Here and Now!
SHARING LIFE WITH JESUS HERE AND NOW
1. What are the keys to continuing freshness in your love relationship with the Lord Jesus?
Him! Just hanging out with Him throughout the day, sharing my struggles and joys with Him, praying for others and looking to Him continually through the day for what He might be about in the circumstances around me. Also, hanging out with good friends who are also on this journey.
2. What do you experience of the Holy Spirit’s speaking and leading in your every day life?
A gracious flow of growing convictions over time of who I’m to spend time with, what He is showing me, and little pokes of reminders when I am striving in my own efforts instead of resting in His . . .
3. Can you describe your everyday communication with God? Has this changed much since you first gave your life to Christ?
I describe it above as a growing conviction over time, and that says it all for me. Has it changed? Absolutely. In the early days I could hardly hear Him or recognize His workings. And when I did hear, the thoughts sounded so far fetched that I ignored them, thinking they were my own. I’ve since come to learn that God’s thoughts are the ones I struggle with most. They make no sense to my natural mind but by learning to listen my recognition of His voice has grown better. I hear Him more and follow Him more quickly, for the most part. But He still drives me nuts some days with growing convictions I think are outrageous, until I give in and see what He had in mind all along.
4. What is worship to you these days? How does it play a part in your everyday life?
Worship to me is how I live my life under God. When I follow Him, spend time with someone He puts on my heart, yield to Him in some area of my life, that is my worship to Him. Praise and adoration rise from my heart spontaneously whenever I recognize how He is working around me and in the lives of others. I find it happens far less in ‘song services’ than I used to think it did, though I love when believers can be together and exalt God in song, prayer, and listening to Him. Unfortunately for many this has become more of a detached ritual than a living expression of shared life.
5. What is your experience of blessings and disappointments in your relationship with other believers?
I have been greatly enriched by others on this journey, some people who are new to faith and others who are further along the road than I am in some areas. Our friendship and mutual cooperation causes no end of joy and lets me see new things about Father that I wouldn’t probably see on my own.
As to disappointments, not much disappoints me anymore, except those who have an agenda to convince people that their theology is the only right one. Or they need to build some kind of ministry at others’ expense.
6. What is your present understanding of local church life, leadership and structure?
Friends and friends of friends in growing relationships, and the willingness to cooperate and do together whatever Father might ask of us. As to leadership, it is simply older brothers and sisters on the journey who are hospitable to others, willing to help others in their spiritual growth, and willing to facilitate what God wants to do in inviting people closer to Himself. As to structure, I’m learning that our attempts to structure gatherings and ‘ministries’ in perpetuity become ritualistic and empty over time. I like structure that facilitates what God is doing in a certain event or season and then lets it go to see what else He might do. So I think structure is important, but we dare not conform to it without that ongoing listening to Jesus.
7. What 2 or 3 things have become increasingly important to you over the period since you first trusted in the Lord?
Real friendship with other believers and with people in the world, letting God provide for all things and not doing it myself or in my own strength, letting God open doors instead of kicking them open myself.
8. What two or three things have become quite unimportant/meaningless/valueless to you since God ‘turned your life around’?
Doctrinal controversies, my own wisdom and abilities, my own reputation, notoriety or significance.
9. At the present time, what is your main area of desire, concern or aspiration?
Simply to see people become free in the life of Jesus, able to see Him, hear Him and follow Him rather than think they have to get that from other people, and to connect with others who have a similar passion . . .
by Wayne Jacobsen, USA
