Like Riding A Bike

“But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.”

John 1:12 (NLT) 

Have you ever met someone who acted like they really knew how to do something, but after a little while, you really started wondering if they did? Sometimes that’s how it is when you talk to someone who says they’re a Christian. They’re kind of a Christian in their head, but have they really met Jesus? They say they have a “personal relationship” with Him, they say they’ve gone to church their whole life, they say they’ve prayed the salvation prayer, but the way they talk about God makes you wonder if they’ve really ever met Him.

How would it be if you were trying to tell someone how to ride a bike, having never ridden one yourself? You’ve seen people ride a bike, you’ve talked to other people who have ridden bikes, you’ve read books about riding bikes, but you’ve never ridden one yourself. Yet somehow you think you know enough to tell someone else how to ride a bike. That’s what some Christians are like. They don’t know what the Bible says about a personal relationship, but they talk about a personal relationship. They may even know scriptures about having a personal relationship, but have they ever really met God?

Sometimes it bugs me when people say they have a personal relationship with Jesus. Think about it for a second. If you’re close friends or best friends with Joe, do you say, “I have a personal relationship with Joe?” No – you say, “He’s my best friend.” But we couch our Christianity in words like personal relationship so we can feel like we have something with God when maybe there’s not much there at all.

We look at praying a prayer of salvation in such a casual way. With our hands in our pockets, we scuff our feet and say, “Yeah, I sort of have this relationship with God,” but have we ever really met Him? Could we accidentally meet David Beckham and say, “I think I have a personal relationship with him”? If we had ever met David Beckham, there would be no question in our mind who we met and how well we knew him.

If you have really met Jesus, you won’t be saying, “Yeah, I have a personal relationship,” in a real drone kind of voice. No, the time you met the King of kings and Lord of lords will stick out in your brain for the rest of your life! It will have riveted your heart to His heart and you’ll remember forever that that was the day in history that changed your life forever. From that moment on, you were never the same.

We say we have received the Lord in our heart, but what does that really mean? Do we somehow let Him come inside? The Greek meaning of the word receive means to get a hold of, to seize, to obtain, and to take hold. (See James Strong’s, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Nashville:Abingdon, 1890, “Greek Dictionary of the New Testament,” #2983.) The point is, we don’t sort of receive the Lord, and we can’t sort of have a relationship with Him. We are to take hold to Jesus.

Think about the bicycle example. Jesus doesn’t want us to be talking about the bike, He wants us to ride the bike. He doesn’t want us to tell people it’s a really cool thing to have a relationship, He wants us to have a relationship. He wants us to get connected, to grab hold of Him and not let go.

Prayer

Dear Lord. Thank You that you found me. Help me to know you more and more each day, starting today.

Amen

Study by Fraser Murdoch