“Oh, how I love Jesus, Oh, how I love Jesus,
Oh, how I love Jesus, Because He first loved me.” ~Frederick Whitfield, 1855
Many might remember this sweet song from Sunday school. I used to sing it to my babies while we rocked in a chair at night. It’s a wonderfully big truth for such a little song!
There are, of course, a zillion reasons to love Him–the fact that He loved me first being the most amazing and wonderful of all! Yet there’s another reason Jesus has won my heart … when I read scripture and study the ways He interacted with people, I find that so often, He handled similar situations in very disparate ways! Sometimes He spoke to the blind and their eyes were opened; on another occasion He placed mud on a blind man’s eyes and sent him to wash it off before the healing took place, and sometimes He just touched their eyes with His hands and they began to see. Sometimes He required action on the part of the person requesting healing, and sometimes He just spoke to the condition and it was done. And of course, we’re told that not everything He did was recorded–”And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25).
Sometimes He seemed to seek out crowds to talk to; sometimes He withdrew to pray. He told Nicodemus, a Pharisee, how to come into the kingdom, yet labeled others “vipers.” You can’t pin Him down … He always seemed to be “out of the box.”
It seems that life would be easier if we were to have simple formulas to follow, doesn’t it? Do this, and that will happen. If your child acts like this, respond like that.
And yet …
If Jesus dealt differently with similar situations, who are we to come up with formulaic answers?
SarahMae and Sally talk about this trap in Chapter Three of Desperate, and Sally is discussing it at her blog today! Don’t miss it: Will We Live By Formula, or Faith?
About Misty Krasawski
Hi, this is something that has been on my mind lately too
It has brought a sense of freedom, something that I believe Jesus is working more into my being. I am someone who has struggled with comparison and even when considering God’s body and how He has gifted each one… there is a freedom in knowing that HE gave the gift and HE wants to use each member of His body! The gift is from Him and even when He uses each person, the same gift can and will be manifested differently! What an awesome God we serve 