1) Be introduced to him via word of mouth or book - someone mentions Christ and you are curious as to who he is.
2) You go to Christ's house to meet him and discover that He's not home and nobody seems to know where to find him. Further, although everyone there claims to know Christ, nobody has ever met him, and every description of him is conflicting. Still, you are curious, so...
3) You read his book. This is rather confusing. Like claiming you know Steinbeck because you read The Grapes of Wrath. This leads you to read other books from the experts, which contradict each other as well. You start to get a better picture of who everyone thinks Christ is. You know what he's done. But you still can't get to know him just yet. What you really need is to walk in his footsteps for a while...
4) You do things that Christ did. This brings you REALLY close to knowing him. You begin to suspect that the best way to know Christ is to be really really good to everyone - to love them as much as possible. BUUUUUTTTTTT... after many years of this, you still don't really know him. Which brings you to the final step...
5) You accept that Christ is unknowable. And surprisingly, when you stop trying to capture Christ into some definable picture, you finally get to know Him.
2 comments:
In my view, it is not that He is unknowable, it's just that our own nature prevents us from knowing Him as well as we can/should. Unless we truly die to ourselves and allow Him to live through us, we cannot know Him.
Cheers.
Step 6 - You accept Him into your heart and allow yourself to be transformed by Him.
Willow Creek Church did a survey of 1000 churches across the country, of all sizes, all denominations, and found that the majority of church attenders/Christians could be placed into four major categories:
1) Exploring Christ
2) Growing in Christ
3) Close to Christ
4) Christ Centered
We need to move along that path, but it starts with us knowing where we're at in the process.
Good post, bro!
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