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This new husband, Jesus, is not a demanding master standing over you with a checklist. He is a life-giving husband who took your ugliness, sin, and shame down into death to bury it forever, sharing with you his own life and perfect righteousness, making you beautiful in his sight and calling you his very own.

When we read the word of God, we find it reads us. It pierces deep. It finds us, it discovers our innermost filth. It judges, and it saves, just as it judged Eglon and it saved the people.

The mutual knowing of Father, Son and Spirit is, to put it simply, the deepest truth of all. It is the foundational and all-encompassing intimacy. It is the affection of which all life is simply a joyful overflow.

The Christian life is defined by Jesus, centred on Jesus, and it even begins to look like Jesus, in all his loveliness and goodness. It is not your own life, but his life being worked out in you. It is this way from day one, and will be this way right to the day when your race has been won. And it will never stop feeling like kneeling at the cross in worship and wonder.

I receive the abundant-life-giving coming of Jesus as I know and am known in my local church. Local church matters because knowing and being known matter.

There is no distance Christ is unwilling to go. There is no job beneath him that he will not joyfully complete in love. And now he is risen in glory, with holes in his hands and standing as a Lamb who was slain (Rev. 5:6). This is what greatness looks like. This is what glory looks like. This is what true leadership looks like.

It is here, and only here where we find our everlasting comfort. Our everlasting beauty. Our everlasting life. 

As we watch, and as we wait in the wilderness of our world today, may we too lift our voices to cry, “Prepare the way of the Lord.” For he who was faithful to come, will come again, just as he promised. And so we cry, “Come, Lord Jesus.” 

Here lies the secret of boldness. Not found in our own strength but in his steadfast love. This is the truth and promise that makes us bold, to take risks for Christ Jesus, to overcome insecurity, to fight temptation, to stand up for what is right, to wait patiently in the face of suffering, to love with our whole hearts. It is the assurance of his love for us in the present brokenness.

How do Christians grow? How does change happen? And if Christians are those who have been accepted by God once and for all because of what Jesus has done, then why bother?