Pentecost C - My Personal Relationship with Jesus



Pentecost C My Personal Relationship with Jesus

May 26, 1980

By Rev. Ernest F. Campbell

The meaning of Pentecost is simply this; we can all experience a personal relationship with God. In the Gospel of John, we read that Jesus ‘breathed on them and they received the Holy Spirit.’ When you are close enough to someone to feel the warmth of their breath on your skin, it implies a closeness and intimacy in that relationship. Jesus predicted the possibility of this kind of personal relationship while He was talking to the woman at the well at Jericho. “The time is coming,” He said, “When true worshipers will not have to go to this temple or that mountain to know God, but they will know His truth through the gift of their own spiritual intuition. Listen, the day is coming when all men, not just a few prophets, but all men, will be able to enjoy a personal relationship with God.” 


God will become the companion and counselor of any who seek Him. The possibility of this personal relationship became a reality through the incarnation of Christ. The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and to as many as allow it, God’s way and will is impacted on our own minds and hearts.

How do we allow this impacting to take place? How do we enter into this personal relationship with God? By seeking it, and inviting it…. ‘Seek and you will find’ …. ‘Knock and the it shall be opened to you.’ …… ASK FOR IT!


We may enter into this divine relationship by turning our daily lives into a prayer… by living as best we can according to Christ’s teachings. We can enter by expressing as far as we are able, the values and love that Jesus personified.


How do we learn about the values and love that Jesus personified? ….. We think about Him… just as we would think about anything that interests us.


Example) Backpacking preparations – on my mind – people ask me where did you go -- where are you going?


What if someone were to ask, “Where have you been with Christ, and where are you going with Him?” The importance of meditation on Jesus is to try and see our lives in relationship to Him. We should know that it is an act of prayer to be with other disciples, sharing experiences and giving support. Prayer is a means of giving ourselves up to God. For the last 4 or 5 years at Proper’s Breakfast, we have attempted to allow our way to dialogue with God’s way. It is out of this dialogue that our personal relationship with God develops and matures. It is out of this relationship that the new creature, that Paul talks about, emerges.


There will always be a dimension of mystery in this process of metamorphosis… it happens as the spark of God’s desire for a new creature ignites the damp tinder of our soul.  


It’s what happens when the girl you have been courting says, -- “And I love you!”  Before she can say that, there must be an openness, a faith, a need, a desire, a hope. That same openness is a prerequisite for a personal relationship with God. He courts us with His blessings, then expectantly but respectfully, patiently, WAITS for us to say, “And I love you.”


Think of it… a personal relationship with God waits on our simple response…. Yes, Father, and I love you.


Yes, Father, I love your word for my life, and I will honor you with my obedience. 


In our marriage service the covenant sounds something like this…. “I will be faithful to you forever, and I will honor you with all that I am, and all that I have…so help me God.”


I don’t think it’s possible to make a faith commitment like that unless it comes out of a certain degree of inner quietude. It’s that spirit of inner peace that comes when you're simply holding hands and walking around the block with your best girl or special man. The coming of the Holy Spirit is like the dawning of a spiritual intuition that assures us that it is God who has come alongside with His love and power. This assurance of a personal relationship with God might be celebrated by some with an ecstatic utterance of tongues… by others with a sigh…… by still others through an inner peace that is beyond human expression. The important thing, it seems to me; if you have felt God’s love in your life, THEN acknowledge His presence in the best way you know how, and don’t let anyone try to talk you out of your experience. 


When God’s Spirit manifested itself to the disciples in the form of the Lord’s breath, or in the form of a wind, or flame, or light, they felt empowered to witness to others with assurance that God’s personal love relationship with them was for real, and that the same kind of personal love relationship could be experienced by those who invited Jesus’s teachings, values, and way of love, into their lives. You don’t know the love of God for nothing.


The form of spiritual interplay between God and man is with….in….us. We can and will meet God if we seek Him in our minds and hearts. If you only know of Jesus because of what others have told you about Him, then may I challenge you right now to get into the word for yourself. There can be no higher purpose in life than seeking and serving this divine relationship. When the reality of knowing that God’s love is personally ours, strikes home, you will have your own Pentecost, and I guarantee that you will be moved to somehow, some way, to share the joy of your reality with others.


Acts 2:11 – And they all heard them telling the wonderful things God had done.


God wants new creatures – recognizing – forgiving – loving – serving as Christ’s minister to us. These new creatures emerge out of a desire for dialogue with God’s word.


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