Jesus rose from the waters of the Jordan, to the voice of His Heavenly Father, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased." Matt. 3:17
Of all His relationships, this one captivated Jesus' mind, heart and will .
The first time we see Jesus' heart for His Father, He is twelve.
His mom and dad are hurt and confused by His disappearance.
"Did you not know," He asks, "that I would be with my Father...?"capital F.
Over and over again in Jesus interaction with others, even as precious to Him as own mother, He makes it clear that the only one He answers to was God; His Father.
This is puzzling... this relationship of the Trinity.
I'm not equipped enough to claim I fully get it.
But I believe Jesus' life has always been completely sustained by God the Father. Jesus is equal in authority and power but yet He cannot exist apart from the life and life-giving nature of Father God. Hence, "Father". The term is not reflective of human gender as if God were in our image, but of God's capacity to initiate and sustain life.
Jesus knew God the Father, as His Father, was His only source of life.
Again, we know nothing of intervening years until His baptism, and here God says..."Son, you please me to no end."
Before the miracles, before the preaching, before the self-sacrifice...Jesus was a delight to God.
This Father-Son relationship should inform us about how God delights in us...
before we talk, before we work, without making a show of ourselves, before we make a show of Him!
I think of how my own parents would look at me sometimes and I would know they loved me and delighted in the fact that I was their daughter. It made me want to please them...not to convince them they could or should but because they already did-love me.
This is what I think of when I read the words of Father God to His Son Jesus. God is pleased with children who believe that in Him is life
and bathe in the river of His love.
Father God can appear heartless when we arrive at the crucifixion account, so for now look at God through the eyes of Jesus, His devoted Son and be reminded that what was to come was driven by a son who knew He was loved.
Monday, August 21, 2017
Tuesday, August 15, 2017
The Right Connections
"Hey,I know a guy. Somebody knows somebody who might know how to help you meet the somebodies who can help..."
We've been through this circus with our kids over and over again. Make calls, do research, eat McDonalds six nights a week in a van, to get to a better team, to get to a better team, to get in front of better coaches, to get to the better school. This craziness begins in preschool.
Athletics is just one example of the rat race of making "connections"... perhaps you know a guy who may be able to make parking tickets disappear for example?!
Calling in a little favor is hard to resist...when you have connections.
John the Baptist was a character with connections.
Not only was he the cousin of the Messiah, but he was given the privilege of baptizing Jesus. John was an eye witness to the dove that descended on Jesus and an ear witness to the voice that came from Heaven speaking divine approval.
If I were to live an isolated life in the desert, tanning hides for my wardrobe, enduring beestings to secure my nourishment, and spending my days introducing people to someone they'd leave me for...I think I would be expecting to call in a few favors and retire well!
But this is not the kind of relationship John had with Jesus. Whatever expectations He had of what Jesus would or should do for him are simply stated in John 3:30,
"He must increase, but I must decrease."
I'm not sure that John pictured his decrease to the extent of being imprisoned and beheaded. John had offended Herod by disagreeing with his "life choices", now he sat behind bars, awaiting his fate and hearing stories of his cousin, The Messiah, rescuing all sorts of strangers. How could he not wonder if he'd been mistaken about Jesus after all?
John's friends came to Jesus on John's behalf:
“Are you the One we’ve been expecting, or are we still waiting?” Matthew 11:3
Can't you feel John's confusion?
"Jesus, if you're who I thought you were, why am I sitting here? Why am I not reaping the rewards of working for you and knowing you personally?!"
Jesus sends word back to John, "Absolutely! I'm performing all kinds of miracles! The blind see and the lame walk. I even raise people from the dead! I'm spreading the good news that God is rescuing His people! But John, I'm not rescuing you from prison and I'm not rescuing you from your grotesque fate. Please, don't be offended." (paraphrase of Mt. 11:4-6)
Can't you imagine John's offense?
John's question still hangs in the air in 2017.
Jesus, are You who we thought You were or are we still waiting...for someone else to rescue us?"
I've never faced torture or deprivation as many around the world do, but I have had expectations and I have been offended.
This whole thing about "decreasing";
decreasing my influence, my possessions, my rewards, my goals, my reputation...
well most of the time, I'd rather not.
After all, Jesus is my friend. I've been getting to know Him a long time. I do stuff for Him and I don't do stuff...for Him! I don't ask much either, not really. So, the least He could do is...
but sometimes, He doesn't.
How could He treat His friends this way?
I think there's a clue in Matthew 11:12. After Jesus honors John the Baptist He says this:
" From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence..."
John preached the Kingdom of Heaven at hand...
peace, justice, hope, joy
is here?
Well, not by an immediate swift sweep of force. Instead, God's kingdom comes through individual hearts yielded to His love. Hearts that say: "Your way, not mine", one battle at a time.
"Our mission in His Kingdom is that His reign is "brought to bear where destructive powers have held sway. These powers will not give up without a fight. The fight itself and incurred suffering are not incidental but somehow the means by which Jesus' victory is applied.
One of the dangers of saying too easily 'the Messiah died for my sins' is to imagine that hereafter there will be no more dying to do, no more suffering to undergo."
-paraphrased from The Day the Revolution Began, NT Wright
Jesus did not spare John pain, He spared Himself no pain, and we ourselves will not be spared all pain...
We are at war. We feel the violence of the fight.
But we know somebody who knows somebody...
a friend in high places,
who's called in a favor on our behalf.
"What shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave Him up for us all- how will he not also give us all things?
...in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." Romans 8:31-32,37
We've been through this circus with our kids over and over again. Make calls, do research, eat McDonalds six nights a week in a van, to get to a better team, to get to a better team, to get in front of better coaches, to get to the better school. This craziness begins in preschool.
Athletics is just one example of the rat race of making "connections"... perhaps you know a guy who may be able to make parking tickets disappear for example?!
Calling in a little favor is hard to resist...when you have connections.
John the Baptist was a character with connections.
Not only was he the cousin of the Messiah, but he was given the privilege of baptizing Jesus. John was an eye witness to the dove that descended on Jesus and an ear witness to the voice that came from Heaven speaking divine approval.
If I were to live an isolated life in the desert, tanning hides for my wardrobe, enduring beestings to secure my nourishment, and spending my days introducing people to someone they'd leave me for...I think I would be expecting to call in a few favors and retire well!
But this is not the kind of relationship John had with Jesus. Whatever expectations He had of what Jesus would or should do for him are simply stated in John 3:30,
"He must increase, but I must decrease."
I'm not sure that John pictured his decrease to the extent of being imprisoned and beheaded. John had offended Herod by disagreeing with his "life choices", now he sat behind bars, awaiting his fate and hearing stories of his cousin, The Messiah, rescuing all sorts of strangers. How could he not wonder if he'd been mistaken about Jesus after all?
John's friends came to Jesus on John's behalf:
“Are you the One we’ve been expecting, or are we still waiting?” Matthew 11:3
Can't you feel John's confusion?
"Jesus, if you're who I thought you were, why am I sitting here? Why am I not reaping the rewards of working for you and knowing you personally?!"
Jesus sends word back to John, "Absolutely! I'm performing all kinds of miracles! The blind see and the lame walk. I even raise people from the dead! I'm spreading the good news that God is rescuing His people! But John, I'm not rescuing you from prison and I'm not rescuing you from your grotesque fate. Please, don't be offended." (paraphrase of Mt. 11:4-6)
Can't you imagine John's offense?
John's question still hangs in the air in 2017.
Jesus, are You who we thought You were or are we still waiting...for someone else to rescue us?"
I've never faced torture or deprivation as many around the world do, but I have had expectations and I have been offended.
This whole thing about "decreasing";
decreasing my influence, my possessions, my rewards, my goals, my reputation...
well most of the time, I'd rather not.
After all, Jesus is my friend. I've been getting to know Him a long time. I do stuff for Him and I don't do stuff...for Him! I don't ask much either, not really. So, the least He could do is...
but sometimes, He doesn't.
How could He treat His friends this way?
I think there's a clue in Matthew 11:12. After Jesus honors John the Baptist He says this:
" From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence..."
John preached the Kingdom of Heaven at hand...
peace, justice, hope, joy
is here?
Well, not by an immediate swift sweep of force. Instead, God's kingdom comes through individual hearts yielded to His love. Hearts that say: "Your way, not mine", one battle at a time.
"Our mission in His Kingdom is that His reign is "brought to bear where destructive powers have held sway. These powers will not give up without a fight. The fight itself and incurred suffering are not incidental but somehow the means by which Jesus' victory is applied.
One of the dangers of saying too easily 'the Messiah died for my sins' is to imagine that hereafter there will be no more dying to do, no more suffering to undergo."
-paraphrased from The Day the Revolution Began, NT Wright
Jesus did not spare John pain, He spared Himself no pain, and we ourselves will not be spared all pain...
We are at war. We feel the violence of the fight.
But we know somebody who knows somebody...
a friend in high places,
who's called in a favor on our behalf.
"What shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare his own Son, but gave Him up for us all- how will he not also give us all things?
...in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." Romans 8:31-32,37
Thursday, August 3, 2017
Hidden progress
What is more fun then discovering a new favorite author?! I just started a book called "Anonymous" by Alicia Britt Chole. What could be better for writer's block then depending on far more accomplished authors to break through? Sometimes my progress in these studies is so slow and the new meaning so hidden, I am about to give up and then...a passage clicks together.
In studying Jesus' relationships with people, we've landed in between His birth and His baptism, Luke 2:41-52... So many hidden years of Jesus' early childhood! As the author points out: Jesus' birth was followed by hidden days, His circumcision by hidden months, His visit from the wise men by hidden years and His visit to Jerusalem by hidden decades. What did thirty years of living in obscurity, thirty years of waiting to step into His life mission, accomplish in Jesus?
These questions and this passage lead to a detested word: submission.
Submission- A choice to place one's own agenda under someone else's authority, someone else's needs, someone else's desires. Which, don't get me wrong, at times can be a bad thing. But for Jesus, it was all good.
Jesus' hidden years were lived in submission to His parents. In an environment of love (evidenced in His parents frantic, three-day search for Him) and His parents' own submission to God (evidenced through His birth story) Jesus grew in His ability to say: "Not my will but Thine". The Creator of time, took time.
At twelve, He was so wise He amazed everyone at the Temple yet returned for another twenty years to live with His parents (is He relevant or what?!) But it wasn't for His needs that He moved back in, it was to submit to their needs. At 30+, Jesus finally stepped out and into His ultimate mission and submitted to His Father's agenda to meet our deepest needs: to be set free from the power of sin and to be restored back into true worshippers of the true God.
Jesus' practice of obscurity, His choice to submit, turned the destiny of the world upside down and restored the ultimate agenda for all of us.
What could be more fun then discovering our new, our ultimate purpose?
What could be better for a "life-block", than depending on the One who breaks every chain?
But it takes time. Sometimes the progress lies hidden, obscure.
Be encouraged today, The Son of God Himself took 30+ years!
In studying Jesus' relationships with people, we've landed in between His birth and His baptism, Luke 2:41-52... So many hidden years of Jesus' early childhood! As the author points out: Jesus' birth was followed by hidden days, His circumcision by hidden months, His visit from the wise men by hidden years and His visit to Jerusalem by hidden decades. What did thirty years of living in obscurity, thirty years of waiting to step into His life mission, accomplish in Jesus?
These questions and this passage lead to a detested word: submission.
Submission- A choice to place one's own agenda under someone else's authority, someone else's needs, someone else's desires. Which, don't get me wrong, at times can be a bad thing. But for Jesus, it was all good.
Jesus' hidden years were lived in submission to His parents. In an environment of love (evidenced in His parents frantic, three-day search for Him) and His parents' own submission to God (evidenced through His birth story) Jesus grew in His ability to say: "Not my will but Thine". The Creator of time, took time.
At twelve, He was so wise He amazed everyone at the Temple yet returned for another twenty years to live with His parents (is He relevant or what?!) But it wasn't for His needs that He moved back in, it was to submit to their needs. At 30+, Jesus finally stepped out and into His ultimate mission and submitted to His Father's agenda to meet our deepest needs: to be set free from the power of sin and to be restored back into true worshippers of the true God.
Jesus' practice of obscurity, His choice to submit, turned the destiny of the world upside down and restored the ultimate agenda for all of us.
What could be more fun then discovering our new, our ultimate purpose?
What could be better for a "life-block", than depending on the One who breaks every chain?
But it takes time. Sometimes the progress lies hidden, obscure.
Be encouraged today, The Son of God Himself took 30+ years!
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