Freaky Friday

Sometimes, the only way to understand someone is to step into their shoes for a time. During this time in history, it is important for us to do this. We do not know what others are going through right now. Yes, it is all inconvenient and out of our control. It reminds me of a movie that came out a few years ago called Freaky Friday.

The original movie came out in 1976 and then was remade in 2003. I guess it was more than a few years ago! How time flies! The premise of this movie is: a mother and daughter, as opposite as could be, switch places to better understand one another. They were frustrated and out of control. There was no switching back until they actually understood what the other was going through.

This sounds very familiar to our relationship with God before Christ. As you look through the Old Testament you see a number of familiar faces: Abraham, Moses, Job and many others. They all know ‘of’ God, and even Abraham was called a friend of God. But they could not ‘know’ God like we can today. Read what Job said about this:

“God is not a mortal like me, so I cannot argue with him or take him to trial. If only there were a mediator between us, someone who could bring us together. The mediator could make God stop beating me, and I would no longer live in terror of his punishment. Then I could speak to him without fear, but I cannot do that in my own strength.”
Job 9:32-35 NLT

On the other end of the spectrum, God only ‘knew’ of man. Yes, He fashioned and formed us. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. But where He was once intimate with man, walking in the garden, He was no longer. He could never be the groom. We could never be the bride.

So, God came and traded places to know us intimately. He made himself less, by adding human to himself. He was still divine, yet now fully human. Nothing was taken away, but flesh was still added. In this way, as Paul puts it, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

It’s as if God heard Job’s prayer and responded in kind. In fact He did. He does hear. He does understand. This is how we can have relationship with God once again. He took our place on a “freaky” Friday two thousand years ago and died for you and for me. The culmination of this entire experience was the cross. It wasn’t until this moment that we could really understand each other. Now, we can be “seated with Him in heavenly places!”

We once heard that He loved us, and now we know that He does. And today, you may have heard this same thing. Does God really love me? You have the opportunity to know for sure that He does. You can be in right relationship with Him even now. You can know that God, the creator of everything, loves you and loves me!