My love for Jesus Christ began in a tiny circle of baby-bear chairs in a Sunday school class of a small town church. My teachers were not biblical scholars. They were moms and homemakers. I’m not sure they ever delved into the depths of Scripture or researched a single Greek word. They simply taught what they knew. I don’t know any other way to explain what happened next: I believed.
I remember thinking how handsome Jesus was in those watercolor pictures and how I had never seen a man with long hair before. I wondered if my dad, the truck driver, would approve. My favorite picture was the familiar one with the children climbing all over Jesus’ lap. As I recall, it was the only one I ever saw that captured Him smiling. I determined quickly that big people bored and upset Him and little people made Him quite happy. I knew right then and there that Jesus loved me.
As I post this simple, unexciting testimony to you, a lump wells in my throat and tears burn in my eyes. Jesus is the most wonderful, most graceful, most exciting, most redemptive thing that has ever happened to me. He is my life. I cannot express on paper my love for Him. It is a love that has grown in incongruous bits and pieces, baby steps, leaps, bounds, tumbles, and falls, . . . decade after decade.
I want all of you to love Him . . . at least as much as I do. I’m believing for us to want Him more than we want blessing, health, or even breath. I want to know Him so well that my undivided heart can explain, “Because Your love is better than life, my lips will glorify You” Ps. 63.3.
Better than life! God invites mortal creatures—you and me—into a love relationship with the Son of glory. That, my friend, is the meaning of life. Let’s Live it. Fully. Completely.
We will never spend our time more valuably than in the pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ.
“Worthy is the Lamb!”