Heart Tracks - One....or the other?

In my prayer journal, I've written the question, "Do we have an impartation of His life, or just information about it?" That's a piercing question and though we may employ every means of evading an answer, it demands that answer. Have we been living on information about Him, or upon Him? In Him?

One of my great problems with the traditional approach to what we call "discipleship" is that we have tended to treat it as a study of His Word and words. We ask people to "digest" great amounts of the truth that is His Word. Scripture memorization, doctrine, theology. Certainly we need to know Scripture and have sound doctrine and theology, but we can do so and yet not really know Him. The Pharisees were experts in what Scripture said about God, and in the teachings of the Law and the prophets, yet they failed to recognize the God they said they followed when He stood right before them. They could recognize and recite information about Him but they couldn't see Him. When He spoke, they didn't hear. When He revealed Himself before them, they didn't see. The Light of the world was before them, but they were trapped in darkness.

I have heard true discipleship described as "teaching people to hear Him." This may sound overly simple, but how did Jesus teach His disciples? Wasn't He constantly seeking for them to "see" and "hear" the words of the Father through the words He spoke? Scripture says that what set Christ apart from the Pharisees and their teaching was that He taught as "One who had authority." That is, that what He spoke was actually who He was. When He taught about His abundant life, He wasn't giving the facts about it. He was displaying that life before them. He was seeking to give them that very life. The disciples, for all their shortcomings and stumblings to believe, recognized this. In John 6, when most of His followers left Him because of His command to surrender every part of their life to Him, Jesus asks them if they too are going to leave. Peter replied, "Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life." Information would never have kept them to Him. Only the impartation, the actual giving of His life to them would. Information concerning Him will not keep you and me. But if we will receive His life, His life will keep us.

The church possesses a wealth of information about Him. Do we possess an equal or greater amount of His life as well? When we gather together in whatever form our "worship" takes, do we do so as spectators of Him, or partakers in Him? Do we "watch" a story about Him, or actually enter into that story ourselves? Does His story become very much ours as well? That's the difference between informing and imparting. Spectating and partaking. We are caught up in either one, or the other. Which is it for you and me; the One.....or the other?

Blessings,
Pastor O