Personal Savior?
Theme of the Week: Faith in Community
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse: "I have given them your word … I have given them the glory you gave me … I have revealed you to them" (John 17:14, 22, 26). Bonus Reading: John 17:9-12
Not once in Jesus' prayer did he declare, "I have given him your word," or "I have given him the glory you gave me." If I take this prayer for unity seriously, I must give up the arrogant illusion that my spiritual life is a personal matter. I must admit that I can't follow Jesus Christ alone any more than I can get married alone.
It's not completely accurate to say that any of us has a "personal relationship with Jesus." We have a communal relationship with Jesus. I owe my understanding of Jesus to the scribes who preserved the stories, the saints who lived them, and the Sunday school teachers who repeated them.
The scribes made some mistakes, but without them I could never have experienced the raw honesty of the prophet Jeremiah. The saints sinned, and by the end of our Sunday school class, my teacher was inexplicably cranky. These diverse saints were as imperfect as the men and women who share your pew every Sunday. But without them, my faith in Christ would never have grown beyond my simple plea as a five-year-old boy: "I need to know Jesus."
—Timothy Paul Jones in Prayers Jesus Prayed
My Response: I'll thank God for his faithful disciples on whose shoulders I'm standing.
Thought to Apply: Christian brotherhood is not an ideal we must realize; it is a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German theologian, pastor, & martyr)
Adapted from Prayers Jesus Prayed (Regal, 2002) by permission.
Copyright © 2009 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
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Lord, help me to realize that other Christians really are my brothers and to treat them as family.
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