Day Forty: John's Jesus

      I've believed in God as long as I can remember but I truly began a relationship with Christ in the spring of 1999. I was standing in a church in Lawrence, KS doing my best to avoid Jesus propoganda and convinced no one would convince me. "Where is the evidence?"  I asked. My beloved friend, Ineka, who I miss very much replied, "I used to ask for evidence and believed intellectually but now I just believe on faith."
       So I asked God to show me who Jesus was and having soon satisfied my intellectual thirst I began to seek Christ by faith and have been on that quest ever since. "For we live by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7)."  If my life were examined for evidence of Christ in it, people would see Jesus in it as my provider of unconditional love, grace, and forgiveness. The evidence for his unconditional love, grace, and forgiveness are abundant and yet, unconditional love, grace, and forgiveness are only received by faith not by intellectual pursuit.
        Although I started my quest standing in a church, it is outside the church that I found Jesus on a deep personal level. It is where Jesus meets me in my most private world that I couldn't share with anyone if I tried. That is where Jesus finds me driving down the interstate weeping and wipes a tear from my cheek. That is where Jesus finds me running on a trail as if running from my own heart and opens the floodgates of tears and lets them flow refreshing my soul. It is Jesus holding me through years of unanswered prayers so he could bring me to this place and present me with an even greater gift than I could have imagined on my own.
      There is no intellectual explanation for the unfolding of faith that happens in the very depths of one's soul. It is greater than a human mind can comprehend and more loving than a human heart can express. Sometimes you just have to believe it by faith and let it happen then look back and see the evidence Christ left in the wake.
     On day forty, Beth Moore asks,  "If your life were a Gospel like John's, who could people "believe" your Jesus to be?" If your life were examined for evidence of Christ, who would people think Jesus is?
  
STUDY GUIDE

Follow along in JOHN: 90 Days with the Beloved Disciple by Beth Moore pages 189-194
 Read John 1:6-13
 Answer the questions in your study guide.
 Share a brief highlight or two from your thoughts and answers in a comment posted to the group. (Read guidelines and cautions posted August 1, 2010 before you post).
 Read the comments of others and share your thoughts and encouragement with them by replying to their comments. Identify which post you are responding to by addressing them and their subject or pasting a brief portion of their reply at the start of your post.
PRAY WITH ME:
Lord, thank you for the big impact you make our lives by being in the small stuff. Thank you for allowing us to draw close to you in faith and yet, not lacking evidence of you in our lives should we seek it. Thank you for being a friend who wipes a tear or provides a hand to hold just when we need it most. Let the examples of our lives testify to the evidence that you are who you say you are; the lover of our soul. In Jesus Name, Amen.