A Journey Toward Relationship, not Real Estate! - Part 1

The Driven Quill...A Journey Toward Relationship, not Real Estate!

“Along with MY journey others were beginning a journey themselves. A journey of discovery. They were realizing that GOD is real and can and does answer prayers. We aren't just praying to someone in heaven rather the God that is among us, and loves us where we are, for who we are.” The Unexpected Journey...not mine by Charessa Wilkinson on Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 4:49pm

Church, where are we going? To understand where we, a Pilgrim People are going, we must know where our savior went. This is not a unique question. It was asked by one of the Lord’s disciples. Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” John 14:5 NIV

Where was he going? And where would he take them - and us? Sonship is the answer! He was not taking them to a place, but into the Presence of the Eternal I AM of whom he is a part. Our existence in Him is not about real estate, but relationship. As Paul said to the Athenians, “for in Him we live, and move, and are (a form of ‘to be or I am’);” Acts 17:28 Young’s Literal. The issue is not one of place, but of presence.

To the self-righteous Pharisees he said: “I go away, and you will seek Me, and will die in your sin; where I am going, you cannot come.” John 8:21 “That is why I told you that you will die in your sins, for unless you believe that I AM, you will die in your sins." John 8:24 International Standard Version (ISV)

Almost all other translations have a variation of “for unless you believe that I am He,” for John 8:24. The word He has been added - it is not in the original. This makes His words concerning himself a statement of what is he, instead of whom he is. There is no direction to go other than error when we attempt to define the I AM as a what or a where, rather than a whom. By making this statement as to whom he was he connects himself to the identifying statement of Elohim to Moses as “I AM WHO I AM” Exodus 3:14. (We cannot escape noticing the use of the pronoun WHO in this statement.) Christ is thus announcing his efficacy to proved eternal salvation to all who would believe that he indeed was and is the eternal preexistent I AM. To borrow from C. S. Lewis, if this statement is not true then he is either a liar or a lunatic, but not the Lord of Glory!

He took human frailty into the presence of the Father. In that relationship he always lives to make intercession. The scars of his suffering, his identification with our Adamic nature, continually plead on our behalf. In Christ the True Believer begins to slip the bonds of the temporal, stepping into the eternal. The tempter’s strategy is to get Pilgrim to step back - appealing to carnal understanding and desire.