The book is here! Friendship with Jesus is finally out! This blog will be a companion piece to the book, for these first few entries at least. I hope to publish Thursday Thoughts every couple weeks, perhaps more in these early days as word begins to get out about the book. Thank you for coming!
We had a wonderful Book Launch the other day and the book has finally been birthed into the world – well, at least into the “worlds” of the friends who celebrated with us. The hope for this blog in these early entries is that it be a place to learn a bit more about the book and interact with me as I pursue this new adventure.
The Why
A good place to begin is to share a little about why I wrote this book.
A few years ago, I came across a passage in a book, a memoir actually, where one friend was sharing the gospel with the author, complete with charts and diagrams.
All the doctrines had fit nicely together, but I never believed Ben's diagram. It was all on paper, abstract, removed from the continuum of time and space in which one talked, walked, studied, admired the scenery, ate, drank . . . It was true only in some parallel dimension, the dimension of religion. It had never been real.[i]
When I read that passage I was caught up short. I dropped the book. I was stunned by the accuracy with which those couple sentences described my experience. I grew up in a Christian home and in many ways I have always believed the gospel. But I struggled for years to know the reality of God in my life. I, too, felt that it was “true” but was not very sure it was “real.” One could unpack that in many different ways but these words spoke to and opened up the deep longing I had for a real relationship with God that had always seemed elusive. I wanted more.
The Crisis
When I hit a spiritual crisis in my life, this question, the reality of God, burst open within me and I was no longer able to push it to the side as I had done for many years. As I continued to wrestle with these thoughts, I came across the passage in John 15 where Jesus talks about friendship, “I no longer call you servants…Instead, I have called you friends” (John 15:15). Friends!
I tell a bit of this story in the Introduction to Friendship with Jesus.
I felt as if I were coming to a crossroads. There was no escape from Jesus’ invitation to become his friend. It was right there in Scripture! But, if I accepted his invitation, it would mean that I would have to relate to him as an actual person, a person I could talk to, listen to, and spend time with. I have been blessed with tremendous friends in my life. I know what a friendship is. Friends are there. Friends are real. Friends care about us and listen to us. I do not have to guess what my friend might say to me. This is what I deeply longed for with Jesus. I could no longer ignore my deep desire to have a real friendship with Jesus. I felt I could not go on without it but I had no idea how it might come about. It did not seem that Jesus met any of these criteria for friendship that I knew so well with my actual friends.
It would be many years before I was introduced to imaginative prayer which helped to open up the door of my heart for encounters with Jesus. (More on that next time). Before that, though, I began to think about this dynamic of “friendship” and how it related to a life with Jesus. I began to think about the ways that friendships in my life had begun, grown and developed.
A Growing Friendship
One of the unfortunate byproducts of growing up in church is that one can be left with the impression that deciding to “follow Jesus” or “giving your life to God” is a one-time event. You were outside the fold and now you choose to be inside. And once you’re inside, you are supposed to trust God completely. No one ever said this quite this boldly. We even used words like “growing in Christ,” “maturing in faith,” and “discipleship,” which were meant to convey the idea of a growing and developing relationship. But somehow many of us who spent our childhoods going to church were given the impression that to call yourself a Christian meant that you trusted God fully.
It wasn’t until I began speaking to groups about the process of a developing friendship with Jesus that I noticed how much tension many Christians were living under in regard to the status of their spiritual lives. There was a profound level of guilt for many who struggled to trust God in the way they felt they should. Or, if not guilt, frustration that “trusting” seemed an impossible hill to climb. When I would talk about a relationship with Jesus that, like any friendship, needed to begin slowly and grow incrementally, there was tremendous relief. I began to wonder whether this might be something to write about.
I made many false starts over the years but when I was introduced to imaginative prayer and began to experience Jesus in the stories of the gospels, the project began to take shape.
I will continue that story next time. For now, thank you for reading. I hope you will consider signing up to receive Thursday Thoughts each week (hopefully) in your inbox.
[i] Tony Hendra, Father Joe. New York: Random House, 2004. 70
Comments