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We Would See Jesus
We Would See Jesus is an amplification of Roy Hession's Well-known Calvary Road. His theme is that Jesus" has come to take us from every yoke of bondage and to set us free to serve Him in the freshness and spontaneity of the Spirit.
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First published January 1, 1980
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
July 24, 2016
Roy and Revel Hession's book is for those who truly want to grow in their faith and relationship with the Savior. The hunger is needed, and it is fair to say that some level of maturity is also a pre-requisite. I say honestly that early in my awareness of accepting Jesus as the Son of God and my Savior, this would have overwhelmed me. It is simply a fact that as we grow up physically or learn other skills in life, there is progression. So it is in our Christian walk.
But these truths added to my maturity, and the entire center of it all is Christ. Developing our love from Him, which is a progression of His love for us, is what it's all about. The Spirit of God within and all of the scriptures listed confirm what the Hessions knew, lived, and shared here.
By listening to what Jesus taught and had to say to us, his family, we can be liberated from misconceptions, get our priorities in order, and hear direction for our lives as we never could before.
But these truths added to my maturity, and the entire center of it all is Christ. Developing our love from Him, which is a progression of His love for us, is what it's all about. The Spirit of God within and all of the scriptures listed confirm what the Hessions knew, lived, and shared here.
By listening to what Jesus taught and had to say to us, his family, we can be liberated from misconceptions, get our priorities in order, and hear direction for our lives as we never could before.
May 8, 2016
I have re-readed We Would See Jesus. It is the kind of book, one can get something new from each time it's read. This very simple, little book is about Someone many Christians are missing in their faith. Someone we meet at salvation, leave there, and move on. Someone we need to live the true life of faith. Someone named Jesus. Be renewed and refreshed. Read this book.
September 9, 2018
My dad must've esteemed this little book, because I found two copies in his collection. As a teen, I used to sneak and read various books of his on Christianity, and I included this one partly because it was short and less daunting. I wanted to re-read it to see if it maintained its music for me after all these years.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus - more than trying to live right, or find experiences or good emotions. That's my summary of this book, but it is much deeper than that.
The only part that I remembered from my first read was the part about understanding the phrase "without the camp" (or "outside the camp" in Hebrews 13:11-13 about the place where Jesus was crucified. I remembered being touched by that aspect of what Jesus suffered for me, although, yes, what He suffered was far worse than where He suffered it.
Roy and Revel Hession spoke about what the phrase "without the camp" would've included to the Hebrews who heard it. Without the camp were the foreigners, the lepers, the criminal executions, and the refuse heap for the sacrificed animals whose blood had been sprinkled on the altar. He went to the place where He was a "stranger," even to His own Heavenly Father. He became a moral leper, a criminal, and yes, a sacrifice, all because He took our place.
Despite a couple of minor footnotes of disagreement, there was much beauty and much good in this book about looking to Jesus and the various Biblical descriptions of Him as the Truth, the Door, the Way, and the End. There are many, many worthwhile ideas in those parallels.
Favorite quotes:
"We have come to think of the Christian life as consisting in serving God as fully and as efficiently as we can. Techniques and methods, by which we hope to make God's message known, have become the important thing. To carry out this service we need power, and so instead of a longing for God, our longing is for power to serve Him more effectively. So much has service become the centre of our thinking that very often a man's rightness with God is judged by his success or otherwise in his Christian work.
"Then there tends to be today an emphasis on the seeking of inner spiritual experiences. While so many Christians are content to live at a very low level, it is good that some do become concerned about their Christian lives, and it is right that they should. However, the concern arises not so much from a hunger for God, but from a longing to find an inner experience of happiness, joy, and power, and we find ourselves looking for "it," rather than God Himself."
"To create, God had but to speak, and it was done. But to redeem, He had to bleed."
"Christian service of itself can, and so often does, leave our self-centered natures untouched."
"We think we are working for God, but the test of how little our service is for Him is revealed by our resentment or self-pity, when the actions of others, or circumstances, or ill-health take it from us!"
"If fellowship with God is to be our first concern, then we can have fellowship with God in the kitchen, in sickness, in any kind of trying and difficult situation."
"For the face that reveals the glory of God is a marred face, spat upon and disfigured by the malice of men."
"The Lord Jesus is always seen through the eye of need. He is presented to us in the Scriptures not for our academic contemplation and delight, but for our desperate need as sinners and weaklings."
"Where there is sorrow, misery, unhappiness, suffering, confusion, folly, oppression, there is the I AM yearning to turn man's sorrow into bliss whenever man will let Him. It is not, therefore, the hungry seeking the bread, but the Bread seeking the hungry; not the sad seeking for joy, but rather Joy seeking the sad; not emptiness seeking fullness, but Fullness seeking emptiness. And it is not merely that He supplies our need, but that He becomes Himself the fulfillment of our need. He is ever 'I am that which My people need.'"
"He is not shocked at human failure; rather He is at home in it, drawn by it, knowing what to do about it, for He in Himself and in His blood is the answer to it all."
"If we are asked, 'Where do we see Jesus as the truth?' we reply, 'Supremely on the Cross of Calvary.' There in Him we see the whole naked truth about sin, man, and the God with Whom He has to do. The very scene that reveals the richest and sweetest grace of God towards man also reveals the starkest truth about what man is. If grace flows from Calvary, so does truth, for both 'grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.' John 1:17"
"If I cannot read God's estimate of man anywhere else, I can read it there. In very deed, truth, painful and humiliating, has come by Jesus Christ, enough to shatter our vain illusions about ourselves."
"The Gospel does not call us to try to be like Christ, but rather to come through Christ. We are presented with a Door rather than an example. Again and again, we find Paul's epistles punctuated with the phrase, 'through Jesus Christ our Lord.' (Romans 6:23 and similar verses.)"
"But the human heart would much rather offer to God its works, no matter how costly, than humble itself to confess sin."
"That is the reason, also, why God has rejected the way of salvation by works or sanctification by works: the way of works is so often but a substitute for repentance." (I would've said one of the reasons, not the only reason.)
"The Sheep do not come to the still waters to find the Shepherd. It is the Shepherd Himself Who leads them beside the still waters. Christ is immediately available right where we are, as we are."
"It is simply to take our eyes off the blessings that Jesus gives, to cease to strive to recapture them, and to put our eyes on Jesus Himself, just as we are and where we are."
"We have been availing ourselves of Jesus and His blood as the way, but to ends other than Himself.... Our end is to be the Lord Jesus Himself. The reason for which we are to get right, is not that we might have revival, or power, or to be used of God, or have this or that blessing, but that we might have Him."
"First, we must be continually seeing by faith Jesus to be the Vine, the One Who is love for others and Who is working out the purposes of grave towards the in the power of his limitless resources. He is never at a loss, never discouraged, never defeated, and He is our Vine!"
Minor Disagreements:
I have heard Roy and Revel Hession's model of how God is eternal, set apart from time, before in other places, but I think it's just conjecture. We don't know how He does it or how time appears to Him. Some things are left in mystery.
I was also a little confused by his summary of Job. I would have to re-read it, but I thought that God vindicated Job as not sinning to cause his misfortunes. The Hessions said that God fought against Job because he protested his innocence too much. I thought perhaps God called Job out as not being all-wise that he should question God, but not for sinning. And in the end, God did bless Job.
They also considered Israel to be the false vine that Jesus was comparing Himself against when He said He was the true vine. (Hosea 10:1, Jeremiah 2:21) The Hosea passage makes that certainly and specifically sound true, as Israel had repeatedly and cyclically turned her back on God. But I think that any other people group would have done the same. And Israel did indeed bless all the nations of the world, despite their shortcomings, because Jesus came from Israel.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus - more than trying to live right, or find experiences or good emotions. That's my summary of this book, but it is much deeper than that.
The only part that I remembered from my first read was the part about understanding the phrase "without the camp" (or "outside the camp" in Hebrews 13:11-13 about the place where Jesus was crucified. I remembered being touched by that aspect of what Jesus suffered for me, although, yes, what He suffered was far worse than where He suffered it.
Roy and Revel Hession spoke about what the phrase "without the camp" would've included to the Hebrews who heard it. Without the camp were the foreigners, the lepers, the criminal executions, and the refuse heap for the sacrificed animals whose blood had been sprinkled on the altar. He went to the place where He was a "stranger," even to His own Heavenly Father. He became a moral leper, a criminal, and yes, a sacrifice, all because He took our place.
Despite a couple of minor footnotes of disagreement, there was much beauty and much good in this book about looking to Jesus and the various Biblical descriptions of Him as the Truth, the Door, the Way, and the End. There are many, many worthwhile ideas in those parallels.
Favorite quotes:
"We have come to think of the Christian life as consisting in serving God as fully and as efficiently as we can. Techniques and methods, by which we hope to make God's message known, have become the important thing. To carry out this service we need power, and so instead of a longing for God, our longing is for power to serve Him more effectively. So much has service become the centre of our thinking that very often a man's rightness with God is judged by his success or otherwise in his Christian work.
"Then there tends to be today an emphasis on the seeking of inner spiritual experiences. While so many Christians are content to live at a very low level, it is good that some do become concerned about their Christian lives, and it is right that they should. However, the concern arises not so much from a hunger for God, but from a longing to find an inner experience of happiness, joy, and power, and we find ourselves looking for "it," rather than God Himself."
"To create, God had but to speak, and it was done. But to redeem, He had to bleed."
"Christian service of itself can, and so often does, leave our self-centered natures untouched."
"We think we are working for God, but the test of how little our service is for Him is revealed by our resentment or self-pity, when the actions of others, or circumstances, or ill-health take it from us!"
"If fellowship with God is to be our first concern, then we can have fellowship with God in the kitchen, in sickness, in any kind of trying and difficult situation."
"For the face that reveals the glory of God is a marred face, spat upon and disfigured by the malice of men."
"The Lord Jesus is always seen through the eye of need. He is presented to us in the Scriptures not for our academic contemplation and delight, but for our desperate need as sinners and weaklings."
"Where there is sorrow, misery, unhappiness, suffering, confusion, folly, oppression, there is the I AM yearning to turn man's sorrow into bliss whenever man will let Him. It is not, therefore, the hungry seeking the bread, but the Bread seeking the hungry; not the sad seeking for joy, but rather Joy seeking the sad; not emptiness seeking fullness, but Fullness seeking emptiness. And it is not merely that He supplies our need, but that He becomes Himself the fulfillment of our need. He is ever 'I am that which My people need.'"
"He is not shocked at human failure; rather He is at home in it, drawn by it, knowing what to do about it, for He in Himself and in His blood is the answer to it all."
"If we are asked, 'Where do we see Jesus as the truth?' we reply, 'Supremely on the Cross of Calvary.' There in Him we see the whole naked truth about sin, man, and the God with Whom He has to do. The very scene that reveals the richest and sweetest grace of God towards man also reveals the starkest truth about what man is. If grace flows from Calvary, so does truth, for both 'grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.' John 1:17"
"If I cannot read God's estimate of man anywhere else, I can read it there. In very deed, truth, painful and humiliating, has come by Jesus Christ, enough to shatter our vain illusions about ourselves."
"The Gospel does not call us to try to be like Christ, but rather to come through Christ. We are presented with a Door rather than an example. Again and again, we find Paul's epistles punctuated with the phrase, 'through Jesus Christ our Lord.' (Romans 6:23 and similar verses.)"
"But the human heart would much rather offer to God its works, no matter how costly, than humble itself to confess sin."
"That is the reason, also, why God has rejected the way of salvation by works or sanctification by works: the way of works is so often but a substitute for repentance." (I would've said one of the reasons, not the only reason.)
"The Sheep do not come to the still waters to find the Shepherd. It is the Shepherd Himself Who leads them beside the still waters. Christ is immediately available right where we are, as we are."
"It is simply to take our eyes off the blessings that Jesus gives, to cease to strive to recapture them, and to put our eyes on Jesus Himself, just as we are and where we are."
"We have been availing ourselves of Jesus and His blood as the way, but to ends other than Himself.... Our end is to be the Lord Jesus Himself. The reason for which we are to get right, is not that we might have revival, or power, or to be used of God, or have this or that blessing, but that we might have Him."
"First, we must be continually seeing by faith Jesus to be the Vine, the One Who is love for others and Who is working out the purposes of grave towards the in the power of his limitless resources. He is never at a loss, never discouraged, never defeated, and He is our Vine!"
Minor Disagreements:
I have heard Roy and Revel Hession's model of how God is eternal, set apart from time, before in other places, but I think it's just conjecture. We don't know how He does it or how time appears to Him. Some things are left in mystery.
I was also a little confused by his summary of Job. I would have to re-read it, but I thought that God vindicated Job as not sinning to cause his misfortunes. The Hessions said that God fought against Job because he protested his innocence too much. I thought perhaps God called Job out as not being all-wise that he should question God, but not for sinning. And in the end, God did bless Job.
They also considered Israel to be the false vine that Jesus was comparing Himself against when He said He was the true vine. (Hosea 10:1, Jeremiah 2:21) The Hosea passage makes that certainly and specifically sound true, as Israel had repeatedly and cyclically turned her back on God. But I think that any other people group would have done the same. And Israel did indeed bless all the nations of the world, despite their shortcomings, because Jesus came from Israel.
March 6, 2024
This book was recommended to me by a dear friend, and I found it to be engaging. Sometimes a believer can get caught up in the doing and striving of being a Christian and leave Jesus out of the equation. We can easily move forward in our own strength. This book addresses this and so much more. It's definitely a book I could turn around and read right through again. It's short, but there is lots there to reflect on.
May 4, 2019
Any book that focuses purely on Jesus ought to be good, and this is a very good little book. It can be a real source of refreshment to be reminded of the basic aspects of the gospel, and to be challenged with them once again.
December 30, 2019
A short book which will give you much to think about if you're seriously pursuing your faith in Christ....
August 10, 2012
This is my all time favorite book on the person and work of Jesus Christ. I have read it over and over again and still don't fully grasp all that Christ has done for me. Powerful.
February 3, 2016
It was interesting, not my favorite.
March 7, 2016
Wow. Exceptional.
August 22, 2021
Sometimes confusing, but probably due to my lack of spiritual understanding. Certainly not for the brain, but the heart.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews