Where Does Jesus Fit In?
“ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”
Mark 6:33 (NKJV)
Where does Jesus fit into your search for meaning? Where does the Lord fit into the myriad of conversations you have in your own head about decisions and options and dreams and burdens and weights and gifts and blessings? As you define your life, and as you edit that definition based on maturation and experience and growth and exposures and hurts and joys, where does Jesus fit into all of that content which creates the meaning for your life? As you wrestle with the questions that require answers, is Jesus enough?
I'm talking about questions such as these:
Do I stay here or transition to the new thing? Do I sit still or do I go? Do I try again or do I quit? Do I keep the wall up or open myself up one more time? Do I love, even though the last time I loved my love got crushed? Do I take the leap or do I wait and watch? How do I handle the me that I have become? And what does the me that I have been contribute to the shaping of this me that I am? How much of who I was needs to stay in my past, and how much should move forward to who I will yet become? What am I taking with me right now? What does it all mean?
Your aging, your activity, your connections, your interests, your hurts, your value, your control versus your surrender, and the ambiguity that is created by all of these things is asking you one real salient question:
Where exactly does Jesus fit into your search for meaning?
Is He centered? Is He central enough that all unanswered questions are covered by your trust in His plan for your life? Because that is what it all boils down to, doesn't it?
Does Jesus fit in the center of your life amidst the lack of details and the absence of certainty?
The Strength of Forgiveness
“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.”
Ephesians 1:7 (NKJV)
Your faith grows by counting blessings. Your faith grows by identifying and acknowledging your gifts. Your faith grows by sharing your witness and hearing the eternal Word of God. Your faith grows by nurturing your belief and exercising your devotion to religious practice.
Your faith grows through all of these things—but can I tell you how else your faith grows? It also grows by the depth at which you accept, affirm, acknowledge, and rejoice over how forgiven you really are.
Your sins have been washed away. Your penalty has been covered at Jesus’ expense. His blood was offered so that yours did not have to be. You and I live forgiven.
There is so much power in simply affirming that fact: You and I have been forgiven!
That fact calls not only for love of God, but for love of self. In fact, I suggest that you can't love God or neighbor without loving yourself. Maybe that's why Scripture teaches that you should love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Salvation, and the redemption that is released from it, brings forth an awareness of who you truly are in God. This self-realization comes as you affirm and accept that you have been forgiven. Forgiveness helps you to accept yourself, to get over the you that needed to grow and mature and change and be transformed. It helps you to get over the fact that you had to be rescued. It helps you realize how far you wandered from the fold of God.
You live with a lot of amazing stuff that Jesus’ presence has extended to your life, but I dare you to find something stronger than the forgiveness that comes with salvation. You can't find anything that is stronger than living forgiven by God.
Keep Fighting
You must not fear them, for the Lord your God Himself fights for you.
Deuteronomy 3:22 (NKJV)
You have fight in you.
You have more fight in you.
You have enough fight in you.
How do I know? Because the Lord is in the battle with you.
I don't care how tired you are. I don't care how many knockdowns are on the record for you. I don't care how many times you've already had to suffer defeat. I am certain that you have more fight in you because you're not fighting by yourself. Jesus stands with you in the battle.
One of the ways the Lord teaches us to engage in battle is by trusting our faith, even when it takes us down irrational paths. What kind of irrational paths am I talking about?
Loving enemies. Using prayer as a weapon and a shield. Waiting or remaining still when other credible options are right in front of us. Remaining silent when we know our words are strong. Staying sacrificial when we thought it would be our time to live showered in blessings.
Irrational paths include building arks, wielding slings, stretching rods, walking on water, climbing Sycamore trees, and so much more.
It's the surrender to the irrational that releases discernment. You know you are progressing and maturing spiritually when your faith makes you trust the irrational. You're fighting to live better when faith starts creating options that require belief more than strength, trust more than facts, spirit more than flesh, promises more than people.
I'm not sure what irrational task the Lord has given to you, but whatever it is, obey it—because it is your path back from brokenness.
This fight you are in—this comeback from brokenness—may not look like what you imagine. It may not come when you imagine. It may not be much like you have envisioned, but you are nonetheless coming back from brokenness. You'll know it when you ask to step out of the boat. You'll know it when you stretch that rod over an expansive body of water. You'll know it when you stand in front of Pharaoh and relay God’s message.
The Lord may lead you down some irrational paths, but He is with you in the fight. So keep on fighting.
God’s Acceptance
“He has made us accepted in the Beloved.”
Ephesians 1:6 (NKJV)
I don't care how much money you have. I don't care what kind of car you park in the driveway. I don't care where you work or what your salary is. I don't care how many friends you have. I don't care where you take your vacations. I don't care how superlative your health is. I don't care how you matriculate in the marketplace. I don’t care what kind of delicacies you eat on a daily basis.
None of that is stronger in your life than this: You get to live every single day in the extension of God’s forgiveness.
Understanding the depth of your forgiveness gives you permission to accept all of who you are. In other words, I can accept the me that God forgives and accepts. As a result, I don't need to restrict my movement. I don't need to suppress my dreams. I don't need to apologize for my ambitions. I don't have to disqualify myself from active participation in the pursuit of godly things. And neither do you.
I don't have to hold back on what I ask God for. I don't have to read His Word and not see myself in every promise or receive for myself every expression of love. I don't have to hide my thanksgiving or my gratitude or my gifts. And neither do you.
Because God has forgiven and accepted me, I’m moving, I'm chasing, I'm progressing, I'm elevating, and I am working to make things happen. That is the freedom that comes from forgiveness.
This freedom qualifies you to chase the vision framed for you by the revelation God has given you about your life. So go for it. Show up. Present your offering. Offer your worship. Pour out your gifts like perfume on the Master’s feet. Present your body as a living sacrifice.
You don’t stand before Him on the basis of a spotless life. You are there because no matter how spotted your past may have been, you have been forgiven. Forgiveness is worth everything. It's the permission to try everything that God extends. It is what allows you to claim every one of God's promises and to chase every one of God’s blessings.
Because of forgiveness, God accepts you. Accept yourself, and live for Him.
Faith and Ambiguity
They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?”
Mark 11:4-5 (NIV)
Famed psychiatrist Sigmund Freud said that neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity. I suspect Freud is hinting at the stress and panic and pressure and pain that we often invite into our lives. It is the result of living closed to additional meanings in life's circumstances—closed to additional lenses with which to view our human encounters.
Often, when we live closed to our circumstances and encounters, that’s when the stress and the discomfort arise in our lives. We must learn to live with ambiguity. I think we might expand that idea to say that, from Jesus’ perspective, ambiguity is necessary to cultivate a growing faith.
To love Him and to walk “open” is the way faith matures. Faith obeys on the strength of trust rather than proof. Faith follows because of trust rather than facts. Faith only needs to know that the Lord is asking or that the Lord is allowing or that the Lord is present, and then ambiguity is to be nurtured and not feared.
In Mark 11, Jesus calls two of His disciples and tells them to go into a village, and upon entering it they would see a colt. He tells them to untie the colt, and should anyone ask them why they are taking it, their response is to essentially be, “The Master has need of it.”
For these two disciples, the mission is clear, but the way it might unfold leaves a lot of room for ambiguity. How exactly would this scenario play out? What will be the reaction of those who confront the disciples about the colt?
Yet the disciples obeyed, regardless of the ambiguities.
There's a lesson there for you and me. Despite our ambiguities, despite the inexactness that we are living with, despite the vagueness of it all, let’s just obey. Let's trust Jesus’ authority.
What the disciples believed about Jesus’ identity and the faith they'd put in His eternality was sufficient enough to answer all of their plaguing ambiguities. The question that I think is being asked of us in this story is this: Is Jesus a big enough answer for the ambiguities that surround your decisions, your movements, and your interactions?
