Conversations With Jesus

By Brooke Momblow

 

 

“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

 

Jeremiah 29:13

 

My grandmother, my dad’s mom, had an unshakable faith in Jesus. When she would pray, things happened. When I was a child, she told me Jesus lived in my heart and I could talk to him whenever I wanted and if I’d listen really close I could hear him talking in my heart too.

 

My dad told me something different. He said that some people are just special, like my grandmother… they have the ear of God… the rest of us just have to do our best and try to be good people because God doesn’t talk to us like that.

 

When I discovered an interactive relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit, I was a young teenager. From reading my Bible I realized the Holy Spirit wasn’t only for a few gifted people, it was how everyone was intended to walk with Jesus. What I saw exhibited in scripture was that an encounter with Jesus either turned your world inside out or you chose to ignore him and what he offered. Choosing to follow Christ as described in scripture is marked by great love and desire for God and supernatural Spirit leading and empowering.

 

In the gospels Jesus was our example of seeking God, communicating with him, and following in obedience. This was a way of life, a reality lived by Paul, the disciples, Stephen, Timothy, Barnabas, and those many individuals in the early church because of the Holy Spirit. My grandmother lived that way.

 

Jesus became my best friend and I talked to him all hours of the day in casual conversation. In the beginning it was a lot of me talking about me and my world. But as the Holy Spirit met with me and taught me through the Bible, I learned to listen more and to care more about the things God cares about. Jesus became my greatest joy.

 

Enthusiastically, I would share with my parents what I was discovering and how I thought the Spirit was leading me. Convinced that I had inherited my grandmother’s special ability, dad would often request that I ask God for an answer for him about a job to take, or a car to buy, or wisdom for a difficult situation. Unable to convince him that talking to God was open to anyone who chose to seek and follow Christ, my teenage self would sometimes get mad and retort that I wasn’t a magic lamp.

 

For years I prayed my father would encounter Jesus. I asked that my dad would be able to grasp how great Jesus’ love was for him, that he would choose to follow Jesus in all his ways and discover what great joy and peace it brought, that he would walk in relationship with the Holy Spirit.

 

A.W. Tozer said, “The Holy Spirit is not a luxury meant to make deluxe Christians, as an illuminated frontispiece and a leather binding make a deluxe book. The Spirit is an imperative necessity. Only the Eternal Spirit can do eternal deeds.”

 

In The Pursuit of God, he also said, “For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God Himself, and unless and until hearers find God in personal experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible is not an end in itself but a means to bring [people] to an intimate and satisfying knowledge of God…”

 

On a random day long after my dad retired, he called me to his house to tell me that he finally understood what I’d been talking about for all those years. His face radiated; his smile beamed. I cried. In my head I pictured my grandma dancing with the angels.

 

After that I endured many lectures from him about relying on God and praying about everything. He loved to share about the ways God answered prayer and what actions he was taking in response to a sermon or the Spirit’s leading. He was joyful on the inside, a way I’d never known him to be.

 

C.S. Lewis says that love isn't an affectionate feeling but a desire for the other person’s highest good. Throughout the years I’ve found that the prayers I pray for others are very similar to the prayers I prayed for my dad. Christ is our highest good. Even if we’ve never met, I know how much God loves you, and I want God’s best for you.

 

St. Seraphim of Sarov said, “For the true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God.”

 

The Spirit always points us to Jesus. Jesus points us to a relationship with the Father.

 

Lord, grant us the desire to seek you. Give us a love for you as passionate as your love is for us. May we know the joy of relationship with You.