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You Represent God to a World that Doesn’t Know Him
Getting Closer to Jesus: “You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it.”
That is a pretty amazing promise Jesus made to his disciples—and by extension—to you and me!
Jesus was laying out his succession plans for God’s kingdom. He told his disciples that he needed to go back to the Father, and in his absence, they would carry on his works in the world, extending the kingdom wherever they went. And although he would no longer be with them physically, he would be with them—and more importantly, live in them and work through them, by the indwelling Holy Spirit:
Literally, to his followers who would completely yield their lives in obedience to his word, commitment to his purposes, and availability to his work, Jesus promised, “My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them.” (John 14:23)
Make his home in them! What a thought: through the initial infilling and ongoing indwelling, the Holy Spirit—the third person of the Holy Trinity—would actually take up residence within Christ’s followers, making their whole lives—body, mind, and spirit—the new temple of God on Planet Earth.
Those words are from the lips of Jesus himself, and they are meant for you! As you go about your life—wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you are with—you are God’s temple on Planet Earth, the dwelling place of God’s presence. Do you believe that? If you do, Jesus’ words will transform you to the core of your being. They will radically alter the way you perceive yourself and interact with your world. And they will lead you to have the kind of impact for Christ in this world you have always dreamed of having.
The story is told of a private in the army of the Greek general, Alexander the Great, who ran after and retrieved the general’s runaway horse. When this lowly soldier brought the animal back, Alexander offered his appreciation by saying, “Thank you, Captain!”
With one word, the private had been promoted. When the general said it, the private believed it. He immediately went to the quartermaster, selected a new captain’s uniform and put it on. He went to the officer’s quarters and selected his bunk. He went to the officer’s mess and had a meal. Because General Alexander had said it, the private took him at his word and changed his life accordingly. He was simply now doing life under the authority of Alexander.
Why don’t you take the word of Someone far greater than Alexander and change your life accordingly? If you will, greater works will you do!
Take the Next Step : Offer this prayer for radical alteration of your existing life: “Lord, I believe what you said. On this day, I ask the Father, as you have commissioned me to do, to empower and embolden me to do the very kingdom works that you would do if you were in my place. And may all glory go back to you!”
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Talk About Faith is Cheap, Trust is the Acid Test
Getting Closer to Jesus: In his book, Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning tells the story of ethicist John Kavanaugh, who traveled to India to work with Mother Teresa in “the house of the dying.” Kavanaugh was searching for what to do with the rest of his life, so he asked Mother Teresa to pray for him that God would grant him clarity. She refused, saying, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh protested that Mother Teresa seemed to have such great clarity, she responded, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust.”
Manning goes on to say it is trust—the simple but ruthless childlike trust that we place in God—that is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship. I agree. That is what Jesus called his disciples to in the first century—to trust in God, to trust in him—and that is the challenge that Jesus lays down for his would-be followers in our age.
No matter how you slice it, the basic minimum requirement for following Jesus always comes down to this: Will you give him your total trust? If you will, you are on your way to the most exciting and rewarding experience of life a person will ever have—walking with Jesus. And from what Jesus said in John 14:1, we can deduce that one of the basic blessings of placing our trust in God is a trouble-free heart. Not a trouble-free life, mind you, but a heart (and a mind, Paul adds in Philippians 4:7) that is guarded by Jesus himself.
However, if you won’t give God your total trust, your Christian experience will never get out of the harbor to set sail on the rewarding voyage of risky discipleship. You will find yourself nursing a troubled heart and travelling a less-than-satisfying journey with God.
“Trust in God,” Jesus says, “and trust in me.” So, are you? When your faith is boiled down to its basic elements, will we find there, despite life’s circumstances and in scorn of the consequences of living out your faith, a simple but ruthless childlike trust in God? Or is trust something that merely gets talked about but never fleshed out?
A lot of people talk about trusting God, fewer people ever place the totality of their lives in the Father’s hands and unequivocally say, “into your hands, I commit my spirit. May your will be done.” If you are one of the courageous and committed few who do, you have given the greatest gift a human being can place before the God who has everything—the rare trifecta of extreme dependence, radical faith, and resolute obedience. Nothing brings a smile to the Father’s heart quite like that.
One of the best illustrations of this kind of ruthless trust came from the life of the famous tightrope walker, George Blondin. In the 1850s, for a publicity stunt, George decided he would walk across Niagara Falls on a rope that had been stretched from one side of the falls to the other. Crowds lined up on both the Canadian and American sides to watch this unbelievable feat. Blondin began to walk across, inch by inch, step by step, and everybody knew that if he’d make one mistake, he was a goner. He got to the other side, and the crowd went wild. Blondin said, “I’m going to do it again.” And to the crowd’s delight, he did. Then, to everybody’s amazement, he crossed again, this time pushing a wheelbarrow full of dirt. He actually did this several times, and as he started to go across one last time, someone in the crowd said, “I believe you could do that all day.” To that, Blondin dumped out the dirt and said, “Then get into the wheelbarrow.”
In a very real sense, that is what God is saying to you and me. Our talk alone is cheap. At some point, we need to get in the wheelbarrow of trust and prove that our discipleship is real.
Take the Next Step : Pray this honest and humble prayer: “God, I trust in you. Help my lack of trust!”
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Jesus Cares Deeply About You
Getting Closer to Jesus: I have always had an easier time accepting Jesus’ divinity than his humanity. I suppose that’s because I tend to think of human emotions—anxiety, disappointment, temptation, fear—as flaws and weaknesses. How could the Son of God be flawed or weak? No way; not my Messiah! Jesus in “great anguish”! How could this be?
Jesus was God, so he knew all things in advance. He knew what he would face, but he also knew the outcome was pre-set, so there would be nothing but victory and glory for him at the end of the day. Even though he would allow hurtful and harmful things to happen to him in his assignment as the world’s redeemer, he had power over those things; he would turn them toward his Father’s ultimate purpose. How then would he ever be upset, feel overwhelmed, and weep over things that didn’t go his way?
Yet over and again in the Gospels we see Jesus expressing a variety of emotions that we mistakenly attribute to humans only: tiredness, hunger, anger, grief, disappointment, distress. The truth is, those emotions are resident in the Creator, and we, made in his image, simply are able to feel and experience what he felt and experienced, too. We feel because God feels. In fact, the writer of Hebrews tells us that not only does he feel what we feel, we ought to be supremely grateful for that since that makes him our empathetic High Priest:
But Jesus the Son of God is our great High Priest who has gone to heaven itself to help us; therefore let us never stop trusting him. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses since he had the same temptations we do, though he never once gave way to them and sinned. So let us come boldly to the very throne of God and stay there to receive his mercy and to find grace to help us in our times of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)
In the case of his betrayal, knowing in advance that Judas would hand him over, for a price, to the Jews, having deliberately selected him with that knowledge in advance, Jesus was still distraught as he announced to his disciples that one of them would stab him in the back. And his distress was not hidden behind a stiff upper lip. The disciples were very aware that Jesus was terribly upset, so much so that Peter tried to counteract these messianic emotions with some bravado of his own: “Don’t worry Lord, I’ll be with you through thick and thin!”
Many times during my two daughters’ growing-up years, they would come to me for comfort when they had experienced fear, frustration, disappointment, and hurt in their lives. And being a little thick-headed as a father (I know, that’s a bit redundant), it took me a while to realize that they didn’t always want me to fix their problems, they simply wanted me to listen to their upset and offer an emotional response that assured them I identified with their hurt. They wanted me to “feel their pain.” They wanted, and needed, an empathetic father. To be sure, they sometimes needed me to fix things, but most of the time they just needed to know that I cared.
Here’s the thing: They didn’t care how much I knew; they needed to know how much I cared.
The fact that Jesus cared so much about Judas’ betrayal—even though he knew in advance it would happen and that God would leverage it for his eternal plan—proved to his disciples that he cared for them, too. They knew how much he cared, and that made him a perfect, empathetic High Priest they could come to for anything they were facing.
What a drag it would be to serve an uncaring, unfeeling Messiah. Thankfully, that is not the Messiah you serve. Jesus was distressed—but what a blessed distress! It proves that even as one who is fully God, he is still perfectly capable of feeling emotions for you, too.
Take the Next Step : Where are you hurting today? Boldly—with unmitigated fear, anger or hurt, if necessary—go to Jesus and pour out your heart to him. He cares! And he knows what to do for you, too!
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Seize Interruptions as Invitations
Getting Closer to Jesus: If we are to be the kind of Christ-followers that God can bless, our behavior must align with our beliefs. What we “know” must become what we “do.” Specifically, we will have to live like Jesus lived, which means serving like Jesus served. Jesus made that perfectly clear when he said,
You call me “Teacher” and “Lord,” and you are right, because that’s what I am. And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.” (John 13:13-15, NLT)
So, how did Jesus serve? Well, an entire book could be written on that, but among the many characteristics of Jesus’ servanthood, he was simply available to people. Reflecting on my own life and the lives of many people I know, my sense is that the critical need for most of us who will read this devotional is to reorient our busy schedules so that serving Jesus by serving others becomes our top priority in life.
Think about how Jesus did that. Matthew 20 tells the story of Jesus walking to Jericho when some blind men start yelling at him: “Lord, have mercy on us!” And it says, “Jesus stopped and asked. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’”
Now think about that: Jesus stopped! God turned aside to make himself accessible to those whom society had cast aside. Jesus did that a lot! Do you realize that most of his miracles were interruptions? What we see as an intrusion, Jesus saw as an invitation—an opening in his schedule to serve God’s purpose by serving God’s people. If we are to grow into a Christ-like ministry mindset, that is the attitude we must cultivate. And here is what that means:
First, we will have to realign our crowded calendars. Matthew 6:33 says, “More than anything else, put God’s work first and do what he wants. Then the other things you want will be yours as well.” What that means is that if you make God’s concerns your priority, he will make your concerns his priority. In other words, that will make you bless-able.
Second, we will have to refocus on others. That means we will need to think a lot less about ourselves and a lot more about others. Philippians 2:4 reminds me that in becoming like Christ, I must “forget myself long enough to help other people.” That is truly the preeminent attitude of Christlikeness. And it is one of the things that leads to a truly satisfying experience of life, giving yourself to others. Again, that is what will make you bless-able.
Third, we will have to relax our perfectionism. Too many Christians wait for perfect circumstances to serve: when life isn’t so hectic, when the kids are out of the house, when the right ministry comes along, or when other stuff gets done first. Ecclesiastes 11:4 says, “If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done.” Christlike servants do their best with what they have for Jesus today, not someday. Like Jesus, they are available when the opportunity presents itself! By definition, a servant always makes themself available to their master, and that is what will make you bless-able to the only Master that matters.
Jesus served because at the core of who he was there was a consuming desire to connect people with the grace, mercy, and love of his Father. Serving was the primary means of that. Since, as a Christ-follower, you are being transformed into his character, that must be characteristic of you, too.
God has made—or more accurately, remade you—to serve him by ministering to others. Actually, “you are God’s workmanship, made to do good works that God himself has prepared in advance specifically for you to do.” (Ephesians 3:10)
Interestingly, and quite deliberately, the Greek word in that verse the Apostle Paul chose for workmanship is poiema. We derive our English word poem from that. You are God’s poem, and when you serve in the mindset of God’s Son, you become poetry in motion.
And when you do, you are at your most bless-able!
Take the Next Step : There is one vitally important question you must answer after you have been saved: Where are you loving God by serving others?
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Serving Puts You at Your Christlike Best
Getting Closer to Jesus: If you and I are going to be a fully devoted follower of Christ, we will have to think, speak, and live like Jesus thought, spoke, and lived—not the least of which is to take on the attitude, exhibit the actions, and live the lifestyle of a servant. Yes—you will have to serve as Jesus served!
Serving is what Jesus did because servanthood was at the very core of who Jesus was and why Jesus came. The Gospel of Mark, the first written biographical account of Jesus, sums up the life and ministry of Jesus with this simple, clear, and compelling mission statement:
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)
Fleshing out this mission statement, John 13 presents the servanthood of Jesus in action in the most unusual and unforgettable way: He washed his disciples’ feet. Then, as he completed this humbling task, he said to them, “I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.” (John 13:15, NLT) It is abundantly clear from this passage, along with other scripture, that serving is an unmistakable, unavoidable demand of discipleship. Not only is serving a demand, but when we look at Jesus’ example, we find that serving is also a delight. It is what makes us bless-able: “Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.” (John 13:17, NLT)
Think about it: Serving like Jesus is what puts you at your Christlike best!
You are called to serve! Paul writes in Philippians 2:5-7, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God…took on the very nature of a servant.” Galatians 5:13 says, “Serve one another in love.” If you are serving, you are fulfilling your basic Christian calling. If you are not, then you are not!
You were created to serve! Like fish swim and birds fly, Christians serve! Ephesians 2:20 states, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Before you were even conceived, God laid out specific plans just for you. You are not an afterthought; you do not just exist; you are on this earth not just to be a potted plant, you were born not just to consume, but to contribute. God deliberately shaped you to serve his purposes, which means that he has placed an important responsibility on your shoulders that only you can fulfill.
You contribute to the Body of Christ when you serve! God specifically created you, converted you, and called you to contribute to the life, health, and mission of a local church. Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 12:27, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Verse 12 says, “The body is a unit, though it’s made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.” Verse 18 says, “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” Why? Verse 7 tells us it is “for the common good.” 1 Peter 4:10 says, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” Perhaps you didn’t realize this, but as you and others serve in your church, serving becomes the primary means by which others receive God’s grace. Your serving is the conduit of God’s grace to those around you.
You capture the world’s attention when you serve! Our humble, authentic acts of service put God in a good light. Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. (Matthew 5:16, NLT) Jesus said John 13:35, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples: That you have love for one another.” It is by authentic servanthood that you become living proof of a loving God.
Jesus ended the washing of his disciples’ feet by issuing this very simple challenge: “Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.” (John 13:17, NLT) It doesn’t get any clearer than that!
Take the Next Step : Having read this devotional and meditated on the scriptures quoted, there is a simple question you are obligated to answer: “Where am I serving?”
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