18 May The Pitfall of Growing Up with Jesus
When Jesus came to the earth, He came humbly. He was born in a stable, laid in a manger, raised by teenage peasants, and grew up in a small poor rural town.
In a day when the more power you have the bigger home you buy, flashier car you drive, and bigger entourage you roll, the humility of our homeless virgin God in His early thirties can be a real head scratcher for us. The same was true in Jesus’ day.
As Jesus’ public ministry was expanding, He began explaining that His hometown was in fact heaven. This confused folks who had kids that played on his Little League team as they could have sworn that He was from their hick town of Nazareth. John 6:41-42 says that those who heard Jesus say He’d come down from heaven, “…grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?””
What happened to these people continues to happen. They grew up with Jesus and became so familiar with Him that they did not really know Him. The same thing happens often when, for example, someone grows up in a Christian home. You can spend so much time talking to Jesus in prayer, learning about Jesus in Scripture, and serving Jesus in church that you cease to be amazed by Him or fully aware of His fullness. This also explains why sometimes people who grew up without Jesus and meet Him later in life seem to be the most excited about Him and amazed by Him.
How about you? Did you grow up with Jesus? Are you as amazed by Him as you ought to be? Or, have you possibly become too familiar with Him?
