We Are Not Orphans – Revisited and Updated

John 14:18 NASB
“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”

How is it that one can come to love Jesus when we’ve never met him? How do you explain that to someone? And yet it is true. The other day I had the strangest feeling that I wasn’t going to see my wife again, here, as I left for work. It stayed with me for most of the day and I prayed about it a couple of times during the day. I really got chocked up about it and called her at home but everything was fine.

But when I was praying about it, it dawned upon me that I love Jesus, just like I love my wife, actually more, because for me, He holds my everything together. And just like I would find it extremely hard to even imagine my life without my wife of almost 52+ years of marriage with me, what is totally inconceivable is not having Jesus in my life. Try putting that adequately into words. And there is a preciousness about Jesus that is so hard to explain. I remember having a dream a few years ago where I was looking down into a large crowd of people and I heard my wife call my name and then I saw her face in the crowd. Of course, my heart melted when I saw her face and I thought to myself, who could not love that face. I’ve never forgotten that dream and I can still picture it in my mind today and I still love her face and always will.

Yet even though I’ve never seen the face of Jesus, I know I will know Him when I see Him. I just know. I could pick Him out from a crowd of ten thousand or more. He is my everything, He is what holds me together. And Jesus knows everything about me, He knows me better than I know myself. We’ve been through such an awful lot together and He has showed me so many aspects of Himself along the way. His patience with me is unreal and that just melts my heart. And as I look back over the years I find it difficult to comprehend how little I did understand and yet He was there with me even then, in spite of my selfishness and in spite of my sheer stupidity. It’s so unsettling to comprehend that in these last years of my life, I’m only now beginning to really see and only now beginning to really hear. So many lessons, so much forgiveness, so many demonstrations of His love, when I deserved absolutely nothing at all.

Many years ago I had the joy of visiting Jerusalem and spending a couple of weeks there. I’ve been to the Mount of Olives and I literally walked around the entire old city of Jerusalem. My eyes actually gazed upon the area of the Garden of Gethsemane from Jerusalem and when I first saw it, it felt like I had seen it before, that’s also hard to explain. But when I read the Holy Scriptures now, I can remember how the air smelled and how it seemed to have a texture to it that seemed different from anywhere else that I’ve ever been. It’s difficult to explain what it feels like walking over the area that you know Jesus walked on, even though it’s many feet below. I find that when I read the Gospels it almost seems like I am there and it amazes me what actually took place there. That Jesus spoke there, healed people there and actually shed His blood there, for you and for me. It makes it real because it was and is real.

My favourite method for prayer is to walk alone and pray and that is where sometimes the closeness of God’s Holy Spirit, the Spirt of Christ, flows from within me to commune with Him and I know He hears me and touches my heart. Those times are so very very precious. They vary in degrees of intensify from time to time but there is always that awareness of connection that is also hard to explain. Precious and beautiful. I don’t think you can put that into words either.

Consider that Jesus said that He would not leave us orphans, that He would be with us, even though we cannot see Him or put our hand in His. The fact that He can do that is amazing and the witness of His Holy Spirit within us is the reality of that promise.

What is truly scary is that I know I have yet but to scratch the surface. And yet He patiently waits for me, bringing that which He started in me to completion in Him. And when all is said and done, until Jesus gives everything back to our heavenly Father (1 Corinthians 15:27-28), it really is all totally about Jesus. That’s the way that our heavenly Father ordained it and that is indeed the way that it is. Once you see that, the whole Bible changes, from cover to cover. One of my prayers is me asking Jesus not to allow the me in me, to get in the way of what He wants to be in me. That’s where I die in Him and He lives in me. And I am convinced that all of that takes place, or comes to be, because of God’s grace, because only He can and does, do that in us, when we truly ask Him to and it is our hearts desire to walk in His ways.

I sure wish I had come to understand this much sooner in life, but I’m thinking that God knows my beginning from my end and His will for me will be accomplished and I am truly grateful and trusting in Him.

Just a bit of sharing from the heart, in all the turmoil that surrounds us.

Worthy is the Lamb. Blessings.