Enjoy Jesus
What do you think it looks like to truly enjoy your relationship with Jesus?
Maybe this question sounds frivolous. Many of us want to get up and go do something for Jesus! There are people to be loved and work to be done. And while this is true, if we don’t put first things first, we’ll find ourselves tripping over our action-oriented feet. This is one reason our vision statement is ordered like it is: We exist to grow the family of God for the glory of God, by enjoying Jesus, loving boldly, making disciples, and reaching the nations. The Bible shows us that if we want to grow the family of God for His glory, we begin by enjoying the One who’s called us.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:37-39.
Our culture prizes productivity, which means that we see time and, often, relationships as a means to an end. This can easily bleed over into how we view our relationship with God. “Where are we going, God? How are you going to get me there?” And yes, it’s important to place value on the vision God has for us – that’s the point of this entire series! But we’ve got to untangle our hearts from viewing time with the Lord as a means to an end. He wants our hearts, not our results. This is vitally important for us to learn individually, and also as a community. May we not elevate doing things for God instead of delighting in Him; He has so much more for our church than productivity.
So what does enjoying Jesus actually look like? Paul, writing to the church in Ephesus, tells us three things we are to enjoy in our relationship with Christ: the hope of God’s call, the riches of His glorious inheritance, and the knowledge of His great power (Eph. 1:18-20).
The Hope of His Call
Our enjoyment of Jesus is directly related to where our hope lies. As believers in Christ, we have a hope that life’s circumstances can’t touch: the hope of God’s plan. 1 Peter 2:9 says that God’s plan for us is a life where He’s always calling us out of darkness into marvelous light. We aren’t destined for a life of dead ends that define us; when we run to Christ in our sin and despair, He calls us out of those dark places to the newness and light of grace. Do you need hope? Spend time with Jesus! Our enemy tells us that going to Christ with our sin will make us feel worse, yet the opposite is true. When we go to God, He brings us from darkness to light and we’ll have more hope than we even know what to do with! Imagine a community of people filled with hope – this is the life God has for us.
The Riches of His Inheritance
Paul continues, urging us to know the riches of God’s glorious inheritance. What is God’s inheritance? You and I. God calls us His possession, He says “You are mine!” And we aren’t children who are merely tolerated – our Father delights in us. Now, if we believe the opposite, that God doesn’t really even like us, we’ll turn from Him to all manner of things, looking for something or someone to take care of us. But Jesus came to say, once and for all, “I love you! I like you! I want to be with you.” And when we really get this, we won’t spend time with God out of begrudging submission; we’ll long to enjoy His goodness. As God’s possession, what can we give Him that He doesn’t already own? Ourselves. He wants us to delight in Him because He delights in us. So we give Him our hearts, our lives, our worship. May we as a church not complicate our faith, but simply love our Father back. We’re a community with nothing to prove because we cannot reach a higher status than to be a child of God, delighted in.
The Knowledge of His Power
Finally, Paul knew that if we want to enjoy our lives with Jesus, we have to know the greatness of His power. It doesn’t take much to realize that as humans, our power is constantly diminishing. We need a greater, lasting power to be able to do all that God calls us to. Through God’s Spirit, we have access to this power source, one that literally cannot die: the power of the Resurrected Christ! Sometimes we forget, trusting in the power of ourselves, or so many other things – but it’s only through the power of Christ that we can truly live. That we can enjoy the life God has called us to, not weak and exhausted, but fully alive. And if we want to truly live in His power, we’ve got to walk with Him. We can’t have His power apart from His fellowship; it’s Christ’s presence, lived and walked in, that fills us with the power to do all that He calls us to.
God has given us so much to enjoy in Jesus! And yet, like any other relationship, if we don’t put in the time, we won’t experience all that is offered. Consider this week how you could repurpose your time in order to enjoy and spend time with Jesus. Get practical! Wake up earlier or make time on your lunch break, and figure out how to make Sabbath a priority. As a community, we know that God is going to do great things in an through us – but may it never be at the expense of delighting in Him. And the beautiful thing is, joy is contagious. The more we are filled with the joy of the Lord, the more we’ll fill the earth with Christ’s presence, and be a part of growing the family of God, for His glory.
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This is the second blog post in a series to accompany our vision series, “For the Glory.” We’ll recap and further unpack each week’s sermon. If you want to listen to each full-length sermon, head to our podcast page. Read along with us each week as we explore God’s vision for Central Community Church. Follow along in Ephesians 1:15-23.