I have read the gospel of John and studied it for over 30 years. Yet it was only just this year that God opened my eyes to the Father verses in it. You wonder sometimes how you can be so blind. This of course is all part of what he has been teaching me over the last few years. How to live on the other side of the road. To look at my christian life from another perspective.
God's Father heart. He says he will not leave me an orphan, he will be my Father and I am his daughter.
So I was re-reading John's gospel for the umpteenth time and Holy Spirit started to highlight certain verses to me. Jesus did nothing on his own, said nothing but what the Father told him to. He said he could only do what he saw the Father do.
Now I expect someone will be laughing and saying after all these years didn't you know this, and the answer is yes of course I knew this. I could have quoted the verses etc.
But now instead of knowing it, I KNEW it. I could see it in my spirit. Jesus, in communion with the Father, listening intently, watching through an open heaven what the Father was up to and then doing it himself. totally submitted, totally obedient.
I looked again at what Jesus was actually doing and then imagined that the Father must be doing these things too in heaven. How exciting and how busy is the Father. What a picture of heaven it conjures up.
Jesus shows us what the Father is like when we look at him, so we know that the Father enjoys socialising. Likes the occasional party, is compassionate, loves the poor and downtrodden. Holds women in high regard. Heals, raises from the dead, gets angry, cries and much more.
But Jesus also shows us how to be a son or a daughter by trusting, loving, listening to, spending time with, obedience to the Father.
How exciting it is when scriptures that you have read over and over suddenly open up a whole new dimension to your relationship with the Father and Jesus. That WOW moment. Just like reading the bible for the first time. With the eyes of the Holy Spirit one verse can have an infinite array of meanings depending on what you need to know at that moment.
The sad thing is there are not the words to really describe what happened. When put into words it somehow loses something in the telling. But this is just another little piece of the puzzle that I am being taught in this season with the Father. A Father heart season that seems to be world-wide at the moment. He wants intimacy and to deepen the relationship with him who knows all things. He is love and he wants us to know that love and to love him back.
Jenny <><
What a great post. I have done many Bible studies in groups and alone and always I find that the words there open up new and wonderful insights. It is a very old book, The Bible, but it's words are as fresh as each new day.
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