I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. But now I call you my most intimate friends, for I reveal to you everything that I’ve heard from my Father.  John 15:15

Last time we ended by saying that when we are doubtful about who God wants to be for us and what He wants us to be for Him, then we’re perfectly positioned to discover Him in some new, glorious and breathtaking way.
…If we’ll let ourselves.

I wonder how many of us have lost—or maybe never had—that intimate knowledge of God as our true Father?
Or how many of us have lost—or maybe never had—that intimate knowledge of Jesus as our Bridegroom?
Our how many of us have lost—or maybe never had—that intimate knowledge of the Holy Spirit as our comforter and loving director of our path?

Our God wants to be all that to us and more. But we need to come to grips with the truth that God reveals Himself to each of us in different ways. Even in the Bible, we see God often reveals Himself as a father, sometimes as a mother… in the NT we see Him as a brother, a savior, a door, a flower, bread, water… lots of things. In the same way, God reveals His relationship to each of us in a series of ways: As a Kinsman-Redeemer to a young widow, as a brother to a sibling, as still small voice to a listening ear, as a Master to a slave, as a Friend to a friend, as a Husband to a wife or a Lover to a lover…

And not all of these relationship metaphors are equal. When Jesus said, “I no longer call you slaves, but now I call you friends,” that was a promotion, not a lateral move in their relationship. Yet in their future writings, they don’t introduce themselves as “friend of Jesus”; they introduce themselves as “servants of Jesus.” So becoming friends – experiencing Jesus at that status — didn’t negate the idea that they still identified with the “servant” relationship metaphor.

But why all the metaphors in the first place? All of these and more are needed for us to grasp the Bigness of our God and how He relates to us. But it also points to a reality that God often reveals Himself to each of us in different ways. So, my experience of Him might be a little different than yours.

It’s kind of like the well-worn sermon illustration of the 3 blind men meeting an elephant: One stumbled around until he found the tail and declared, ‘Elephants are like a rope’. The next one found the leg of the elephant and declared, ‘Elephants are like a tree’. The final one discovered the elephant’s trunk and determined, ‘Elephants are like a hose’. So, rather than collaborate their experiences of elephants, they had a big argument about it. Each of them was right so far as their experience was concerned, and all of them were wrong.

The sheer number of metaphors God inspired in the Bible to describe Himself and our relationship to Him tells us something. It’s like God is saying, ‘You aren’t all going to experience me the same way all the time. In fact, your experience of me now will undoubtedly be different than your experience of me in another situation and time. So, don’t get too opinionated.’ The point is that God is revealing Himself to each one of us in some way, and we want to reach out and experience His reveling.

How has God revealed Himself to you?