{"id":317,"date":"2025-08-29T15:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T15:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/?p=317"},"modified":"2025-09-01T13:59:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T13:59:38","slug":"struggling-with-awe-for-jesus-while-knowing-hes-my-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/29\/struggling-with-awe-for-jesus-while-knowing-hes-my-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Struggling with Awe for Jesus While Knowing He\u2019s My Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t\t\t\t\"awe\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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I don\u2019t know about you, but I struggle sometimes with praying to Jesus. He\u2019s my friend but also commands awe and deserves deep reverence.<\/p>\n

I think we\u2019ve humanized Jesus so much that my prayer life is becoming difficult. Jesus himself said we should ask things of the Father in his name, and that\u2019s stuck with me. But I sense a tendency in myself to focus on Jesus\u2019 humanity more than his divinity.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I came to the Lord as a kid, accepting Jesus at age five\u2014I understood the gospel and it stuck. But around age 14, I met the Lord on a deeper level in the Psalms (that\u2019s a story for another time). By 16 or 17, I got serious about obeying him. But I\u2019ve always prayed to the God of the Old Testament, the big, awe-inspiring God who commands his universe.<\/p>\n

In my prayer struggle, I\u2019ve been thinking about the Athanasian Creed, which C.S. Lewis quoted in a few of his writings: \u201cnot by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God.\u201d<\/p>\n

This comes from a creed used in Western Christianity that explains the Incarnation, how Jesus is both fully divine and fully human. That phrase means the divine nature of Christ didn\u2019t turn into human flesh; instead, God the Son took on human nature, joining it with his divinity.<\/p>\n

In Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer<\/em>, a fictional book where Lewis debates theology through fake letters to a guy named Malcolm who doesn\u2019t exist, he says, \u201cIn the Incarnation, God the Son takes the body and human soul of Jesus and through that, the whole environment of nature, all the creaturely predicament into his own being.\u201d To me, this means God the Son, the power behind the universe, the Word from John 1:1\u20134, invaded an egg in Mary\u2019s body, subsuming that bit of humanity into his awesome divine nature.<\/p>\n

I remember one day in chapel at Azusa Pacific College when the dean prayed to \u201cJesus.\u201d Calling him by his first name felt good, close and healthy. It feels like we\u2019ve gone too far. When I go to church, though, I hear people tossing around Jesus\u2019 name casually, like he\u2019s their buddy and not their lord. Some of the songs we sing feel watered down. I may prefer rock music in church but I want the lyrics to challenge me toward higher ground.<\/p>\n

Lewis said something else that hit me. He talked about the \u201cdark side\u201d of Christianity, how you can\u2019t have the light side\u2014comfort and grace\u2014without it. It\u2019s like furniture: it\u2019s cozy, but you\u2019ll stub your toe if you\u2019re not careful. God is awesome, even angry when we\u2019re disobedient, and that demands surrender.<\/p>\n

Paul says in Philippians 4:5\u20136, \u201cThe Lord is near, therefore don\u2019t worry about anything,\u201d and we can pray about everything because of Christ. But Jesus, who is near, isn\u2019t just a friend; he\u2019s God the Son, the Creator of the universe, the one prophesied in the Old Testament as the second Person of the Trinity.<\/p>\n

I think we need to \u201cre-christen\u201d Jesus in our lives\u2014not literally, but by remembering his awe-inspiring power. The Lord Jesus, the Christ. If we pray to a God, who deserves reverence and obedience, it makes it easier to trust, and to rest in him.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll probably keep groping for that balance between Jesus\u2019 closeness and his divine majesty but today the Athanasian Creed shined a little light on my path.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Ralph Moore<\/strong>\u00a0is the Founding Pastor of three churches which grew into the Hope Chapel ‘movement’ now numbering more than 2,300 churches, worldwide. These are the offspring of the 70+ congregations launched from Ralph’s hands-on disciplemaking efforts.<\/p>\n

He travels the globe, teaching church multiplication to pastors in startup movements. He’s authored several books, including\u00a0Let Go Of the Ring: The Hope Chapel Story<\/em>,\u00a0Making Disciples<\/em>,\u00a0How to Multiply Your Church<\/em>,\u00a0Starting a New Church<\/em>, and\u00a0Defeating Anxiety<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The post Struggling with Awe for Jesus While Knowing He\u2019s My Friend<\/a> appeared first on Newbreed Training<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know about you, but I struggle sometimes with praying to Jesus. He\u2019s my friend but also commands awe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":319,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamcameroon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}