Jesus-centred

Posted on by Andrew Clark

I didn’t necessarily set out to read the whole New Testament during July. I started with the intention to read Romans through, and was so blessed and encouraged by sitting and absorbing large chunks of scripture I just kept going.

It wasn’t the ‘task’ that got me started or kept me going, though. It’s Jesus I’m after. More of Jesus. I want little else in life. He is the only one who makes sense to me and who helps me make sense of life.

I don’t study him as an historic figure, even although he is: I experience him to be present to me, with me and within me through the Holy Spirit. For these last 30 years, through thick and thin, it’s he who is the common denominator, the ground of my being, the source of life, hope and inspiration, and the one who ministers healing to my heart, mind and soul.

I am passionate to see a revival, but for me, that is 100% wrapped up in a fresh revelation of Jesus to a dying world. Revival isn’t increased church attendance, increased gifts of the Spirit or passionate worship…those are merely by-products of the presence of Jesus amongst people.

‘Take the world, but give me Jesus’, the old gospel song says. Right enough.

I am a failure as a pastor and minister if I am not holding Christ up to people. There have been seasons in ministry where that can totally slip and the enemy loves it. We preach Christ crucified, it is him we proclaim. The gospel isn’t 10 pieces of good advice, it is the lifting up of Jesus – all he is and all he has done; all’s he is doing and all he will do.

Any group calling themselves ‘church’ are sorely misguided if Christ cannot be found in their worship, conversations, ministries and lives being transformed into his likeness.

In my read through of the New Testament, I kept Revelation until last. It is glorious, but I’ll tell you what is more glorious: it’s because it’s a revelation of Jesus in all his beauty, power, majesty and glory. The one before whom they fall down before as if dead, as they cast their crowns before him. The Lamb who was slain, the Lion of Judah, the Rider of the White Horse, the Bridegroom – Heaven’s King: Jesus.

‘My Jesus, I love thee, I know thou art mine.’