Could the real Jesus step forward...?

I want my coffee to taste like coffee,
I don’t want to learn a foreign language to order my drink,
Or decipher a code to know what’s in it.
Small, medium and large are good enough names.
I want my cell phone to “ring” not play a dance jingle.
I don’t need a heated cup holder in my car,
Or a climate controlled clove box.

I’m not “touchy feely”,
I will never willingly have a pedicure,
Nor will I have lazar hair removal on my back.
The only feminine side I want to get in touch is my wife.
I don’t just want to “journey”
I actually want to get somewhere.
I need someone to ask me if I’ve read my Bible,
Not ask me how I feel.
I don’t need Glade scented candles to pray,
But oh God, I do need to pray.

Is there a Jesus for men anywhere? I’m getting tired of singing songs that make me feel like Jesus is my boyfriend.

I’m coming out of the closet… So get over it, if you’re offended just tough it out. I’d like to come clean and proudly say that I am a man!!

OK that might be an over reaction… but no… probably not. Will the Jesus for men please step forward!? The Jesus for men who need answers. Who need to know how to be men for their God, husbands to their wives, Dad’s to their children and how to walk the life that they know they’re called to, not just blend in and be nice just in case anyone asks you “why are you such a nice guy…”. How “nice” was the real Jesus anyway? I mean the one that went out and premeditatedly make a whip and took it to church… that Jesus. The one that had carpenters apprentice hands from hours in the shop with His step dad. The Jesus who hung out with a bunch of down to earth, often confused, mildly clueless, adventurous discontents.

I know He’s still around somewhere, buried at the back of the Christian bookshop behind the self help books and Christian feel good publications.

Why is the first question we ask our kid’s when they come out of the youth meeting… “Was it fun?” That’s right …fun. Could it be that some of us didn’t just sign up for fun, or to be politically correct or to have our feelings stroked, but rather to fight a good fight?

If God is the same “…yesterday, today and forever…”* then He’s still the God of the mountain of fire and smoke*. Also the rider and judge of Revelation*. The same God that that sent an angel to call Gideon a “mighty hero”*. And took a bunch of in debt, in trouble and discontented no-ones and built an army for a would be King called David*. The very same God that gave Jephthah strength to keep his word even though it cost him more than we could imagine*. The God that in the form of Jesus cursed a fig tree for not bearing fruit*, touched coffins holding dead people breaking the religious laws of the day*, sat with “publicans and tax collectors”*, who was an ordinary man yet somehow instantly recognizable as different from the crowd. Where’s that God…?

Elisha hit the water with the cloak that fell from his mentor’s shoulders and shouted, “where now is the God of Elijah?”* Is it wrong that I feel like shouting, “where now is the God of the Bible?” The one that’s been buried in flowery language, hinted at in stories from our platforms, veiled in experiential subtleties, blurred by pseudo intellectualism and a multiplicity of words that actually seem to say nothing. That God, the One that is never quite proclaimed in straight terms anymore. Is it just me, or is there a sense that something real is missing from our new found religious communities?

There’s a growing unease that gnaws away at me, and in dark recesses of my spirit, heart, mind and soul I know I sighed up for more than just a culturally relevant “christianish” club. I know that I know, that I know, I signed up to be a man of God. A whole man for a whole God… can we please let that Jesus step forward?

Hebrews 13:8, Exodus 19:18-22, Revelation 19:11-16, Judges 6:11-12, 1 Samuel 22:1-2, Judges 11:30-40, Matt 21:18-19, Luke 7:11-17, Mark 2:15-16, 2 Kings 2:13.