The Lord is awe-inspiring, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him in 1 John 1:2-3,
“The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.”
This morning my thoughts are drawn to the apostles. John had encountered someone very unique during the formative years of his life as a very young man, maybe an older boy. He became one of an inner circle that Jesus shared select experiences with: his transfiguration on the mountain, Jesus moments in the garden of Gethsemane, etc. Together with Peter and his brother James, the first martyred apostle, he spent time with Jesus on a very personal level. John describes himself as the disciple Jesus loved, John 21:20-24.
John had the amazing opportunity to spend time with someone who was from heaven itself! John acknowledged to his readers that he and those with him had fellowship with the Father and with his Son. When Jesus was here on earth John lived his life with Jesus. They ate together and encamped together. They traveled together and brought the most amazing news to the Jews, “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” They shared many experiences in those years and I can only imagine the conversations they must have shared that are not recorded in Scripture.
We live in a world that is estranged from God. There exists a great gulf between us and heaven itself. Heaven is from where our eternal destiny springs for those of us who have embraced Jesus Christ in faith and yet we know so precious little of it. There are no travel brochures to provide us pictures, we have no friends who have visited and come back with video clips, etc. But John had access for a period of years to one who came from heaven, the Son of God himself!
If I were John, what might I have asked Jesus about? What was heaven like? Do we relate to it and all there just as we do on planet earth? Does heaven resemble God’s creation in any way? What are angels like? What is it like to live in God’s presence? What are the “rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” like?
We know that the apostles were very limited in their understanding of just who Jesus Christ was as he was with them and we know that it wasn’t until the Holy Spirit came to them after Jesus’ death that they had much better insight. But here John and the others experienced on a personal level someone who had eternally existed in heaven and was now within their midst and within their fellowship!
Just what must have that been like for them?!
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share your theme of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We’d love to hear from you!
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