“You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.” – Mark 1.11 & Luke 3.22.
“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” – Matthew 17.5.
My kids are great! Many parents will say the same… About their own kids, not mine (necessarily).
The way you get to know my kids are great is by getting to know them.
We thank God almost daily for their lives and liveliness. They are bundles of energy with heart and joy and questions and fun.
There are some kids in our neighbourhood who love to come to our house to play… Not with my wonderful boys, but with their stuff.
You see, we have a trampoline and a jungle gym in our garden. We have toys and balls and bats which lie around wanting to be used. And when the neighbourhood kids come round, those things are played with*.
The point is, they have the opportunity of hanging with my excellent sons but they are too busy playing with their stuff to get to know them.
They know my boys own the stuff, but they see me and my authority and neglect my boys and their authority over the stuff.
I’ll hear “Nathan’s Dad, can we come and play?”. Not ” Hey Nathan, hey Timothy, can we come and play with you?” “Nathan’s Dad, can we come and play?”.
How often are we doing the same to God?
We know there is God/Father (first person of the godhead), we know He has a Son (second person of the godhead) and we know the Son has sent Holy Spirit (third person of the godhead). But we want to play with the toys and bypass getting to know the Son.
Holy Spirit is the “fun one”^. He’s got the coolest toys. He’ll “play nice”. And so we play with the things of God, knowing He is the authority – “Jesus’ dad, can we come and play?” – but miss the authority of the Son over these things.
Yay, prophecy! Yay, healing! Yay, speaking in tongues! Yay, [insert gift of the Spirit here]! But how is our relationship with the Son? Do we spend time with the Son because he is the Son? Or do we spend time with Him because we have to in order to get to “His stuff”?°
Those neighbourhood kids will have fun with my boys’ toys. They will even play with my boys in order to justify their presence in my garden. But it is possible that they will NEVER KNOW my wonderful boys.
Is that what many of us are happy with? Spending time in the garden, playing with stuff and NEVER KNOWING the Son?∆
I think that is the basis for Jesus’ warning in Matthew 7.21-23. Scary to think that He could say: “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.”
May we be a people who love the Son for being the Son. Spending time with Him because we want to get to know His wonder, might, everlasting splendor and majesty.
Oh Father! Please! Help us to love your Son more than His stuff! Give us the courage to engage with Him and His ways and commands. Thank you fo Holy Spirit and all He is to us, but God give us wisdom to spend time getting to know Jesus before we “play with His stuff”. We love you and want to be to you and for you what you call us to be. Bless you. So be it.