Touching Christ

Touching Christ

Luke 6:19

And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him and healed them all.

   How do we touch the living Christ?  The answer to this question depends entirely upon your relationship with Him.  If we go to church to receive a touch and have to work yourself up to “enter in” during worship and then wait for the sermon to feel that you’ve “received” from God, you are sorely lacking in relationship with Him.

   If you are sitting in the pew, do you feel as though you have to get God’s attention?  Do you feel as though you have to live a good Christian life or have to work hard to fulfill an obligation to Him to receive from Him?  If the answer to any of these questions is “yes,” you need to step back and begin again.  Just leave all this failure behind and determine to begin again.

   First, you need to get your head straight.  Tell yourself these simple truths. 

You do not need to try to impress God because you can’t. 

You do not need to work hard to earn His favor because His favor can’t be bought. 

You do not need to get His attention because you already have it. 

Your relationship is free and available and the only hindrance is you, yourself. 

Got that?  Good, now that you know these things, you can begin again.

Start by humbling yourself before him and say, “I am wrong.”  Stop there.  “I am wrong” does need any modifiers and there are no excuses needed or accepted.  Simply, “I am wrong.”  That hurts, doesn’t it?  Being wrong and messing up your life by wrong understanding or by bad attitudes is hard to accept and hard to admit to but when you do, healing can begin.  It’s like having a thorn under the skin of your finger.  It’s a sensitive area and digging the thorn out will hurt like the dickens but you will never heal until it’s gone.  So you take a knife and cut that sensitive skin and open the sore flesh up and pluck that thorn out.  You need to cut through your sensitive pride and open up your sore soul and pluck out the bad thinking so healing can happen. 

   Next just accept that you’re the child and He is Father God.  He will make decisions that you won’t understand and you will go through things that are there to help you grow and you will not understand what’s happening and why it’s happening.  Just trust your Father and keep in mind He knows what’s going on and trust Him in all things. 

Scary, isn’t it?  You are not in control and never will be in control of your life.  The only recommendation I can make is this:  picture yourself on the side of a cliff.  You can’t go back and you can’t climb down.  You hear the voice of your Father calling to you to trust Him and jump.  He says He’ll catch you.  You can’t see Him.  What do you do?  Trust God!  Go ahead and jump!  What are you waiting for?  It’s not going to ever get easier to learn trust than to leap out and let God take control.

   Now, (if you’ve gotten this far,) the biggest thing.  Study His Word.  And no excuses!  You can learn from His Word.  Everyone can.  A quote I once heard says, “the Bible is shallow enough for a child to wade in but deep enough to drown an elephant in.”  What that means is that anyone can study the Bible and anyone can learn from it.  The simple person can glean enough to live by it and the scholar can dive in and never reach the bottom of it.  He can find enough in the Bible to keep him studying the rest of his life.  You might never be a biblical scholar, but you can learn as much as you can learn.  Whatever you learn, you will be ahead of where you are now.  Right?  So open that Bible up and begin.  If your church has a Sunday school, go.  If not, might be you need to find one that does.  Join a Bible study group.  Whatever you do, you need to get the Bible into your life.  Why do I think Bible study is so important?  Because the only place you can learn about God and Jesus and Christian living is the Bible.  Does it make sense to you that if the Bible is your only source of reliable information, you should learn what it has to say to you? 

   Still with me?  This message is not a joke: I am very serious here.  You will never touch Jesus until you humble yourself, learn to trust Him, and learn about Him.  When you do this, you won’t have to “get in the Spirit,” you will live in the Spirit.  This message is not for the multitude, it’s for the individual.  You can’t make this journey with anyone else, you make it alone.  If I’m speaking to anyone, take that first step.  Jesus waits to welcome you back to Himself.

Stephen Cram                                                                        July 7, 2013                     

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, following the tradition of men according to the rudiments of the world, and not in accordance with Christ. Colossians 2:8