Presence: What If Jesus Were Really Here?

by R. Ashbrook

Jesus responded to each of their confessions, “It’s sort of like growing up, isn’t it? We start out as babies, needing and demanding. We become adolescents and begin to figure out how we can make the world work for us, to meet our own needs. Finally, if we truly become spiritually mature adults, we learn that the world and God are bigger than we can ever manage to control. So, we learn to adapt, to care about the needs of others. You learn to take yourself out of center place and let God be God, our God. As He reveals Himself to you, you come to love Him and live in His love. As you continue to grow up, that relationship of love becomes your ground, your hope, your life. It’s a lifelong process and I’m inviting you to live as my brother, my sister, an adult child of the Heavenly Father.” Jim realized that Jesus understood this process personally from His own experience as He grew from a baby in Bethlehem to a boy in Nazareth and finally into a man.