the key moments, experiences, and lessons that have shaped your connection with Him. Reflecting on your journey will help you identify significant milestones and articulate your personal experiences with clarity.

#2. Identify Key Beliefs

Articulate the core beliefs that define your relationship with Jesus Christ. Consider what you believe about His identity as the Son of God, His role as your Savior, and the significance of His teachings in your life. Identify the foundational beliefs that have shaped your understanding and relationship with Him.

#3. Describe Prayer and Communication

Explain how you communicate with Jesus through prayer. Share the significance of prayer in your relationship with Him and how it allows you to connect with Him on a personal level. Describe the topics you discuss with Him in prayer and the ways in which prayer has deepened your relationship and brought about transformation in your life.

#4. Share Scripture and Insights

Discuss the role of scripture in nurturing your personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Share specific verses or passages that have been impactful to you and how they have shaped your understanding of His teachings and character. Talk about the insights and revelations you have gained from studying the Word of God.

#5. Express Gratitude and Worship

Share how you express gratitude and engage in worship to Jesus Christ. Describe the ways in which you acknowledge His goodness, offer praise, and engage in worship activities such as singing hymns, reading devotional materials, or participating in church services. Express how worship deepens your relationship with Him and brings you into His presence.

#6. Discuss Personal Transformation

Describe how your relationship with Jesus Christ has brought about personal transformation. Share specific areas of growth, positive changes in attitudes or behaviors, and the ways in which you seek to align your life with His teachings. Illustrate the impact of your relationship on your character, relationships, and overall well-being.

#7. Talk about His Guidance and Presence

Share instances where you have felt Jesus’ guidance and presence in your life. Discuss how you have sought His guidance in decision-making, experienced His comfort in challenging times, or recognized His hand in providential moments. Express how His presence has brought you peace, assurance, and direction.

#8. Highlight Relationships and Community

Discuss how your relationship with Jesus Christ impacts your relationships with others. Share how you seek to live out His commandments of love, compassion, and forgiveness in your interactions with family, friends, and the wider community. Emphasize the importance of fellowship and the support of fellow believers in nurturing your relationship with Jesus.

#9. Explain the Source of Hope and Purpose

Share how your relationship with Jesus Christ provides hope and purpose in your life. Explain how you find assurance and meaning through His promises and teachings. Illustrate how your relationship with Him has given you a sense of direction, clarity, and fulfillment in pursuing His purpose for your life.

#10. Emphasize the Personal and Intimate Nature

Highlight the personal and intimate nature of your relationship with Jesus Christ. Express the depth of connection you feel, the comfort and peace you experience in His presence, and the trust you have in Him as your guide and companion. Emphasize the transformative power of a personal relationship with Jesus and how it has shaped your identity and purpose.

Sample Descriptions of a Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ

If you’re stuck trying to describe your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, here are some sample descriptions that you can leverage as your craft your own.

“My personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the foundation of my life. Through Him, I have found forgiveness and salvation, knowing that His sacrifice on the cross redeemed me from my sins. I communicate with Jesus through prayer, pouring out my heart and seeking His guidance in every aspect of my life. The Bible is my constant source of inspiration and wisdom, as I delve into its pages to understand His teachings and promises. My relationship with Jesus has transformed me, filling me with love, joy, and a desire to serve others. His presence is real to me, guiding my steps and providing comfort in times of need. I am forever grateful for His grace and the purpose He has given me.”

“For me, my personal relationship with Jesus Christ is like a steady anchor in the storms of life. Through Him, I find peace and comfort, knowing that He is always by my side. Prayer is my way of connecting with Jesus, sharing my hopes, fears, and dreams with Him. His words in the Bible are a wellspring of insight and guidance, illuminating my path and shaping my perspective. Worshiping and praising Him fills my heart with gratitude, and it reminds me of His majesty and love. His transformative power has touched every aspect of my being, helping me overcome my weaknesses and empowering me to serve others. Jesus is my constant guide, leading me towards a purposeful life and giving me hope even in the darkest times.”

“My personal relationship with Jesus Christ is deeply personal and intimate. I see Him as my friend, my confidant, and my source of strength. Through prayer, I pour out my heart to Him, sharing my joys and struggles, knowing that He listens with love and understanding. His words in the Bible speak directly to my soul, offering wisdom and guidance for my journey. When I worship Him, I feel a sense of reverence and connection, knowing that He is worthy of all praise. Jesus has transformed my life in profound ways, helping me overcome challenges and grow in faith. His presence is a guiding light, and I find comfort and strength knowing that He walks with me every step of the way.”

“My personal relationship with Jesus Christ is rooted in gratitude and awe. Through Him, I have experienced His boundless love and forgiveness. Prayer is my lifeline, allowing me to have an ongoing conversation with Jesus, seeking His direction and sharing my deepest desires. His words in the Bible are a constant source of inspiration and truth, guiding my steps and shaping my worldview. When I worship Him, I feel a sense of awe and gratitude, as I recognize His sovereignty and love. Jesus has transformed my heart and mind, helping me become more compassionate and patient. His presence is my source of strength, and I trust Him to guide me through life’s ups and downs.”

“My personal relationship with Jesus Christ is centered on His guidance and provision. Through Him, I have found direction and purpose for my life. Prayer is my way of seeking His will and aligning my desires with His plans. The Bible is a treasure trove of wisdom and knowledge, and I spend time daily studying His teachings, discovering new insights, and applying them to my life. Worshiping Jesus fills me with a sense of awe and gratitude, as I recognize His sovereignty and love. Jesus has transformed my life from the inside out, helping me overcome challenges and grow in faith. His constant presence and guidance give me confidence, and I am grateful for the abundant life He offers me as I walk with Him.”

By using these examples as inspiration, you can craft your own descriptions of your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, incorporating your unique experiences, insights, and expressions of faith.

In conclusion, describing your personal relationship with Jesus Christ is a deeply personal and meaningful endeavor. It requires reflection, openness, and the willingness to express your faith journey and experiences. Remember that your relationship with Jesus is unique and personal to you, and the way you describe it may evolve and deepen over time.

By exploring the key aspects of a personal relationship with Jesus, recognizing the benefits it offers, and employing the tips provided, you can effectively convey the depth and significance of your connection with Him. Embrace the transformative power of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and let your heart speak of the joy, peace, and hope that it brings.

May your spiritual growth and faithful perseverance in your relationship with Jesus be a testament to His love and grace, drawing others to experience the beauty of knowing Him.

Peace Theology

Engaging faith and pacifism, a journey with jesus.

World So Full: My Quest for Understanding

Ted Grimsrud—Journeys With Jesus Colloquy

One advantage of growing up outside the church—at least for me—is not being taught stuff about Jesus I had to unlearn later.  My parents didn’t talk much about God or faith.  They left it up to their kids to decide for themselves.  And our rural community in southwestern Oregon was probably about as unchurched as you could find in the entire country.

So I never had a Jesus watching over my shoulder or a Jesus who might return at any moment or a smiling Jesus with blue eyes and a carefully trimmed beard or a Jesus who would just as soon send me to hell as embrace me or a Jesus of some creed—part of the Trinity, pre-existent, fully human and full divine.  I was pretty much a blank slate concerning Jesus when I met him for the first time when I was 17 years old. However, I did gain from my parents an embedded theology that did profoundly shape my sense of who Jesus is.

My embedded theology

My father grew up the youngest child of a Lutheran pastor.  He fought in World War II, then set his guns aside.  He had had enough to last a lifetime.  He never laid a hand on me in anger.  He never stated it, but I knew he loved me.  The closest he came to telling me was when I left Oregon for seminary when I was in my mid-20s.  My dad hugged me and said, “Take care of yourself.”  He then hugged my wife, Kathleen, and said to her, “take care of Ted.”

My mom taught fourth grade and was remarkable in her ability to relate to troubled kids.  She enjoyed them all.  She found them interesting, worth learning to know.  And they realized that, responding to her like they did none of their other teachers.

My parents taught me by their actions to be peaceable, to care for marginalized people, to be clear about my own desires and convictions, to be willing to stand against the majority, to respect myself and to respect others.  Which is to say, they prepared me to understand Jesus when I finally did encounter him.

Turning toward faith

My high school years were happy without Jesus.  My turn toward faith came at a funeral when I sensed God’s presence like I never had before.  I didn’t have an intellectual explanation, but the feeling wouldn’t go away.  So I started talking with a buddy who had himself recently had a conversion experience.  This buddy understood my concerns.  I was not looking for release from guilt or meaninglessness.  I was not trying to find happiness in face of a traumatic life.  There was only one need, really, that mattered to me: the need to understand.

I wanted thoughtful talk about how belief in Jesus made sense.  I would like to have a transcript of our conversations.  I can’t imagine they would be very persuasive to me today!  I think I was given the standard Billy Graham line—we are all sinful but God loves us and in Jesus has provided for us a way to gain forgiveness and go to heaven to be with God.  But it made sense at the time.  After hours of conversation, I knelt next to my bed, June 1971. I was 17 years old, and I asked Jesus into my heart as my personal savior.

And my life did change, right at that moment.  Not so much my behavior—I found the transition into the moralism of the fundamentalist Baptist community I was to join to be painless.  I never did drink or smoke due to my commitment to sports.  I had sworn off swearing because I didn’t like how it sounded.  I was too shy to mess around with girls.  So my lifestyle didn’t need to change much (I did give up rock and roll for a few years).  What did change was my intellectual orientation.  Now, everything had to fit with my new Christian convictions.

The church I joined, the Elkton (Oregon) Bible Baptist Church, was not set up to nurture a potential young theologian.  The message, Sunday morning after Sunday morning, Sunday evening after Sunday evening, Wednesday evening after Wednesday evening, was the same.  Personal salvation and personal evangelism. Jesus saves through his sacrificial death.  The Bible is isolated verses that point toward salvation and the soon return of Christ.

My mind was not much engaged.  My sense of concern for social justice was stifled.  At Elkton Bible Baptist, Jesus was on the side of American military actions.  He hated the hippies and their drugs and free sex and avoidance of the draft.  When I learned that our U.S. Senator, Mark Hatfield, a Vietnam War opponent, was a Christian, I went to my pastor in disbelief.  He also doubted Hatfield could be a Christian and still be against the war.  As a college freshman, I proudly drove about 200 miles round trip on election day to cast my vote for Richard Nixon.

Opening to the wider world

When I went away to college, Jesus as I knew him then influenced me to repress my natural intellectual curiosity.  I still wanted more than anything to understand the truth, but I had been persuaded that the truth was simple, static, and contained in the slogans I heard over and over.  At the University of Oregon, I joined a non-denomination congregation.  The message I heard there was similar to what I had already been taught. But there was openness to engaging the world beyond simply as a place for soul winning.

I met with a friend, a Bible school grad who enjoyed talking with me about theology.  I found these talks gripping—especially when he told me that not all Christians believed the Hal Lindsey line on prophecy.  This comment rocked my world.  I had never imagined such a thing.  I thought the rapture and soon-return-of-Christ beliefs were synonymous with Christian faith.  To imagine that one could question those beliefs, that they were optional, opened my mind.

Then, I discovered a popular-level magazine devoted to theology called  Present Truth .  The articles were clearly written, I devoured them, and they utterly refuted futuristic eschatology on biblical grounds. I had tapped into what became the passion of my life: the study of theology.

I joined a small group studying Francis Schaeffer.  Schaeffer reinforced my departure from futuristic eschatology.  Most importantly, he advocated openness to the intellectual life.  We should never be afraid of any questions.  All truth is God’s truth.  Jesus was beginning to mean more to me than simply a personal savior.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s  The Cost of Discipleship  introduced me a Jesus who engages the world directly in costly love.  For awhile, I quoted Bonhoeffer so much that friends called me “Tedrich.”

The U.S. finally abandoned the war effort in Vietnam about the time I turned 21 years old.  After voting for Nixon in 1972, I began moving left politically.  When I found evangelical “radicals” who published various fascinating magazines, I drank up whatever I could find.

The loosening from the intellectual stifling of my fundamentalism opened my mind to a new possibility. Jesus himself might have some concerns about my views of war and peace.  I knew that I had no desire to be involved in the military or any other kind of violence.  I now think this was my default sensibility.  I had gotten in numerous minor fistfights in grade school, but after the sixth grade I realized that I hated the feelings involved in physical conflict.

All it took was realizing that Jesus, who I did—with all my heart—want to follow, indeed came preaching peace.  Then I was freed to claim my true self, that’s how I see it now.  It was important in my journey with Jesus, that I came to realize Jesus’ truth—the way of peace—on my own.  I did not have any friends who told me about principled pacifism.  I did not know of anyone who claimed conscientious objector status.  I never heard a sermon rejecting warfare.

But I was thinking about these issues, even if I didn’t have a vocabulary for them.  Just as my choice to embrace Christian faith came in solitude, so too did this second conversion.  A sense of clarity seized me—a sense I have never once doubted since.  My belief in futuristic eschatology had crashed like a house of cards as soon as I got a glimpse of another view.  So also my belief in the moral legitimacy of a follower of Jesus taking up arms crashed as soon as I realized that Jesus indeed meant “love your enemies” as a norm for all Christians.

Right after this, in the summer of 1976, I discovered John Howard Yoder’s books. Yoder gave me “understanding” for what my “faith” was seeking, a clear rationale for reading the Bible as a brief for pacifism.  About this time, my future wife Kathleen and I began our relationship—and it was crucial that we shared our pacifist convictions from the start.

It soon became clear that I  had  to go somewhere to study theology.  Eager for a chance to study with Yoder, we attended Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary.  We only were able to spend one year there, but it certainly was one of the most important years of our lives.

While at AMBS, Kathleen and I realized that we indeed were Mennonites.  We had found a spiritual home. Peace, simple living, community, international connections, service.  These were our ideals, too, and here was a tradition readymade for us.

In an eventful conversation, a professor, Willard Swartley, said to me, “when you go on for your doctorate, you might want to work on New Testament ethics.”  Until that moment, it had never crossed my mind to keep going in grad school.  So I began planning for the Ph.D.

During those years from 1976 through 1981, I made a major change in my understanding of Jesus Christ.  I moved from seeing him primarily as my personal savior whose significance had to do with being a sinless sacrifice to turn aside God’s wrath and take my place, freeing me to go to heaven when I die.  I ended up seeing him primarily as a teacher and model who as God incarnate shows us how to live.  Love marginalized people, love enemies, confront abusive power, challenge exclusive religion.

A peaceable Jesus

When we returned to Oregon, I served as interim pastor at Eugene Mennonite Church.  Then, we ended up in Berkeley, California, at the Graduate Theological Union.  One very important fruit of my Ph.D. studies there was the discovery of a strand of modern philosophy and social thought that was friendly to my pacifism.  A great deal of philosophy takes a rather coercive approach—you develop careful arguments that any logical person must follow to their conclusion and either consent or have their brains explode.

Thinkers such as Wittgenstein, Dewey, MacIntrye, Rorty, Gadamer, and others, while not necessarily having a lot else in common all had serious questions about the coercive philosophy paradigm. I began to seek a pacifist epistemology, a way of knowing consistent with Jesus’ way of life.

After finishing my dissertation in ethics, I returned to part time pastoring and was ready to move to a project more overtly theological.  I read a book by the just war theorist Paul Ramsey where he discussed John Howard Yoder.  He agreed with Yoder that the crux of the issue that divided them was their different understandings of the meaning of Jesus Christ.  I became intrigued by Ramsey’s admission and decided I would try to get behind this difference.  What about Ramsey’s christology would lead him to reject pacifism?

So I started reading christology books.  I soon realized that there indeed was a watershed in recent theology.  The way I would say it is that you have two approaches: christology from above and christology from below.  I encountered these terms in two Catholic theologians, Hans Küng and Edward Schillebeeckx. Both centered their christologies on a close reading of the gospels rather than on interacting with the post-biblical creedal traditions of the churches.  They argued that we need to start with Jesus of Nazareth and his story and build our christologies from that foundation.

Now, there are Christian pacifists who are creedal and non-pacifists who are not.  However, I think in both cases such people are going against the logic of their theological approach.  That is, if we start with the biblical story and keep it as central, we will logically be moved toward pacifism.  If we start with the creeds of the Constantinian church, we will logically be moved away from pacifism.

I dove into that study and began to produce some writing.  At this point, though, reality intervened and my project was sidetracked for some time.  Up until this time. I had a pretty nice life.  While not all happiness and joy all the time, things went well.  Loving family, friends, some success, nice places to live.  But I hit some rough waters in the late 1980s.  Without going into any detail, I’ll just say that I faced some traumatic personal circumstances—brokenness, betrayal, conflict, shattered dreams.

Now that those hard times are long past, I can look back with gratitude.  It was a time of testing my theology in the crucible of life. I found that the thinking I had been doing about pacifism and its application to all areas of life helped me a lot.  I basically faced a choice, it seemed, about what kind of power I would seek to draw on for sustenance.  Would it be anger, holding onto my grudges, defining myself in relation to how I had been hurt?  Or would it somehow be love, a sense of gratitude even amidst the pain?

I tried to trust more in love than in anger. I found help from beyond myself—especially with friends, but also a sense of God’s presence, and the coherence of my theology being applied to my life.  Everything I had come to believe about Jesus was being confirmed.  Jesus did not save me from sorrow or intervene to fix my problems. Jesus did not lift me out of history into a place of tranquility and bliss.  What Jesus did do is enter into my circumstances, remind me of the path of love as the path to sustenance, walk with me in my sorrow, loneliness, and confusion.

As the pieces grew back together, we sought a change of scenery.  So Kathleen and I, with our son Johan, opened ourselves to a new place of ministry. We took a joint pastorate in the Russian Mennonite mecca of Freeman. South Dakota.

It was a rich two years.  A time to learn a lot.  To appreciate the farming environment, to participate deeply in marrying and burying rituals, to relate to multi-generational extended families.  This was another environment to test my theology.  Does the gospel of peace lend itself to thoughtful theology for non-academics who care mostly about seedtime and harvest, the passing of elders and welcoming of newborns?  I was satisfied that it did.  Sermons I prepared made up the core of my book,  God’s Healing Strategy .

We had one more major geographical and cultural transition to make.  A teaching opportunity arose, unexpected but welcomed.  We moved to Harrisonburg and EMU in 1996.

I published  God’s Healing Strategy  in 2000.  My main argument in the book is that the Bible tells a single story (with many side sub-plots and tangents).  God seeks to heal human brokenness in the world through calling into being a community of those who know God’s healing and then share that with the rest of the world.  Genesis 12:1-3 becomes the opening manifesto for this agenda.  The story reaches its climax when we meet Jesus, the teacher, prophet, and healer who embodies God’s love spread from communities of faith to the nations.

Theology for seeing Jesus as central

Today, I would say that theological affirmations such as Jesus’ divinity, his status as the second person of the Trinity, and the reality of his resurrection all take on renewed meaning for me.  God enters into history in the life of this human being born in humble circumstances in Jewish Palestine.  Jesus makes clear that God is love, that God seeks healing in the face of human brokenness, that God shows a preferential option in favor of vulnerable people.

To speak of Jesus as God is a statement about God more than a statement about Jesus.  Jesus’ humanity, Jesus’ passion for justice, Jesus’ offer of unconditional mercy, Jesus’ vulnerability, Jesus’ confronting abusive power, Jesus’ gathering friends around himself to share in his work, Jesus’ refusal to rely on coercion and retaliation even in the face of great suffering and eventual death—all of these show us what God  is like.

As the second person of the Trinity, Jesus gives us a concrete picture of God.  No one has seen God except insofar as we see God in Jesus.  The Trinity is a helpful metaphor—not for a God with three distinct wills, but to remind us that God is one, each manifestation (father, son, spirit) is an expression of the one God, the one character of God, the one will of God.

We may affirm Jesus’ identity because God raised Jesus from the dead.  I don’t really understand what happened in history with Jesus’ resurrection.  However I am willing to affirm the reality of this event even if I can’t explain it.  The point, though, is not the historicity of a one-off miracle.  Rather the point is the meaning  of this act of God’s.  The meaning is that in Jesus’ resurrection we have the vindication of his life. The truthfulness of his way is confirmed by God’s victory over death.

So my journey with Jesus, tested through much thought, experience, striving to speak and write about him, leads me at present to believe that we should do all our theology, live our lives, as if Jesus matters.  This is the title of my forthcoming book:  Theology as if Jesus Matters .  I think he really does!

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1 thought on “ a journey with jesus ”.

Thank you for this open sharing of your journey with Jesus. Although I grew up the son of a line of Mennonite Ministers, my journey through EMC, Goshen College, Chicago etc. has been to follow Jesus deeply influenced by the Anabaptist movement. In 50 years I have encountered many others on Jesus journeys, Shalom Mission Communities, Koinonia Farm (koinoniapartners), Bruderhof (Church Communities International), New Monasticism, Simple Way, Christian Peacemakers Teams. In many ways it is like the early anabaptist movement with some organic, some informal connections, some communities thriving, some reaching crisis that cause them to end, much like the early anabaptist movement.

As I read whole New Testament, I am impressed again and again how much of the content is about living love with our brothers and sisters, the expectation is that it is hard to do the Jesus journey together with others committed to the Jesus journey, yet that is how Jesus mission of new life is continued with the empowerment of his Spirit.

I think we all face crisis again and again as I do because I am human and I loose my focus on Jesus. I found your website because I was looking to put some more definition and clarity in my peace beliefs. I am trying to look again at Jesus and his way, without the glasses with which I grew up, to keep renewing my journey with Jesus.

God Bless You

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Lectionary Essay for the January 23rd, 2022 RCL

Readings: Nehemiah 8:103, 5-6, 8-10 Psalm 119 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a Luke 4:14-21

Ray, please use the images from this archived essay: https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2060-when-he-opened-the-book

Title: Today

For Sunday January 23, 2022

Lectionary Readings ( Revised Common Lectionary , Year C)

Nehemiah 8:103, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 119 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a Luke 4:14-21

If your pastor told you to feast, celebrate, and rejoice right now, because today is a day “holy to the Lord,” how would you respond? If one of your spiritual mentors insisted that this year — 2022 — is “the year of the Lord’s favor,” what would you say?

I’ll be honest; I would say, “You’ve got to be kidding me. This year?  This one? Today? Right now? How can that possibly be?”

I don’t think I’d be alone in my skepticism. As I type these words, Omicron is overwhelming the planet. Hospitals are reaching capacity, physicians and nurses are exhausted, national and local economies are flailing, and Covid’s death toll continues to rise. And this is before we mention any of the other challenges facing us. Wars and threats of wars. Violence of all stripes. The catastrophic effects of climate change. The long shadow of racial injustice. Alarming breakdowns in civility and basic kindness. Rising epidemics of anxiety, depression, addiction, and despair.

Who on earth would reasonably call our current moment holy, or favored of God?

I ask, because our lectionary this week does exactly this. In two distinct stories of worship, two stories about people gathering to read, hear, and inwardly digest the word of God, we hear a call to attend to now.  Both stories end with an invitation to recognize the sacredness of the present moment.  Both stories insist that when we seek the divine — in worship, in the reading of scripture, in the intentional gathering of the beloved community — today shimmers with the presence, the blessing, and the favor of God.

This is true regardless of circumstances. Regardless of the trials we face, the sorrows we carry, and the pain we bear. Not because God’s exultant “today” is dismissive of our hardships, but because God’s presence infuses all things. God’s joy — the joy which is our strength — has within it the capacity to hold and honor our tears.

The first story this week is from the book of Nehemiah, and it describes a tender and hard won moment in Israel’s history. If you need some context: Nehemiah is a minor figure in the court of Artaxerxes, the king of Persia. When Nehemiah hears that Jerusalem is a broken, fire-razed wreck, he begs the king to let him return to his homeland and rebuild the city of his ancestors. The obstacles to the rebuilding are fierce and numerous, but Nehemiah persists, and finally succeeds in restoring Jerusalem’s wall and gates. He then invites his people back from exile, and asks them to gather in the square before the Water Gate for an assembly.

Our lectionary picks up there, at the moment when the prophet Ezra “opens the book in the sight of all people,” and reads from the law of Moses. He reads until the assembly of men, women, and children gathered in the square open their ears, stand up, raise their hands, worship “with their faces to the ground,” say, “Amen, Amen,” and weep. The story ends with Nehemiah and Ezra telling the people to dry their tears, return to their homes to “eat the fat and drink sweet wine,” and share the feast with those who are poor. Following an intense divine encounter, the people embrace the day and time they live in as “holy to the Lord.”

I love this story because it offers us a beautiful and multifaceted picture of what can happen when we seek the presence of God together, and allow that presence to infuse every part of our lives. Remember, the Israelites who gather at the Water Gate to hear the reading of the Torah are not people living in a “happily ever after,” all their trials and travails behind them. They are people newly returned from exile to a homeland that’s still in ruins. Their traumas are fresh and their future is unclear. Their most recent memories are memories of loss, dislocation, oppression, and chaos.

And yet, something powerful happens among them when Ezra opens the book and reminds them of who they are in the long arc of God’s story. What happens is not magic. Neither is it manipulation. What happens is transformation. As the people consent to listen to God’s word with their whole hearts, to receive what’s read in a spirit of openness and vulnerability, and to express their comprehension as honestly as they can, everything changes.

To be clear, the honesty they express includes sorrow, lament, and repentance. Ezra reads for hours — from early morning until midday — and in that time, the people enter into a period of deep reflection and remembrance. I imagine that when the Israelites hear the sacred stories of their tradition — the stories of the Exodus, the stories of God’s provision in the desert, the stories of their ancestors’ failures and rebellions — they feel everything from nostalgia to elation to horror to happiness. They weep in gratitude over God’s goodness. They weep in bewilderment over God’s silence. They weep in regret over their own sins. They weep in mourning for all they’ve surrendered or lost. And they weep in relief that the exile is over, and Jerusalem — razed though it is — is once again their home.

God’s word — living and active among them — holds all of this.  It allows all of this, and blesses all of this. When the time is right, God transforms the entire encounter into an experience of joy.

The second story takes place centuries later, in the backwater town of Nazareth. It’s a Sabbath day soon after Jesus’s baptism and temptation in the wilderness. “Filled with the power of the Spirit,” Jesus returns to his hometown, enters the synagogue he has likely attended since boyhood, and stands up (as is the  custom) to read from the Prophets. He asks for the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, unrolls it, finds the passage he wants, and reads aloud. By the time he’s finished reading, every eye in the synagogue is fixed on him.

Luke offers us this reading scene as the inaugural act of Jesus’s ministry. An act in which Jesus proclaims his identity, his purpose, and his vocation. What I love about the scene is that Jesus chooses to reveal the meaning of his life and work through the beloved and well-worn words of Scripture. Words his audience has heard a thousand times. Words no doubt rich with communal memory and meaning, but also words in danger of losing their power through over-familiarity. It’s not as if the Son of God is incapable of penning a new and shiny mission statement; he is the Incarnate Word himself.  But he doesn’t improvise; he opens the book and makes the old words of the tradition his own: “God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” As if to say: the Word lives, here and now.  Today. It is organic, it breathes, it moves in fresh and revolutionary ways.  The Word of God is neither dull nor dead. It is alive.

Of course (as we will see in next week’s lectionary) the opening of the book doesn’t always go smoothly for those bold enough to attempt it. Unlike the assembly that receives Ezra’s reading with open hearts, Jesus’s audience recoils in shock and outrage when he dares to suggest that the divine word is a word for their contemporary moment. They take offense at the fact that God’s “today” is not a day to postpone and defer.  Not a cosmic fairytale ending to expect in some fuzzy, indistinct future.

Of course, what's surprising about this story is that the very people who need the freedom Jesus offers, find his invitation of freedom intolerable. What offends them is not the ancient prophecy of their beloved ancestor. After all, Isaiah’s words offer nothing but good news.  No, what offends them is the suggestion that the good news is available right now.  That the time for transformation, renewal, and metanoia is at hand.  That they must change today.  Lean into liberation today.  Accept the joy of the Lord today.  The time of the Lord’s favor — luminous and rich — stands in front of them, embodied before their very eyes, if only they will dare to see it. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

As I contemplate these two stories, I realize how reluctant I am at times to embrace the holiness of “today.” Perhaps like some of you, I have spent the past two years living “on hold.” Deferring and deflecting, as if the days we live in right now don’t count as “real life.” “Real life will resume after the pandemic,” I tell myself. Real life will resume when church services go back to being in-person.  When we can celebrate the Eucharist with bread and wine. When we put away our masks for good.  When we get some sort of handle on climate change, police brutality, teen depression, and sectarian violence.

I wonder if I do this because I am like Ezra’s listeners, full of pent-up grief, longing, regret, and lament that have nowhere to go. Maybe I assume that I can’t lean into God’s joy until all my sorrows are spent. Or that worship can only be an articulation of happiness — not grief or anger or confusion or doubt. If so, can I remind myself that God’s embrace is wide enough to hold all of human experience? Can I trust that divine abundance is possible now, even in the midst of uncertainty and pain? Can I say “Amen” to God’s word in the complicated circumstances I live in right now? Today?

Or perhaps our ambivalence around “today” has more to do with a deep-seated fear of change. Like Jesus’s listeners, we long for liberation — but we want to control what that liberation looks like.  We don’t want to face someone who looks and sounds and loves and probes like Jesus. How dare he mess with our traditions, our boundaries, our well-established norms around how God works in the world? We’d rather put salvation off than confront its alarming presence in our lives right now.

Perhaps we need to accept the possibility of holy discomfort.  Perhaps the “now” of God means we have to stand up, shake the dust off, and move.  What if the release of the captives and the healing of the blind require that we step out of our prison cells and open our eyes? It’s one thing to scan the horizon of someday for the “year of the Lord’s favor.” It’s quite another to live boldly into that favor now.

During this season of Epiphany, we are invited again and again to look for signs and glimpses of revelation.  Of light.  Of God's transformative presence.  We are asked to hold in tension chronos time and kairos time — the linear, "ordinary" time we experience as human beings, and the sacred time of God's perpetual inbreaking.  We are called to trust that even in the mundane day-to-day of life on earth, God's "now" brims with the possibility of joy and feasting. 

“This day is holy to the Lord.” “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”   May it be so.

Debie Thomas:  [email protected]

Image credits: (1)  Bible History Online ; (2)  Seattle Pacific University ; and (3)  Bible HIstory Online .

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When your faith begins to feel too small, too confining, you could choose to leave it. But what if the faith we inhabit is roomier than we'd thought? What if our collapsing faith is just a closet in a much larger dwelling?  Disillusioned by narrow theologies, church dysfunction, and constricted readings of Scripture, people are leaving Christianity in droves. But Jesus describes the reign of God as a house with many rooms. The kind of God who decided to experience the world as a guest likely feels constrained by our pinched theologies too. What sorts of ruptures and revisions would it take to find a more spacious faith--and then to inhabit it with authenticity and joy?

A Faith of Many Rooms: Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity

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For years, Debie Thomas has offered fans like me a winsome, enlightened approach to the word of God. This time, in this book, she opens the door to God's whole, colorful, many-winged house—a house where our cultures are gifts, our ancestors are prophets, everyone’s story matters, and God is always near. Brilliant, carefully crafted, and heart-stopping in its beauty and honesty, this is Debie Thomas at her best.”

THE REV. STEPHANIE SPELLERS Canon to Presiding Bishop Michael Curry and author of The Church Cracked Open

I have been feasting on Debie Thomas’s words for years. I often say that she reads the Bible like a radiologist reads an MRI, seeing things I could never see. But in this book I get a glimpse of Debie herself, and I’m grateful. The story of her journey from the cramped closet of an evangelical childhood to the “many rooms” of a more generous faith is one of her greatest gifts to the church, and one I hope she will continue to share. It inspires my own journey.

THE REV. JIM SOMERVILLE Pastor of Richmond’s First Baptist Church and Founder of  A Sermon for Every Sunday

I found myself feeling very at home and unexpectedly exposed reading Debie Thomas's quest for a faith and a place to be at home and not an outsider. Thomas rests in Jesus's promise of a spacious, roomy Christianity that travels with us, crosses borders, and bears our sorrows. If you are curious about a faith capacious enough to embrace the entire world with reverence and humility, this story of one Malayalee woman's journey to bare her whole self to the God of the universe is a must read. Me too, Debie, I have caught myself saying blessed Thomas (and Mary) of India, pray for us.

THE REV. WINNIE VARGHESE Rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Atlanta, GA

I’m the author of  A Faith of Many Rooms: Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity , and  Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories: Reflections on the Life of Christ . I’m a columnist and contributing editor for  The Christian Century , and from 2014 to 2022, I was a staff writer for  Journey with Jesus: A Weekly Webzine for the Global Church. I now serve as the Minister for Lifelong Formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, CA.

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Teaser text for upper right home page module: Aurelius Prudentius' earliest poems are the twelve hymns contained in the Cathemerinon (for use in the morning, at meals, and at night, from which the collection took its name).

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For Sunday April 28, 2024

Lectionary Readings ( Revised Common Lectionary , Year C)

This Week's Essay

THANK YOU to Michael Fitzpatrick for a six-week series of lectionary essays from Easter to Pentecost. Michael was a regular staff writer for JWJ from 2020 to 2023. He is a U. S. Army veteran and philosopher. He served five years in the Army as a Chaplain's Assistant, which included two deployments to Iraq during 2004-05 and 2006-08. Michael is finishing his PhD at Stanford University.

Plato’s telling of the trial and death of Socrates is quite paradoxical. The Athenian Senate, providing all the trappings of a show trial, condemns Socrates to suffer the death penalty for “corrupting the youth” and “preaching false gods,” yet he says they can do him no harm. Socrates’ disciples are so distraught some of them try to break him out of prison, but he refuses to go. On the day of his execution, Socrates assures those who gather to say their goodbyes that his destiny is the land of the blessed, and it is those who condemned him to death who should be pitied.

In later writings, Plato defended Socrates’ perspective that even a cruel and unjust death as a good person is better than living with riches and happiness gained through cruelty, deception, and exploitation. In one of his dialogues, the Gorgias , Plato imagines Socrates telling a couple notable Greek intellectuals that “it is better to suffer wickedness than commit it.” His interlocutors, Polus and Callicles, are utterly flummoxed by this assertion. They cannot understand how someone who has a successful career in politics or military command or trade by taking advantage of others to get ahead has a worse life than someone who is never cruel or unkind or seeks power over others and who, because of their gentleness, is abused, harassed, and perhaps even murdered by those with power.

Plato’s notion that it is always better to be good and just even if it doesn’t get you ahead in life and even if you suffer injustice for your principled stance (think Dr. King in the Birmingham jail) has significant resonance with the lives of those who earnestly follow God.

David Brooks has recently told the story of Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman living in the Netherlands in the 1940's when Nazi Germany invaded and occupied her country. Although initially a non-observant Jew, Etty found herself compelled into prayer during this time. Her restless searching for God led her to read deeply from the Psalms and later from the Gospels. As she pressed into the presence of God in her life, she discovered how much beauty in the world around her she had been missing, from the radiance of the flowers in the fields to the textures of a friend’s clothing. She was surrounded by one of the most awful moments in Dutch history and yet she inexplicably found the joy of God welling up inside her.

In 1942 when the Nazi incarceration of Jews reached the Netherlands, Etty refused to flee the country, instead going to work at Westerbork where she served Jewish prisoners in transit to Nazi concentration camps. She provided meals and medical care, assisted in squaring away affairs, and she mailed letters for her Jewish sisters and brothers before they were sent off. Those who survived the war and remembered her described her as a person of inexplicable warmth and compassion amidst a godforsaken scene.

A year later, her own name came up for internment, and Etty was shipped off to Auschwitz. When she left, she wrote on a piece of paper, “The Lord is my high tower,” quoting Psalm 18. Those were her last recorded words.

From a worldly perspective, it would seem that Etty had a terrible life that ended with her unjust murder as part of the Holocaust. Yet from the perspective of faith, Etty lived for that which rust and moth and Nazi executioners cannot destroy. If Plato’s maxim is that it is better to die doing what is good than live committing wickedness, Jesus adds in our Gospel reading that it is better to lay down our lives for our friends than to live only for ourselves. For that is what love is, Jesus tells us. Etty was loving her Jewish neighbors in their hour of greatest need, even though she knew doing so would be fatal. In her love, she had victory over her captors, even when they executed her.

These stories illuminate the full meaning of St. John’s remarkable claims in 1 John 5. He tells his readers that loving God is keeping God’s commands. Think of God’s commands as what Etty was doing in serving imprisoned Jews at her transit hub. She seemed like a slave, a pawn in a nightmarish political snare tightening around her and her people. Yet by obeying God’s commands, she loved God, and so had “a victory that overcomes the world.” How can this be? How could Etty’s life be one of victory over the powers dominating her people?

Jesus’ story is quite similar to the stories I’ve been retelling. Jesus, venerated by his followers as the long-awaited Jewish messiah, not only fails to liberate Judea and Samaria from Roman occupation, he also gets himself crucified! Yet within weeks of his ignominious public execution Jesus’ followers were running around Jerusalem proclaiming that God had raised Jesus from the dead, and over the next few years they insisted that Jesus had been exalted by God to be Lord over the whole earth and the cosmos!

In our previous Eastertide readings John has taught us that, by his death, Jesus has purified us from all sin (1.7). By his resurrection Jesus has destroyed the devil’s work (3.8). Because Jesus has first loved us we are free to love others utterly and completely (4.11). Although Jesus’ life and death seems like a failure by worldly standards, Jesus actually accomplished the ultimate act of love that allows us to pass from death to eternal life (3.13).

Rooted in Jesus’ victory, those who love God and love others invoke a power that is greater than any earthly government or military. Etty’s Nazi jailers held all the physical power over her life, yet all they could achieve was a culture of death and paranoia. No matter how hard they tried to demoralize Etty her joy and willingness to love wastefully only grew.

Etty’s life embodies John’s most extraordinary claim, that “God’s commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world” (5.3–4). Although it can seem like Etty was an exceptional person, a moral “Sabrina Ionescu” capable of doing impossible acts of love that the rest of us will never achieve, John’s message implies that in one sense, her acts of devotion weren’t difficult at all. If God in Jesus has already overcome the worldly powers, then we are free to just do what God commands unfettered. Etty found herself serving as if it was breathing. She laid down her life in love because God had already overcome the world for her.

Not just anyone can become an Etty Hillesum. John is clear that those who “overcome the world” are “born of God.” If we have only a worldly birth, then the commands of God are burdensome, because we are acting from our own strength alone. But when we are born again — that is, when we participate in Christ’s death and resurrection to become new people living within Jesus’ eternal life — then we are living and loving by the strength of God first loving us.

There can be no compromise between a perspective that says the lives of Socrates, Jesus, and Etty Hillesum (and saints like her) are failures, and the perspective of God that says they have overcome the world. We must study the scriptures, pray to our God, and with the Church seek the perspective of God so that we too can participate in the victory that overcomes the world. We must be born of God, just as Christ was born of God.

The lesson here is not that we are all to seek out monumental moral acts like that of Etty Hillesum so that we can prove our love for God. For most of us, obeying God’s commands means something as simple as letting the garbage disposal woman know how grateful we are that she has picked up our waste, or changing a bed pan for an aging parent. All these acts of laying down our lives for another are not burdensome if we do them with God. We are not the source of such moral courage. Instead, in every moment we simply focus on the God who first loved us, who sent Jesus as an atoning sacrifice to overcome the world for us, so that we might be free to lay down our lives for others — even when we do not want to, and especially when the world thinks us mad for doing so.

Weekly Prayer William Boyd Carpenter (1841–1918) Before Thy Throne, O God, We Kneel Before thy throne, O God, we kneel: give us a conscience quick to feel, a ready mind to understand the meaning of thy chastening hand; whate'er the pain and shame may be, bring us, O Father, nearer thee. Search out our hearts and make us true; help us to give to all their due. From love of pleasure, lust of gold, from sins which make the heart grow cold, wean us and train us with thy rod; teach us to know our faults, O God. For sins of heedless word and deed, for pride ambitions to succeed, for crafty trade and subtle snare to catch the simple unaware, for lives bereft of purpose high, forgive, forgive, O Lord, we cry. Let the fierce fires which burn and try, our inmost spirits purify: consume the ill; purge out the shame; O God, be with us in the flame; a newborn people may we rise, more pure, more true, more nobly wise.

Michael Fitzpatrick cherishes comments and questions via [email protected]

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