Preaching Jesus

Preaching Jesus

This Sunday we had a wonderful example of how the Name of Jesus changes lives. We heard Jesus preached – not particularly the Gospel, but the person and His intense desire to have a relationship with each and every one of us. We heard about how He slept through the storm with no fear whatsoever. Why no fear? Because He created the wind, the rain, the sea, the storm so He had no fear of His own creation. The disciples, on the other hand, new no such power. All they could see was a watery grave looming up ahead of them.

That was when they cried out to Jesus, “Don’t you care that we perish? Save us.” This, immediately  after Peter had the revelation of the Messiah-ship and Son-ship of Christ. The story continues that when Jesus addressed His creation, it simply had to obey Him and be still. The preacher remarked that he would rather have Jesus even in a storm than to try to live life without Him at all.

We sang “My Jesus I love thee, I know thou art mine”.  When the call was given , a number of people invited this same Jesus into their own lives. They didn’t respond to a call to Christianity, nor to any particular church, nor even to the church in general. They responded to an invitation to meet this same Jesus and to make Him a part of their lives too.

My whole point here is to emphasise that yes, we are to preach the Gospel but just occasionally, we need to focus on the person of Jesus, and to respond to who He is. Their further response to what He has done and why He did it may just be for another day.

Just occasionally – that’s all.