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In my last post, I expressed some of my personal lament for my unfamiliarity with the most memorable events to the Lord Jesus as He walked the earth. The most precious moments that come to His mind often are probably those of His arrest, trial, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. Many Christians can recount the details of their favorite movie with more precision than they can the most precious memories of the Lord. If you’re as pained as I am by that fact, you may be asking “well, how do I change that?” I want to take just a couple of more posts on this topic to address the obstacles to enjoying true intimacy and fellowship with Jesus at the Cross.

The first barrier we come up against in truly growing in friendship with Jesus related to the Cross is simply unfamiliarity and ignorance. For most of us, we have only a very superficial knowledge of the events of those three days. We can talk about the general themes and broad strokes of the Passion narrative, but the details of the story elude us simply because of a lack of diligence in study. The solution is as simple as the reason we are foggy on the details; we must devour every detail of the story, the setting, the culture, and the context until His Cross moves from a hazy progression of events in our minds to a clear, flowing, coherent story. We must know the people, places, and sequence in both the simplicity of the structure and in the depth of the details.

A few days ago on one of our sets at IHOP-KC, our worship team sang through the drama of the cross of Christ. Beginning at Jesus’ anointing at Bethany, proceeding to the garden of Gethsemane, the beating by the Romans, the march to the cross, and finally ending with an empty tomb, we developed each scene musically and vocally for the two hours of our set.

As we were singing and playing through the story of our Lord’s passion, it struck me how ignorant I was regarding many of the details, sequence, and order of the events of those few days. If Christ is truly my life, my hope, my treasure, and my reward, I had to ask a hard question - why do I not cherish and intimately know the details of some of the most precious moments of my Lord during His life on the earth?

Within our lives, the events that bring us into deep mourning or great joy are often the most significant. They shape our personalities, form our decisions and attitudes, and stand as signposts in our story. These are the moments we replay in our minds, hearts, and conversations with those closest to us.