Pam's Perambulation

In 1989, Depeche Mode released a song called Personal Jesus, written by Martin Gore, the first verse of which goes:

Reach out and touch faith
Your own Personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own Personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there

It’s about being a Jesus for somebody else, but it echoes the need to be able to reach out and touch Jesus, to know he is near.

You want to hear it?  Oh go on then:

The desire to be able to reach out and touch faith is a common human one.

Romans 10:8-13

⁸ All who are acceptable because of their faith simply say, “The message is as near as your mouth or your heart.” And this is the same message we preach about faith. ⁹ So you will be saved, if you honestly say, “Jesus is Lord,” and if you believe with all your heart that God raised him from death. ¹⁰ God will accept you and save you, if you truly believe this and tell it to others.

¹¹ The Scriptures say that no one who has faith will be disappointed, ¹² no matter if that person is a Jew or a Gentile. There is only one Lord, and he is generous to everyone who asks for his help. ¹³ All who call out to the Lord will be saved.

This is one of those passages that are difficult to work out what the message is.

The version from The Message makes this passage clearer:

It’s the word of faith that welcomes God to go to work and set things right for us. This is the core of our preaching. Say the welcoming word to God—“Jesus is my Master”—embracing, body and soul, God’s work of doing in us what he did in raising Jesus from the dead. That’s it. You’re not “doing” anything; you’re simply calling out to God, trusting him to do it for you. That’s salvation. With your whole being you embrace God setting things right, and then you say it, right out loud: “God has set everything right between him and me!”

^11-13 Scripture reassures us, “No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it.” It’s exactly the same no matter what a person’s religious background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help. “Everyone who calls, ‘Help, God!’ gets help.”

God is right here – as near as a part of your own body.  We have to do nothing other than reach out to God and trusting him. Our statement of faith in him, welcomes God to come into our lives and get to work there.  He does the rest.

God is always near to us.  Reaching out to us.  Do we welcome him? Reach out to him?  All we need to do is reach out to him and trust him – that is the basis of faith, nothing more complicated. God’s generosity reaches out to us – will we reach out to him?

Lord,

you are so near to me,

all I have to do

is reach out,

call out,

trust you,

allow you to go to work in me.

Lord ,

I want to be nearer to you,

and so I call out to you,

and ask for your help