How Are We Treating Jesus?
Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully.
Psalm 24:3-4 (NKJV)
Jesus is not in our lives to be pushed around by our urgencies. And while He may respond to them, while He may minister to us in them, He teaches us that He is extremely intentional about how He is to be treated.
Jesus has emotionality when it comes to us. He can be angered by us. He can be blessed by us. He is acquainted with our grief. He has emotionality.
We live in a climate and culture where everybody views and interprets and sifts religion on what Jesus offers to us, how the Lord treats us. But have you ever considered that while the Lord is so good to us, we have an expectation by Him of how He also wants to be treated?
For example, Psalm 24 asks and answers: “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully.” In Matthew 16, Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Psalm 100 instructs us to “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” The Lord is specific in how He is to be treated by us.
Matthew 9 tells of two blind men who cried out to Jesus for healing, but He made them follow Him into a house and asked them about their faith before He healed them. It’s almost as if He is saying to them, “I could have healed you on the road. I could have healed you before your first expression to me. But I wanted it to be clear that I am not pushed and manipulated by human urgency. I moved by divine synchronicity. And there are some things that I do because it has to fit within God's timing, and it has to fit within the pedagogy that I am dispensing to your life.”
Jesus is extremely intentional about how He is to be treated. It matters how He is approached. It matters how He is viewed. It matters how He is responded to.
