I was sitting at my desk not long ago when a phone call was transferred to me from someone who wanted to speak with a minister. It’s not all that unusual for me to get such calls… we have a lot of people who call the church office and want to talk with a minister. What made this caller a bit out of the ordinary was that the first words out of her mouth to me were spoken with such urgency: “I want you to tell me what you believe about Jesus!”Now, I love to talk about Jesus. And this woman seemed really interested in what I had to share... so I spent the next twenty minutes telling her about Jesus.
The more I talked, the more excited the person on the other end of the phone line seemed to become. She said a couple of times that it was almost as if she was coming out of fog and finally realizing that she had been searching for God all of her life. The words she used to describe what she was hearing about Jesus were “thrilling” and “refreshing.”
She wanted to know how she could find out even more about Jesus, so I pointed her to the Bible and the books of Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. It was too cool hearing her excitement grow as she heard, for what she said was the first time, the good news about Jesus.
As I hung up the phone, I prayed a prayer of thanks to God for His incredible grace and unbelievable love. I asked God to touch my heart and revive the awe that comes from hearing the thrilling and refreshing news of Jesus.
There was just something so clear
and beautiful
and true
and unique
and powerful about Jesus
that old rabbis would marvel at his teachings,
young children would run up and sit in his lap,
ashamed prostitutes would find themselves
weeping at his feet,
whole villages would gather
to hear him speak,
experts in debate of the law
would find themselves speechless,
and people from the poor
to the rugged working class
to the unbelievably wealthy
would leave everything… to follow him.
