Dear friends of the word!

“To be In”, “To-be-In-Jesus” – how does that work? Lets look at the couple in love when a seperation in any way forces them to write instead of seeing each other. What a central positon does the daily mail takes in, the many SMS, the mails. Or let us look at them while phoning... laughing and kidding they are completely sunk into the world ot the beloved ones. Let us look further to a mother who is completely there for her baby. She is caring in each moment trying to understand any crying or wailing of her child.

To-be-in-sombodyelse means therefore to be in the world of the loving one, of the child, just in sombody else to understand its way of living and its demands from the inside. But how can we get “into” Jesus, who we can not meet personelly? He Himself gives us the answer:”If you stay in me and my words stay in you, than ask for anything you want: You will receive it!” (Joh 15,7) We therefore get into the way of living of Jesus, if we make some space inside of us for His words. If we read the Word of Jesus, let us be catched from it, let it be fasten in our mind and try to live it, then we are IN Jesus.

But why does our lives bear so few fruits even though we are on our way with the word of Jesus for a long time? Madeleine Delbrêl points us to the danger of dilettantism. We live amateurish with the Word of God, because we take it and then leave it again. “We let it outside of our spirit, in the necessary distance, ‘on our way’, so His light has no influence of our work, our behavior and our acting. We are just taking a shower in the gospel and let His living water spoil down our body or into a towl.” We let the gospel stay in a secured distance to our lives.

If we really relie on Jesus with flesh and blood, then His Word, the gospel, will start to touch us from the inside. It will show us the mirror into our faces and change us. It will call us for return and conversion. That hurts and we will suffer on ourselves. But at this way The Word will become more and more space in us and influences our doing. So the old one will die in us and the new one will grow.

So many times he came back home from playing the cards in a bar. She allways stood at home with the kids waiting for him. The following recommending of the gospel not to judge she even fixed something to for supper for him every night, she just loved him. No judging, no asking, no grumbeling. After years hi layed down the cards forever. “It was only because of her endless love that took me away from it!”

To be on the Words of Jesus and so to be inside of HIM – The fruits wont be staying away!

For the OnWordTeam

                     Meinolf Wacker