<\/p>\n

^{15 <\/sup>I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master\u2019s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. John 15:15<\/p>\n}

The idea that the Lord of the Universe would send His son to die for mankind is an overwhelming thought. It is very difficult for us to get our minds around that idea. Somehow, we do.<\/p>\n

More difficult is the concept of a personal savior. We have a love\/hate relationship with intimacy. We deeply wish for someone to know us completely and yet to love us. Yet we are far too familiar with the darkness inside. We know what rests in the dark corners of our souls. We can’t believe that someone would completely know us and still love us. It’s the greatest insecurity that we carry through life. <\/p>\n

We play games in our relationships. We put forward an “us” that is not a true or complete picture. We show only part of us. I have known my wife for forty-eight years. We know each other pretty well and are still in love. Even after all that, we are reluctant to share every thought, our deepest and darkest secrets. We still harbor the fear that complete knowledge would kill love.<\/p>\n

That’s not possible with Jesus. He knows us completely,  more than anyone else ever could, yet He loves us enough to die for us. He is still willing to call us “friend” and to share with us everything the Father has shared with Him. Just try to get your mind around that. The complete and freeing intimacy that we all crave is possible. Only with Jesus. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master\u2019s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. John 15:15 The idea that the Lord of the Universe would send His son to die for mankind is an overwhelming thought. It is very difficult for us to get our minds around that idea. Somehow, we do. More difficult is the concept of a personal savior. We have a love\/hate relationship with intimacy. We deeply wish for someone to know us completely and yet to love us. Yet we are far too familiar with the darkness inside. We know what rests in the dark corners of our souls. We can’t believe that someone would completely know us and still love us. It’s the greatest insecurity that we carry through life.  We play games in our relationships. We put forward an “us” that is not a true or complete picture. We show only part of us. I have known my wife for forty-eight years. We know each other pretty well and are still in love. Even after all that, we are reluctant to share every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"chat","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-chat","hentry","category-the-spiritual","post_format-post-format-chat"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9385"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9385\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9386,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9385\/revisions\/9386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicksigur.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}