John 8:19

“OK, Jesus,” they challenge the Master. “Produce this Father of yours. Where is he?” Jesus replies, “You don’t get it, do you? You don’t know me any more than you know my Father. If you truly knew me you would know my Father as well.” John 8:19 EFP 

There it is—“Show us this Father you speak of, Jesus! Where is he?” I sense a little twinge of sarcasm lacing those words. “Produce that credential if you want us to accept it as a basis for your claims.” It sounds like a fair request at first glance. After all, Jesus is asking them to believe that the God they have always believed in is, in fact, His Father, and that the almighty LORD who led Moses and the children of Israel into the Promised Land also sent him. That is a step into the unfathomable for these simple people jaded by the claims of their religious leaders and perhaps other pseudo-Messiahs claiming to have been sent by YHWH. 

Jesus’ response puts them back into reasoning they must have perceived as cyclical. “If you knew me, you would know my Father.” He is an eyelash-length from his future declaration to Philip in John 14:9. John is about believing. There is bedrock to accepting Jesus as the Son of God. There is a point beyond which there is nothing more than choice to believe or not. It requires knowing a person named Jesus to the degree that ushers us into the realm of faith; things unseen are seen, even as they are hoped for in anticipation of their ultimate and tangible fulfillment. That is the world I want to experience more deeply—the world of faith, not for the sake of believing, but for the life and world changing it brings. I sense it requires more than simply a tacit consent or a semblance of commitment. It is a total surrender into the unknown spiritual world of unabashed faith and devotion. Am I ready? Are you?