Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller Jesus Christ Love

We're sorry, but this content is no longer available on Beliefnet. You may enjoy the following related articles: Love Thy Neighbor, Hate Thyself? By Brennan Manning Jesus Was Lonely, Too By Charles Stanley Thirst for God By Max Lucado What God Wants for Your Life By Fred Schmidt to love the Father , a relational exploit, and He adds, as if to emphasize, to love as well our neighbors (see Matt. 22:36-39). Christ is saying that the two most important commandments of God are to have within us a relational commitment to God and to other people. This isn't even to mention the fact that, as God, He created people in the first place. God calls us His children, His sheep, and His bride. It must have been wonderful to spend time with Christ, with Somebody who liked you, loved you, believed in you, and sought a closeness foreign to skin-bound man. A person would feel significant in His presence. After all, those who knew Christ personally went on to accomplish amazing feats, proving unwavering devotion. It must have been thrilling to look into the eyes of God and have Him look back and communicate that human beings, down to the individual, are of immense worth and beauty and worthy of intimacy with each other and the Godhead. Such an understanding fueled a lifetime of joy and emotional health among the disciples that neither crowds of people jeering insults, nor prison, nor torture, nor exclusion could undo. They were faithful to the end, even to their own deaths. People don't go out and get tortured and arrested for somebody who doesn't love them. If somebody loves us we will do all kinds of things in their name, for them, because of them. They will make us who we are. He Had No Fear of Intimacy I have sometimes wondered if the greatest desire of man is to be known and loved anyway. It is no secret we are terribly protective of our hearts, as though this tender space is a kind of receptor for our validation as humans. The closer we are to another person, the more vulnerable we are and the more we feel a sense of risk. Lovers can take years to finally trust each other, and many of us will close ourselves off at the slightest hint of danger. Introductory conversations are almost always shallow. "Where did you go to school?" and "How old are your children?" are safe places to begin. Start an initial meeting with "What addictions do you struggle with?" or "When do you feel least loved by your wife?" and we are going to have a tough time making new friends. It seems that we feel we must trust people before we let them know anything remotely vulnerable about us, and to ask for more before trust has been built is to contravene a social etiquette dating back to the fall of man. All this, I suppose, is connected to the fact that our validation seems to always be in question. And yet it is through this system of defense Christ walks with ease, never seeming to fear that He would do damage by rummaging around in the tender complexity of a person's identity. Instead, He goes nearly immediately to our greatest fears, our most injured spaces, and speaks into those places with authority. John includes in his gospel an interaction between Jesus and a woman from Samaria. She was from a group of people known in the day for subscribing to loose interpretation of the Judaic system; the modern-day, evangelical equivalent of a Unitarian. In the scene, Jesus is alone with this woman at a well where He has come for a drink and she has come to draw water for the day. The woman has a loose reputation, according to the text, having gone through five husbands. In this day, it was nearly unheard-of for Jews to have any dealings at all with Samaritans, much less women of her repute. The woman is shocked when Jesus asks her for a drink of water. "How is it that You, being Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" she says to Jesus (John 4:9 NKJV). A friend recently told me that this exchange would be the equivalent of a known evangelical walking into a gay bar and asking a man to buy him a beer. "Listen," Christ says to the woman. "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, `Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water" (v. 10). This odd response must have frustrated the woman, because she responds sarcastically, "I would like to have some of that water because I wouldn't have to keep coming out here to this well!" (see v. 15). And then Christ walks directly past the barriers around this woman's heart as if He had been destined to live in and warm those cold chambers. "Go, call your husband, and come here," He says to her (v. 16). The text indicates Christ knows full well the woman has had five husbands and is now living with a man to whom she is not married. The interesting nature of Christ's words is that they correct a misunderstanding. The woman had assumed the living water Christ talked about was like the liquid in the well, but instead, Christ redirects her immediately to a thirst of a different sort: this desire to be known and loved anyway. In no way does Jesus judge this woman, stand over her and condemn her, or even mention the idea of sin; rather, He appeals to the desire of her heart, pointing out the dehumanizing cycle of her life that has driven her through relationship after relationship, none of which gave her lasting fulfillment. In a sense, this woman was looking for importance and love through a man, and Jesus walks in and says what you really need is God, what I have is living water; and if you drink of it, you will never thirst again. It is interesting to me that He offers Himself to the deepest need of man, not a religion, not a formula, but Himself. He offers to her a relationship that is more than romantic, more than a balm for her heart. "I know that Messiah is coming," she says to Jesus. "I who speak to you am He," Christ responds (vv. 25-26). It must have been unnerving when, to an elitist audience, Jesus later would tell a parable about a man who had been robbed and beaten and then ignored by all but a "good Samaritan." Jesus was not afraid of controversy, of revealing the worth of those considered worthless. The modern-day equivalent might be to tell a story to a group of conservative evangelicals about a pluralist, liberal homosexual who heroically stops to help a stranded traveler after a preacher, a Republican, and a Christian writer have passed him by. -->