A Different Guy

 

 

 

“Pay attention to the weird,” a friend had said.  Out of the 12 disciples, John was a bit different in the way he referred to himself.  “John, the one whom Jesus loved,” he wrote, is sprinkled in the gospel of John.  No other gospels say this about him, nor do other disciples like Matthew, Luke or Mark refer to themselves as, “the one whom Jesus loved.”

 Weird.

Teachers I have sat under recently through DVD or television have trended to make fun of John and his sense of ego in his own gospel.  I’m seeing it differently.  I’m paying attention to the weird and seeing John.

John used more symbolism throughout his gospel  as Jesus being God than the others.  It opens in John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”  John is seeing much more.  He’s revealing more spirituality and bigger picture things.  

What is it about him?

John receives.

John doesn’t appear to hesitate or work on coming up with his own stuff.  He receives. 

He received Jesus’ love.  He believed it.  He walked in it and he claimed it for himself. 
“John, the one whom Jesus loved.”

John also wrote that others were those whom He loved.  John 11:5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

John recognized and received Jesus' love and saw that He had it for others.  If you do online searches on Bible verses about love you will find that the larger majority are in Psalms (David was a man after God’s own heart) the book of John and the three small books 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd John.

“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone that loves is born of God and knows God.  He that doesn’t love, doesn’t know God, for God is love.” 1 John 4:7-8.

And in the Aramaic translation, John 3:16 For God loved the world in this way: so much that he would give up his Son, The Only One, so that everyone who trusts in him shall not be lost, but he shall have eternal life.

This is the difference.  John was one of the inner circle guys because he confidently followed closely knowing he was loved.   At the time of eating the last meal together it says that Jesus said one would betray him.  John 13:23-25 reads that the one whom Jesus loved was close to Him and Peter asked that one to ask Jesus who it was.  John did so as he leaned back into Jesus’ bosom and asked Him who it was.  Jesus answered him.

Looking at this, here is John so close and comfortable knowing the love Jesus has for him and leaning right into his “bosom” or chest.  He presses into his chest, leaning and asks.  He is relaxed, near, intimate and confident that Jesus will answer him.  John is receiving and believing and living in the position of love and nearness of Jesus.  In that, he is also answered.  Peter, in his own uncertainty, asks John to ask Him. 

John is also the disciple that receives the great revelations of Revelation.  He receives.  He is open and believing.  He believes in such a level of spiritual awareness and openness to all God is that he sees huge things. 

He was at the transfiguration.  This was when Jesus’ human body took on a heavenly body and He conversed with Moses and Elijah.

He was at the crucifixion and there, he received more.  John 19:26-27 When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" 27Then He said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.

From that moment, he received her.  He didn’t say, “O no Lord, I’m not worthy of your Mom” or “I need to check and make sure it’s okay with the rest of the family.” 

He received her as his mother.  And Jesus knew he would.  Also notice his proximity.  Again, John is near.

He was at the ascension.  This was when Jesus was taken into a cloud and went into heaven.

Being receptive is everything. 

It is the beginning place of incredible blessing. 

It is the vision through eyes of grace and the fuller view of His glory. 

Many teachers teach the portion that Jesus spoke about having child-like faith.  That the Kingdom of heaven belong to such as these.  Children are strongly faith filled. They trust, they don’t come with agendas to confirm their own views, and they are open.

 I see them as receivers.

They are dependent on others to provide for them and care for them and they readily receive.  They started life that way and have yet to acquire anything significant on their own.  They have to receive.  Have you ever seen a child reject a gift?  Have you seen an adult?  I have seen adults say, “Oh, no you shouldn’t have done that” or “No, I couldn’t possibly take this.”

 We play unworthy.  Children don’t.

A little boy named Samuel was serving Eli.  Young Samuel received the words of God as God called to him he responded, “Speak to me LORD, for your servant is listening.”  1 Samuel 3:10  He received.

My husband traded his car in for a different one that was a convertible.  He gave the convertible to me and took over driving the older car I was driving.  I could hardly handle that kind of generous gift!  I couldn’t even initially drive it and had to have my husband drive it for the first 20 minutes because I was crying and feeling like it was more than I should have, that I wasn’t worthy of it.  It took me a month to fully receive it and enjoy it and accept it as a blessing.

 Now it is nearing November and I can’t have the top down anymore because it is too cold.  We live in Minnesota.  I wasted a month of warm summer days not feeling the fullness of joy, even with the top down, of this incredible gift by instead feeling like it was more than I deserved.  Now that I got over myself, and I realize how much he loves me and it is his expression of love,  I enjoy it and I see how much of a blessing it and he really are.

 I receive that love.

Those that receive from God and His love see a bigger picture.  They see more spiritually and they speak it more freely because they are not encumbered by doubt, unworthiness or have worked to acquire their own view.  To those that receive, it just is and they got it and they trust it and they enjoy it.

That was John.  He received Jesus’ love and he trusted it. 

Think of what your life could be like if you said your name and after it, “the one whom Jesus loves.”

Because, you are.

Receive.

In the receiving we are told to give, too.  As John received the revelation, he wrote it out so others would have it. He didn’t keep it for himself.  As God does things in your life, tell that story to others.  It encourages them or sets their eyes on His glory. 

Matthew 10:8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.

John was also the only apostle that did not die in martyrdom and lived a long life, believed to have died of natural causes.  Hmm, weird.

 

 





BIG BANG

John 8:12 NIV

Then spoke Jesus again to them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that follows me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.

Over the years we get muddled and mixed up.  Our visions become so focused on one thing we lose track of the big picture.  Special interests, stats, mind narrowing opinions with blinders to see or even deafening ourselves from listening to someone that may think a little differently than us.  As I have focused on things, I have sometime become short-sighted into the whole of it.

 Jesus walked into that narrow vision of expectations of who the Pharisees and Jews thought the Messiah should be.  They lost sight of the big picture that had been clearly displayed throughout the Torah that reveals the Messiah. They were missing Him by their own narrowed views.  On the flip side, some can become so inclusive of all, that they miss the truth.  The ones that by majority received Christ most readily as Messiah and LORD were the Gentiles.  They didn’t have the personally formed opinions or their own efforts in studies or time they put in.  They saw the wholeness of Christ and what He did as “God with us” because their vision was open to see I AM in the present.  They were taking it all in.

 This plays out even in the physical act of reading.  I can read for a long time looking at the words on a page or on a screen and when I look up or out my window it takes a while for my vision to adjust to see clearly all that is there and around me.  Sometimes I am amazed at all I had missed.  The sun may have set and there was only a thread of  orange still there in the mostly darkened sky and a better part of my day had passed.

My Christian life didn’t start out in any way of Bible study.  My Christian life was more relational.  I hung out with God.  I talked to Him a lot.  I needed Him a lot.  I noticed things in nature and saw His humor and His heart and His power.  I observed people and I observed all that I believed that He made.  I pretty much walked in His vastness.

When I did decide to really read the Bible, I would read conversations that David had with God in the Psalms and I’d say to Him, “Hey, we did this!”  The more I understood what it was like to really hang out and walk with God and know Him, the more other things made sense.  My vision was so much wider.  When I would read His Word it already was easy to understand.  I recognized His voice, much like a child that reads a message from his parent.  My experiences with Him were often miraculous.  I was used to this Spirituality. It was comfortable to me.  It still is the place where I am most comfortable. 

The older I have become the more I am beginning to recognize Him in other parts of this physical world. I see the Spiritual and physical overlap. Sciences have started to make sense to me because it matched His design and intentions and His Word.  Of those who wrote the Bible thousands of years ago under the inspiration of His Spirit, they write of things that man had not proven or found yet in science.  And as scientists often focus on the science and get deeper and deeper into it over the centuries, today they often miss the connection to the Word of God.  I’m not a scientist, nor am I a Biblical scholar.  I am someone that is comfortable to say anything to God and receptive enough to listen to Him.   You could say I’m child-like.

But, as I see Him more in physical ways I am amazed.  Numerous times in the Bible the LORD is mentioned with Light and Life.  Today, we even make jokes when someone hurts themselves, but not seriously hurt, and we may say to them “stay away from the light” as if it was the Light at the end of the tunnel where God and heaven are as if they are about to pass from this life to the next. The Light at the end of the tunnel.

The beginning of Life and creation is often debated.  As science has narrowed to the physical, it misses a bigger vision.  Science didn’t use to be this way.

 I was doing some reading recently and I am incredibly grateful to be alive in the days of “Google”.  I was researching some science studies on light.  I came across a lengthy document called The New Chemistry, a lecture on molecules and Avogadro’s Law by a scientist named Josiah Parsons Cooke 1827-1894 and it included lectures he did in Cambridge.  Mr. Cooke begins saying its history has been marked by very frequent revolutions in its theories or systems. This is an introduction he made before he began the lecture teaching.

 The courses of the planets have not changed since they were watched by Chaldean astronomers, there thousand years ago; but how differently have their motions been explained first by Hipparchus and Ptolemy, then by Copernicus and Kepler, and lastly by Newton and Avogadro.  He states that I also know that our knowledge of these laws is as yet very imperfect, and that our human systems must be at the best, but very partial expressions of the truth.  Still, it is a fact worthy of our profound attention that in each of the physical sciences as in astronomy, the successive great generalizations which have marked its progress have included and expanded rather than superseded those which went before them.  Through the great revolutions which have taken place in the forms of thought, the elements of truth in successive systems have been preserved, while the error has been constantly eliminated; and so as I believe, it always will be, until the last generalization of all brings us into the presence of that law which is indeed the thought of God. 

As I have been involved recently with young students and areas of physics, I began to understand in very simple forms, the process of nuclear energy and the power of it not just in death, but life. In nuclear physics, one makes a powerful energy by splitting a tiny form, the atom, to create a much greater energy.  More recently, atoms have been split by laser light.

As the sun shines brightly, it is producing an incredible amount of energy that reaches us as light and heat.  The light on the moon is a reflection of the sun upon its dull surface.  The sun is an example of different kinds of energy, kinetic, electromagnetic radiation, thermal, gravitational.  In other forms of energy I learned that Sound is also an energy.

Here is what I began to see in the vastness of God.

 I read the famous equation and Theory of Relativity of Albert Einstein’s,  E=mc2.

 E means energy.  The m means mass and c stands for the speed of light and the 2 is squared.  That means it is the Speed of Light x the Speed of Light.  This equation led scientists to atomic and nuclear energy.  It makes a big bang of energy. 

The beginning of the Bible is Genesis 1 and it starts with an account of creation.  The word Genesis means origin and it is also synonymous to birth. Some scientists say that everything started with a “Big Bang.”

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

 The presence of God’s Spirit is hovering over a formless mass and water is mass, too. Water is also a component that is part of every living thing.

Genesis 1:3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

These were His first mentioned words.  “Let there be light.”  Sound.  And more.

As the Bible says also in John 1:4 NIV  In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

If you look at God as Life and Light, then we read that God as Light said, “Let there be light.”  We now have c2.  Speed of Light x Speed of Light. 

Can you imagine this equation on a God-Powered level?!  Mass times the speed of light squared equals Energy!  The Biggest, Life-giving Bang and science has the equation but, it was written thousands of years ago by the hand of Moses through the inspiration of His Holy Spirit.  Life. Creation. Genesis.

The theory of relativity goes much further with time and space and the speed of light which is the fastest moving thing that man can measure.  Light travels at a constant finite speed of 186,000 miles a second.  It takes light 8.3 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth.  It travels 93 million miles. 

When we read of the “days” God created, the time can possibly mean time in different ways than we know it and relativity, and speed and time play into that. Science now uses the term “space time.”  2 Peter 3:8 NIV  But do not forget this one thing, dear friends; With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day.  This is before any thoughts of relativity were conceived scientifically.

As we become more aware of God, it says in Isaiah 29:18 NIV In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see.

My Dad is a physicist and he told me that when people need glasses to see better, they need lenses that let more light into the eye when the eye lens is not capable of focusing an image properly onto your retina.  The lens prescription is based on the amount of bend into the lens to allow the proper bend amount to the light rays to sharpen the vision.  Light is what allows the vision of the image on the retina.  When you have seen animals that have lived in caves for years and years like small fish or newts, their eyes no longer form fully or open.  You can see dark places beneath their skin that look as if they were to be eyes. They remain blind because they have no light and the need of continued growth of the eyes stopped.   

Light is what is needed to see.  The word for light in Greek is pho.  We see the word pho in photograph which means light-writing.  Photosynthesis. Photons.  All are the part of the element of light.

 This summer has been a wet one.  Water is a life-giving element and so is light.

 Even with all of the rains this summer, my plants are not as big as they usually are this time of year.  We haven’t had many days of sunlight.  When the sun does come out, I notice much more growth.  Light carries the energy to make my plants grow.  This is the process of photosynthesis. Light is a component necessary for growth and vision.

Light is also equated to thought for ideas which is creativity and understanding.(Notice the word create in creativity) Our cartoons will show a character and suddenly there is a light bulb above their head.  It means they had an idea.  In a more recent animated movie called Despicable Me, the main character, Gru, doesn’t have a light bulb when he has an idea.  Instead, he says, “Light bulb.”  It is a humorous twist representing that he had an idea.  

There is a lot more in the Bible regarding light, the lamp stand and being a light. The pillar of fire as a light in the night. The tongues of fire at the time of Pentecost. The potential study, teaching and insights to it already fascinate me.

May Jesus, the Light of this world, give you the vision to fully see Him and open your eyes and your ears to more.  LORD, let there be Light.