Good/Bad News

 "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you." James 4:8

Several years back a good pastor friend gave me a number of his books. In one of them, he had written in the margin in reference to James 4:8, "Draw near to God: Good and bad news." I'm going to write a bit on how he is right about that and use some of the thoughts and quotes from my prayer journal to do so.

"When Jesus draws near, He draws near as Lord." Mark Galli....We like the idea of Him being near to us. Comforter, Gentle Shepherd, the loving Jesus. He is all these things, but more than all, He is Lord, and when He comes to us, He comes as Lord. Lord over all. Most especially, Lord over us. This can be part of what my friend saw as the "bad news" of His drawing near. As Lord, all that we are and all that we desire must be submitted to Him. We are not our own. We are His. We don't get to choose how He will manifest Himself to us. Kindness, mercy, tenderheartedness are all part of who He is, but they are just that, a part of Him. He is Lord, Almighty Lord, and He comes to us in that role. John Eldredge said that He wanted Jesus, "the real Jesus." So do I, but having the real Jesus means that all the unreal things I've believed about Him will fall by the wayside. The apostle John, called the one whom Jesus loved in the Gospels, fell at the feet of Jesus when he beheld Him on the isle of Patmos. Yet we can have lifted hearts in this because the bad news is only bad for those parts of ourselves that have resisted Him in some way. When we surrender completely to Him, we find the riches of the good news of His coming to us. Only that within us that needs to die will die. And that, my friends, is good news indeed.

"The closer He gets, the more calamity we'll know." Mark Galli.....This is true. Scripture speaks of "following hard after God." This is the picture of being so joined to Him as to be one with Him, which in Christ, we are. When we are so with Christ, He will lead us into the many "dangers, toils, and snares." Into, and through them. It will not be a journey for the fainthearted. He will lead us into trouble. He will take us on a collision course with the fallen world He came to redeem. The collision will be a violent one. Sometimes literally. He will put us at risk, and as He does so, He will expect that we trust Him there. He's not interested in "country club" followers, or those who check in on Him once a week on Sunday's. He leads us into engaging a lost and hostile culture, and at times, a lost and hostile church. And His path will always lead to our own personal Calvary. The only thing He may speak as we journey may be, "Fear not, I am with you." That must be enough. That will be enough. Is it enough for us?

"Too often, we don't want the true God as much as we want the God of our imaginations." Or the true Jesus. We have come up with a lot of imaginary ideas as to who He is. So many of them reduce Him to either a kindly old grandfather, or a kind of "hippie Jesus," who adorns Himself in flowers and gives the peace sign wherever He goes. We create a God, a Christ that is acceptable to our flesh. We're usually very comfortable with our version. So comfortable that we lost our sense of awe, wonder, and reverence for Him. He's more like us than we are like Him. He's committed to changing what we don't like that is around us, while leaving those things He might not care for within us alone. This is where we get back to the bad news of James 4:8. When He truly draws near, all our imaginary renderings of Him collapse. He'll refuse to fit into any of them. It will be Him as He really is, dealing with us as we really are. Good news.....bad news.....desperately needed news. May we receive the news with all our being.

Blessings,

Pastor O