Bathroom Jesus

Many years ago a church Elder at my home church in Miami was preaching about intimacy with Jesus. It has stuck with me over the years and I wanted to share it with you.

There are different levels of intimacy that as humans we afford each other especially around our home. To a complete stranger driving by it’s a tentative wave from your front porch. To the neighbor that walks his dog every day at 6 pm it’s a brief conversation at the edge of your driveway. After a few of those conversations, your neighbor may come on to your porch for some lemonade and small talk. Friends that you’ve gotten to know you invite into your home for a meal and cafecito (coffee) in the living room. You share small parts of your heart and gauge if they like you :).

A childhood friend may sit on the edge of your bed and chat for hours on everything and nothing all at once. We don’t tend to hide much from them. Our spouse we bring into our bedroom and share the most troubling and challenging parts of ourselves. Finally, there is one room we tend to enter alone, we don’t generally invite even our spouses there. In the bath we bare ourselves in all of our in perfections alone. This is the room where we cry the bitterest tears, the ones that come from a part of our soul that no one sees. It’s the room where we conjure the wildest ideas – those we believe could never be but no one is there to hear so why not.

So, the Elder’s question was how far into your home (heart) do you invite Jesus? We all want to believe that we have a bathroom Jesus that we’re so close to Him that we can bare the most disturbing imperfections to Him, but truly do we? To be honest at points in my life He’s been my living room Jesus. I share just enough with Him and of Him to make sure He likes me. I’m working on the fact that I need Him to be my bathroom Jesus but He’ll only meet me there if I ask. Have you asked?

There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 18:24

Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. James 4:8

Pastor Pedro and Marolyn Rodriguez