I began taking guitar lessons at age five. I have taught and played guitar for seventy-two years. (How old am I?)
I have some familiarity with guitars. On a basic level, I am able to discern whether a guitar is in tune, or out of tune. I can hear chords played, and without looking at the guitar being played, tell you what chord it is. (Mostly, not entirely…) I can listen to a song for the first time, and (mostly) immediately play it. (Really accomplished guitarists do this better than I can.)
I became a disciple of Jesus just before my twenty-first birthday. I have talked and walked and lived with Jesus for fifty-five years. (How old am I?) Jesus became to me, as one scholar calls him, a “familiar stranger.”
From the beginning, Jesus was familiar to me. I felt safe, at home, with him. Coming to Jesus was a great homecoming!
Just as the first disciples found the ways and words of Jesus strange, like his use of parables, so did I. Yet I, like those disciples, was, and remain, attracted to him.
I am familiar with Jesus. This is important, since...
Discernment is a function of familiarity.
Discernment is in direct proportion to intimacy.
Apprentices become familiar with the thoughts and ways of their teachers. My Teacher has taught me this: The more I know him, the more I see and understand him.
This is what happens to disciples of Christ. May it be so, in you.
DECLARATIONS
I am becoming more familiar with Jesus every day.
I am able to discern spiritual realities.
I can separate the good from the evil.
Revelation from Jesus is increasing in me.
It excites me to think there is so much more to Jesus waiting for me to comprehend.
There is no greater privilege than knowing Jesus my Lord!
(From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Discipleship)
