Jesus Is My Guru
There are certain moments/events in life we know are from God. Certain dreams, for example, that are so clear and so real that they leave no doubt as to their meaning, and we live them out and look back and think, "Wow." And for me, there are certain books (in an endless list of books I've read and books I'm reading) that I know for a fact have ( Read more... )
A guru just gives you teachings, as if the power lied in the teachings themselves or your ability to keep them. It's just as if a zookeeper told a monkey that he could become a real human by following ten "simple" rules. "Walk upright!" "Learn to talk!" "Work on your arithmetic!" "Never mate with monkeys!," "Don't act like a monkey, act like a human!", etc. Easier said than done, right?
Even if you wore a What-Would-Humans-Do bracelet and temporarily felt like you were making progress by occasionally meditating on "humanness", you would eventually find out that you are unnaturally trying to become something you are not.
But the Lord Jesus' way is different. He says, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," (Matt. 5:48), but He knows that we are sinners and only He is able to do this. Only God is good. Therefore, upon repentance and belief, He enters inside of you to be your life and life-supply, to transform you into His image from within.
So Jesus is not only our teacher, but also our life (Col. 3:4), our love, our Bridegroom. :) Unlike a guru, His presence through His Spirit does matter. His presence is everything to us, and His living inside of us as Lord of our being is actually how He transforms us into His image. There can be no fruits of the Spirit unless the Spirit actively, presently and interpersonally dwells in you.
But whenever their heart turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
And the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
But we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.-2 Cor. 3:16-18
Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me.
I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.-John 15:4-5
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Make sense?
It's important to realize that I wasn't looking for a guru. I already had everything I needed in Christ. But when I read this part of the book, it amused me to think, "Hey! I already have one of those (and then some)!"
The more important point (to me, at least) is that someting about this phrase (while it amused me) inspired me to meditate on Jesus and with Jesus in a very meaninful way.
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Presence. Again, I agree with you:) Yes, Jesus's presence certainly matters and it's here with us and in us and for us all the time. But, of course, I meant physical presence, which is really not important precisely because of the way He's present is all those other ways.
Love the monkey bit, btw;) I have to say, though, that for a lot of new followers (heck, for a lot of old followers) the advice they get from Christian pastors/preachers/priests and the like is an awful lot like being told "Walk upright!" "Learn to talk!" "Work on your arithmetic!" "Never mate with monkeys!"
Telling someone "Stop sinning!" "Be as your Father is in Heaven!" "Be like Jesus!" "Figure out what Jesus would do and do it!" is so utterly useless b/c it just so thoroughly fails to explain HOW TO DO THAT! It's all well and good to tell someone to invite Christ into their life and then be just like Him, but where does that get you? Maybe I'm just a dumb monkey here (hey, after my last final exam I'm starting to believe it) but that advice never got my anywhere. Read you Bible. Pray. Wake up the same as you were before. Hm...
Which leads me right back to the main point (so many tangents, so little time!) of my original story, which is that thinking of JC as a guru, for whatever whacky reason, was the motivation I needed to meditate on Him, and that meditation kicked in some of these marvellous doctrines I had always understood but never knew how to put into action. "Praying is the act of talking to God; meditation is the act of listening." Go figure I'd have to listen before I saw some results:-p
And, of course, I've seen results all along in so many ways that it's not as if this was like the Holy Grail of Divine Revelation that finally opened my eyes after all these years. As I said, it came in combination with lots of other cool occurrences (those podcasts are awesome, btw). But I'm glad it came when it did and it definitely brought me to a much, much deeper understanding of God's love as more than sufficient in my life, no matter who or what else may be present or absent.
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LOL! You have so nailed it.
Even if you wore a What-Would-Humans-Do bracelet
Dude, where did you get this whole monkey routine from? I am *so* going to preach this. You make me crazy with happiness!
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