CLAIMING CHRIST

Judges 8:18-9:21; Luke 23:44-24:12; Psalm 99:1-9; Proverbs 14:9-10

“’Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.’ Then they remembered that he had said this. So they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened.”

“Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established fairness. You have acted with justice and righteousness throughout Israel. Exalt the Lord our God! Bow low before his feet, for he is holy!”

“Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can fully share its joy.

Jesus makes a habit out of not showing up where we expect Him and revealing Himself when we’re not looking. Old Testament prophecy told us plainly to look in Bethlehem, but most missed Him there. Jesus said He would not stay in the tomb more than three days, yet no one believed it at first when they saw the tomb empty. He’s given us clues about His Second Coming, but it’s still likely to come as a surprise, too. There’s a trend here. None of the most significant of the Lord’s appearances have been marked by widespread acceptance. Maybe it’s because relatively few Christians are genuinely serious about claiming Christ as their Lord, as well as their Savior.

It can be hard to find Christ when we’re not seriously looking for Him. Even the most diligent sometimes have a hard time staying focused, particularly when He does not seem to show up when we expect Him as we expect Him. It could be our hearts just aren’t ready, but it also could be we are looking for something other than a Lord.

I was one of the most difficult of souls for the Spirit to reach. No, not an addict, a pervert, an atheist or a Satan worshiper: the guy most mothers wanted for their daughters. I did not smoke, almost never drank, and was a one-girl-at-a-time guy who paid attention to the bounds of morality, played athletics and got good grades. In short, not an obvious sinner at all, I was instead a “lifer,” one who had grown up in the church, never knew any other way and thought everything was fine. Had anyone asked (they didn’t, probably assuming my time in church, youth group, retreats and mission projects spoke for itself), I’d have said I had a relationship with Christ. Certainly, I needed no proselytizing. I knew the Scriptures. I even toured as Jesus in the musical Godspell for close to a year! I didn’t need another relationship; I needed a Lord, but I didn’t recognize it until almost too late.

It’s hard to realize how far off a miss can be until we are confronted with an actual target. I called myself a Christian, but the first time I really needed God, I came up empty. I did not know how to align my spirit with Christ’s. The sad fact is, I had just been going through the motions, acting like what I thought a Christian was, until one day, it became painfully obvious I had no clue. While the specifics of that story are a whole blog for another day, the gist is that I was challenged to respond to a major crisis in my life (at 17, isn’t most everything?) by relying on the Spirit, and had nothing to fall back on. I never really thought I needed Jesus before, so I had never really acknowledged Him as my personal Lord. I had just been going through the motions of a “religious life,” thinking the rest would take care of itself.

It won’t. We can decorate the house for Christmas, spend time in church, carry our Bibles, think pious thoughts, give to the poor… and still not be one step closer to the Living Christ. Finding Christ has little to do with intellectual knowledge or living a decent life. Primarily, it means submitting to Him as the Lord of our lives. Said another way, “being Christian” is much more about recognizing who Jesus is than it is about what we think or do. My prayer is that no one waits until they need Jesus to make Him their Lord. I won’t say Jesus won’t or can’t save us in the bottom of the ninth. But I will say that waiting to actually confess Him as Lord allows a lot of blindness, and may leave us vulnerable when we need His strength the most. There won’t be a better time to claim Jesus as Lord. But there could be any number of times coming when we’ll wish we’d done so sooner.