CONFIDENCE IN JESUS
Dallas Willard (1935-2013) wrote,
“It is possible for religious people, and Christians in particular, to follow Jesus into the kingdom of God and come to know Christ in the modern world. All that is necessary is that they come to realize that they have not “arrived” by means of their particular identification as “Christians” or otherwise, and that they be willing to make knowing the kingdom their first priority. Then their confidence in Jesus—if it really is confidence in him, not just in something he did or said—can lead them into increasing knowledge of him. Their pride in orthodoxy (left or right) or in the form of religion they are practicing is their greatest danger, but it too can be overcome by paying attention to Jesus himself. Speaking from the very center of the bewilderments of contemporary thought, A. N. Wilson remarked that he cannot “… think that our own age has a monopoly of wisdom, and it will take more than a handful of textual critics or analytic philosophers to demolish the experience of those millions of men and women who, in all corners of the earth, and for nearly two thousand years, have been able to echo the excited words of the Apostle Andrew: ‘We have discovered the Messias (which means the Christ).’ ”
The woman (at Jacob’ well) said, “I know the Messiah is coming—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
Then Jesus told her, “I AM the Messiah!”