This is a post from Jack Deere’s Blog
If I can’t find my ultimate joy in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it is unlikely that will find joy in anything.
I have learned this the hard way.
Once my hope for happiness was in legal sex and a perfect marriage. I was young and foolish. Movies determined more of my theology than I realized. I did not know perfect does not exist on earth. Then I thought we’d be happy if we owned home. Then the next home and the next home until we came to the perfect home on a mountain in Montana. That home was so great that I thanked God for it all the time. Then I found my boy dead in that home and neither he nor I would ever spend another night there.
After Leesa and I lost Scott we went into a cave. After a little while, I found Jesus in the cave with us. I think he had been there all along, waiting for me to notice him. So that is where we met for a long time, in a cave. I did not see any significance in meeting him in the cave. Just a fact of life for us now. Then a few years or so ago, on the way out of the cave, I saw its significance.
My basic prayer for the last the 20 years has been that God would grant me the honor of becoming a best friend of His Son. I had forgotten that Jesus had sent his original best friend, the Apostle John, to live in a cave on the Island of Patmos. He exiled John to a lonely cave in his old age. And then Jesus came to John in the cave and gave him the revelation that has given all his little ones faith and courage to fight the good fight for the last two thousand years.
One day Jesus will come back and make all the wrong things right, and for a few years of temporal faithfulness Jesus will give us an eternal reward so great that it can’t be described or imagined with our present earthbound language. That’s what John saw in the cave. And now I think that Jesus sends all his best friends into a cave for some period of their lives. Maybe more than once. And the cave is where they learn that the pain of this life, no matter how severe or complicated or unfair, is ultimately an invitation to the party we’ve all been looking for down here, but have never found. So today, I’m trying to fight the good and great fight by looking forward to the party that will never end.
Love,
Jack
I sat and talked with my friend Eric Metaxas a few weeks ago about Even In Our Darkness. Our conversation turned into a 3 part interview that will air on The Eric Metaxas Show.
You can listen to the first part here and the second part here. I’ll let you know on my Facebook page when the final part airs.
I’m slowly reading through all the comments and messages so many have left on my Facebook page and email account. Thank you for your kind words about the book. I’m so glad that God is answering my prayer that the book be used to bring people into a deeper friendship with Jesus.
Thank you, too, if you have reviewed the book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and elsewhere; it really helps continue to spread the word. I am humbly grateful.
Ray Zoller 