Day 16: Jesus and the Word are Supernaturally Symbiotic

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. JOHN 1:1

MY MIND IS TOO dinky to fully comprehend the supernatural conundrum of how Jesus Christ and the Word are equivalent. It’s like theological calculus. But somehow my heart knows it. My heart deeply resonates with the stories on Scripture’s paper-thin pages and intuitively knows the Bible isn’t something to simply memorize and pull inspirational memes for social media from, nor is it something to weaponize against certain image-bearers I don’t agree with. Instead, these enscripturated promises and parameters are divinely enmeshed with the unconditional love of Christ and have the power to pull sinners into a real relationship!

About twenty-five years ago, when I was still a wet-behind-the-ears Bible teacher, I was invited to teach at a women’s conference in East Tennessee. Although the event was small, with maybe 150 women in attendance, God used it to change the trajectory of my life and ministry in huge ways. It was an all-day Saturday conference, and as the women were filing into the sanctuary to begin the program, one woman in particular caught my attention. She caught my attention for several reasons: she got there late, she didn’t sit down in one of the empty rows at the back of the church and instead remained standing near the door as if she wasn’t sure whether she was going to stay or slip out, she reeked of cigarette smoke, and she was wearing a very form-fitting dress with wild “Stevie Nicks-ish” hair instead of the traditional Baptist pouf.

Based on her attire and her reticence to join the rest of the group, I assumed she’d be gone by the afternoon session. But nope, there she was, still in the very back of the church after lunch. I was more than a little surprised when she raised her hand privately when I asked if anyone wanted to put their hope and faith in Jesus. Then I had the pure joy of praying with her when she did. After we prayed, Debbie (not her real name) shyly shared her story.

She explained how she’d grown up with a father who knocked her around and sexually abused her when he got drunk, which was often. By middle school, she’d turned to alcohol and drugs to numb her pain. Tragically, as is often the case with young women whose innocence is stolen by an abusive father or father-figure, she soon fell into the arms of abusive boyfriends because they were familiar and felt like home. And before she’d even graduated from high school, one of them introduced her to prostitution and became her pimp. The next few years were a blur of working as a waitress by day and working in solicitation at night.

A few years later, a young Christian woman who was about her age and pregnant began frequenting the restaurant where Debbie worked as a waitress and made it her mission to get to know her. She always asked to be seated in her section, left generous tips, and then let Debbie hold her baby boy after he was born. Debbie told me softly, “I assumed Miss Carol knew what my night job was because we live in a small town and most people know what I do because I’ve been busted for solicitation several times. But it didn’t seem to bother her because she just kept coming and sitting at my table once or twice a week with her little boy, and within a few years he started drawing me pictures that I put on my refrigerator. I almost convinced myself they were my family because no one had ever been so nice to me.”

Debbie’s unlikely friendship with Carol is how she ended up at the conference for which I was teaching on that fateful day. Because Carol had invited her and wouldn’t take no for an answer! Once Carol paid for her ticket and hand-delivered it, Debbie relented although she felt anxious and uncomfortable because she hadn’t been inside a church since she was a child. She confessed that her plan was to make a quick appearance at the beginning of the event and then slip out after saying hi to Carol. But she said after I started talking, she was intrigued because I wasn’t the kind of “church lady” she’d envisioned. After I told an embarrassing story on myself and said something about how perfection isn’t a prerequisite for a real relationship with God, she decided to stay for a little while because I wasn’t too boring. (Some days are better than others!)

She said she was stunned when I started teaching from Hosea and told the story about a woman in the Bible named Gomer who was a prostitute. She said, “I’d never heard that story before, Lisa. I had no idea there was somebody like me in the Good Book. And hearing you talk about how God loved her made me think that maybe He could love me too.”

I still think about Debbie almost every time I have the undeserved privilege of opening my Bible and talking about Jesus with people at events, conferences, and churches anywhere in the world. Largely because of her, I still believe the “Yes, Jesus loves me” refrain in our hearts and minds will get loud enough to change the world around us when we better understand, appreciate, and trust the “For the Bible tells me so” part!

• DO YOU READ God’s Word more out of discipline or delight?
• WHAT PASSAGES OR stories help you lean more fully into the love of Jesus? Why do you think you resonate with them so much? In what ways do they give you a little bit more courage to explore the less-familiar parts of the Bible?