How we deal with Jesus Part 1

I have been thinking a lot recently about the way which we relate to Jesus. You see I guess everyone relates to Jesus in some way whether it's as an insignificant person in history or as something more! However, what really interested me was how different people in the church relate to him so I'm going to look at a few different ways we see people relating to Jesus in the church.

1. Jesus as co-pilot

O.K. so this is something both Michael Hall and Paul Lintott were talking about at church and it struck me as so true. What we find in our churches is people who basically want to pilot their own lives but are fine for Jesus to help out a little bit every now and again. If I'm in a bit of a fix or if it's something I don't really care about then Jesus can do a bit but if not then I'll do it by myself. We see this all the time in the church.

People who only obey Jesus when it fits in with their lifestyle

People who only obey Jesus when it fits in with their view of the world

Churches which are more committed to their way of doing things than to what Jesus wants!

If we relate to Jesus as co-pilot we are making 2 mistakes.

1 - We think we are capable of piloting our lives

2 - We think we know more than Jesus

To judge when Jesus deserves to be followed and obeyed and when he doesn't assumes that we know more than him. The problem is that he knows everything and that we don't! You can relate to Jesus as your co-pilot but ultimately you are not really relating to him properly and you are not relying on him at all. If this is you then you are still relying on yourself and unfortunately you are not capable of bringing about the forgiveness and transformation you need. Jesus is not your co-pilot, he's not your PA, he's too good for that!