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How Do
You Draw Near to Jesus?
By Jack
Hayford
I was talking
the other day to a successful businessman whose nephew began attending
our church a couple of years ago. Although the businessman is a
fruitful Christian attending a Bible-believing church, he was impressed
with something he saw in his relative.
"Something
about his church has really led to strong growth in
his life," he said. "Something about the way
you urge people to be honest, childlike, and open with
God—and with one another."
He went on
to elaborate how much that nephew has ministered to him over the
past few months. If it weren’t that I know to be a man of integrity,
I would think he was simply attempting to flatter. But he wasn’t.
He was merely relating what I must honestly say is a kind of thing
I’ve heard time and time again. I don’t hesitate to say that, because
I know full well it is nothing to my credit.
What he said
was noticing in that relative of his is precisely what Jesus came
to work in all of us. Whenever you begin to open up to the real
Jesus in a real way through the Word and by the Spirit, things happen.
I’m persuaded there are a combination of things basic to this occurring
in a person’s life, and when the man I mentioned asked me how I
thought this happened in people, I enumerated these things:
1. Become
open and forthright in worship. Biblical worship is
humbling. It strikes at the heart of cultural resistance, human
pride, and religious formalism. Simple, open praise and worship
softens the heart and prepares us for transformation.
2. Be
filled with the Holy Spirit. The New Testament reveals
this experience to be more than merely an entry into the resource
of God’s power. It also involves making ourselves vulnerable to
the Holy Spirit's transcending our own intellect with His control.
He doesn’t make robots or produce trances, but He does show us
God isn’t as impressed with our brains as we tend to be.
3. Become
involved in transparent fellowship. Small
groups and interactive relationships are the Lord’s
tools for keeping us honestly in touch with others
. . . and with ourselves.. There is nothing more shaping
than submitting your selves to the mutually living
and confrontive kind of relationship that New Testament
integrity calls for and makes possible. "Walking
in the light, we have fellowship with one another"
(1 John 1:7, paraphrased).
How do we draw
closer to Jesus? I think it costs us more than acquiring information
or performing religious tasks. It cuts to the quick of our character—
facing
us up to God in worship,
opening us up to the Holy Spirit in simplicity and worship,
and
drawing us together with God’s people.
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Jack
Hayford Ministries
14800 Sherman Way, Van Nuys, CA 91405-2233