Sacred Decorum (Part 1)

This post is an excerpt taken from Set-Apart Femininity by Leslie Ludy

She said it better than I could.

Last week I opened a letter from a distressed college student named Jennifer. “I just can’t seem to have intimacy with Jesus in the beautiful way you describe it in your books,” she wrote. “I’m sick of living this half-Christian, half-worldly life. I go around saying that I am a Christian, but my Christianity is not based on a passionate relationship with Jesus. I want to find Him, but I don’t know how.”

How many countless thousands of young women echo Jennifer’s despair? Our Christianity is based upon an idea of who Christ is, not upon an actual, personal experience with Christ. We may have moments of intimacy with Christ-like during a worship service or reading an inspiring Christian book. But we don’t abide with Him moment by moment throughout the day. We don’t even know how. And if we were totally honest, we’d admit that we often feel frustrated with God because He makes Himself so distant. We pray, and He seems not to hear us. We read the Bible, and it is just a blur of spiritual-sounding words. Why, we wonder, does He make being a Christian so difficult? If He really wants a relationship with us, why is He so hard to access?

Christ Himself gave us the answer. “He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him” (John 14:21).

Jesus Christ reveals Himself to those who follow in His steps. He draws near to those who build their entire lives around His pattern. If we feel far away from Him, it is very likely that we aren’t truly building our entire existence around Him; that we are living far more for self than for the glory of His name.

Follow up post to come….