What is it about Jesus that drew people to him? Was it
charisma? His knowledge? His appearance? Was it polished speech? Was it grace?
Was it His ‘radical’ teachings? What it because He asked people to do things
unheard of? Was it because He performed miracles? Perhaps it was His
relentlessness? Or was it because He simply saw to the heart of the people and
actually loved them like crazy? Was that
the look in His eyes that just ‘did it’?
Lately, God has been strategically moving me to places that
are uncomfortable, allowing me to feel things that ‘normal’ people don’t often
feel. This is humbly empowering and befitting as a follower of Jesus.
Last Thursday, a man I know showed up at my doorstep in
relapse from a serious, somewhat life-long addiction. He warned me before
showing up of what condition he was in but I told him to come anyways. It
didn’t take long before he was in complete tears telling me, “You know why I
come here? You’re different from all
of the other Christians that I know. You aren’t so serious and condemning of
me. … There’s something about you that is unlike anything I’ve seen before,
something I want, man! I want it so bad!
You know and see what I want deep down; I feel like you actually love me.� Talk
about humbling. I felt uncomfortably in the right place. As an evening of
absolute Holy Spirit movement unfolded, I pondered, “Is this how Jesus felt?�
I love relationships. Craving them, I keep in contact with
people all over the world on a consistent basis and I not only enjoy these
relationships to the nth degree but know it’s key to the Gospel
being the Gospel, passionately seeing to the heart of people and surfacing the
Kingdom within them.
While in Africa last year, I met a man named Domingos
Temane who, along with his wife and children that they have lost, has HIV
& AIDS. Last time I talked to him, he was getting much worse, yet hopeful.
There’s this love that I have for Domingos, a stranger if
you really look at it, that is unbearingly confusing but accurately fitting.
Domingos contacts me often and this morning, I woke to this text message:
Knowing Domingos’ heart and how he is a man of such honor
and valiant character, it eats me up with even more crazy love for him as a
brother and child of God.
I can’t imagine how
Jesus feels on that one….
In Luke 7, Jesus saw the mother of a child who had just died,
weeping. Scripture says, “He had compassion on her� telling her “Do not weep� and stopped at the
casket, doing the unthinkable, speaking to the dead, “Young
man, I say to you, arise.� He sat up and Jesus gave him to his mother!
Often, we picture Jesus as this unanimated, emotionless
character, one who does what He came to do and goes about His business. Could
we be wrong?
How does Jesus feel about His neighbor? How
does He feel about the one that drove the nails? How does He feel when He sees
the hungry? The cripple? The poor? The lonely? What emotions does Jesus have
when encountering a ‘royal screw up’? How does He feel about those dying of HIV
& AIDS? … How does He feel about you?
The answer is uncomfortably befitting…. He
is pained with a burning, compassionate love that compels his actions to move
on behalf of the Father and His Kingdom.
… What are you feeling?
