What do you do with One as good as Jesus?
When my daughter was a little girl we used to play this game—I’d say, “Ricci, I love you.” She’d say, “I love you more.” I’d say, “No, I love you more.” And it would go on and on, from the ‘most to mostest’, to the ‘world and to the universe.’ Finally, I’d say, “Well, I love you as big as God.” And then we couldn’t go any further than that, right? Nothing can surpass His love, it is so great and powerful. His love is so renewing; He renews our soul at the fountains of fresh, living water found in His love.
This message is on the Lord’s Prayer or the model prayer. If you could measure the Father’s heart and His love like you measure water—if you could measure the love flowing from the Father’s heart I don’t think you’d ever have to teach on prayer. His love draws you in like a magnet; you’d never leave the prayer closet.
I remember one time He showed me in a vision that His love was so high that He had to bring it way, way down, and touch us with less than a teardrop. This is after He brought it all the way down to a level for us to be able to tolerate-we could still only handle a teardrop. His love was so great and high that if He allowed us to connect with that love undiminished and unfiltered, we would not be able to survive. Furthermore, we would not be able to feel it. Isn’t that interesting? Down here on this temporal plane He has to water it down so that humanity can relate to it the way we were left to relate to it when Adam fell. So, if you ever say to Him that you want to experience the fullness of how much He loves you, He would never do it this side of heaven—He can’t. I said to Him one time: Lord—I want to know and experience how much You love me. For about an hour, I prayed and prayed. Finally, He told me, I can’t do this for you. Why? I asked and He said: Because if I ever let you feel the fullness of My love, you—your physical body -- would explode. You cannot contain My love.
We try to measure His love by tangible things, such as the sea. We try to measure His compassion and mercy by saying it reaches the heavens—we try to measure it by the things we see. When was the last time you flew to the top of the heavens? If you could touch to the top of the heavens you could touch the top of His love and mercy, the end of His loving kindness and compassions. If you can touch the ceiling of heaven—you can touch the ceiling of God. We try to relate to these things by the tangible things we can see, touch and feel, but it’s not possible. His thoughts are of the sands of the sea. When was the last time you counted the sands of the sea? One, two, three—and you’ve only just begun on your little space of beach and there are millions of pieces of sand, right? If you can count the sands of the sea then you can count His thoughts toward you. When have you had someone think of you so much? When you get to Heaven you can thank Him for those 1.5 million thoughts He had for you while you were on the earth and He would say to you: Much more than that—you underestimate the wealth of My goodness, much more than a million, point five.
If we could measure His love, then no one would have to teach on prayer because it would draw us in so magnanimously. The pull into Him would serve as a magnetic, pulling us into His presence. We cannot measure it—so what do we do? We sit on our little stump and say, “How much do You love me?” And when He is feeling particularly kind and gracious He will say: Only as much as the sacrifice of My Son.
God is love; He is our Father. He is the One who desires to answer our prayers. Sometimes we forget that He is the One who created the institution of prayer. He created it—not us. He created prayer to have fellowship with us and reveal Himself to us. Have you ever asked Him why He hasn’t answered your prayers? Just remember that the least He could do was sacrifice His Son for the privilege of revealing to us the Father that answers prayer. He filters everything through that sacrifice. Everything He does and is, everything He gives, He filters through that sacrifice of His dear Son. Through the heart of Jesus Christ God created a path that we could come onto, walk down, and begin to know and recognize Him.
Matt 6:9-13 “Pray, therefore, like this: Our Father Who is in heaven, hallowed (kept holy) be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven (left, remitted, and let go of the debts, and have given up resentment against) our debtors. And lead (bring) us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
Jesus looked at His disciples, His friends who forsook all, picked up their cross to follow Him and said, Pray therefore like this... Not to all, but to these who demonstrated what it takes to engage in a relationship with God to ever-increasing answers of prayer He says: Pray therefore, like this…
God will answer the prayer of a little child because He is God and He is good. However, His desire is not that you would forever remain a child. His desire is that you will grow and become mature in Him—that you would become an intimate friend and begin to recognize the way He thinks, sees and acts in the earth and how He responds to His creation. He wants us to understand Him, not as some distant figure, but as our Father. Just as a father desires to reveal his ways to his son—hoping to breed into his son his own integrity, appreciations, likes and dislikes, his own thoughts about the future, business, and so on an and so forth. As a father would long to breed these things into his son, so does the Lord want to breed His will and His ways into His disciples.
Let me help you understand; there is something that stood between the disciple and Christ. This is does not stand between the typical moderate, apathetic, Church goer. You can be a Christian and still miss this essential element of a disciple. I’m talking about an espousal to the life of the cross. Every disciple must walk through the cross. To have intimacy with Christ, you must become a disciple. To become a disciple, you must walk through the cross. You cannot have one without experiencing the other.
To be continued next week...
In His Amazing love,
Nita Johnson
