desert direction

There is a longing inside every human soul to touch the divine. The ancient sage, known as “the preacher”, said “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” (Ecc 3:11) We have a longing but God seems to only partially fulfill the longing. He doesn’t show us everything … instead, He gives us glimpses …

The glimpses are all around us. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” (Psa 19:1) God is always speaking. He is always reaching out but never in a way that overpowers. He is gentle and even the strong displays of His glory leave us with the choice to trust and surrender to His goodness.

But, why doesn’t He just make everything obvious about who He is? Why doesn’t He do more than show us glimpses? He did give us more than a glimpse in the person of Jesus. And even then, Jesus used “glimpses” to share the reality of His divinity and Messiahship. For those who had ears to hear and eyes to see, it was clear but He never forced Himself on people.

There is a cry of our hearts that says, “God, show me! Show me Your glory.” We often want Him to do the work for us … but He gives glimpses because making everything so clear would destroy the essence of relationship which is choice and love and trust.

Consider …
Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.” (Ex 33:18-23)

The truth is that all of life is dripping with His glory. In the sunset, we see His creativity. In a cloudless sky, we see His smile. In the starry night, we see His vastness. In the clouds and rain, we see His tears lined with the possibility of a new day. On a warm day, we feel His embrace. With the cool of evening, we experience His refreshment. In the laughter of a child, we see His playfulness and joy. In the rugged face of an old man, we see His wisdom. In the tears of a friend, we see His ache. In a loaf of bread, we see His provision for another day. In our hearts, we see that He exists.

The list could go on and it does. He is everywhere and seemingly unavoidable and yet, we frequently miss the glimpses.

A daily prayer …
Father, may I see You today in all that I experience so that my life would be an expression of You.

A moment by moment prayer …
Father, give me eyes to see You in this situation and in this person.

We live in a world that celebrates the extraordinary to the point that the ordinary can seem like a lesser world to inhabit. The ordinary feels like pure drudgery. To live in the “ordinary” is an insult to our intelligence and capabilities. However, life is made up of one ordinary day after another.

The wisdom of Ecclesiastes proclaims that there is “nothing new under the sun.” (1:9) Even so, there is something in us that longs for the extraordinary … something bigger than “day to day” life. Again, the wisdom of Ecclesiastes: “he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” (3:11)

We were built for the extraordinary but we don’t find it in the circumstances of life. In fact, the wisdom of Ecclesiastes suggests that we can’t find out what God has done from beginning to end. In other words, the pursuit of time-bound, circumstantial extraordinariness is futile because we are the mercy of God and His movement in our lives. He supplies the extraordinary. His very life and the glimpses we catch of Him are the extraordinary. Besides, much of what Western culture celebrates and promotes is an illusion at best.

Seeking the extraordinary is not only futile, it can border on idolatrous. It is He alone who is our “extraordinary.” When He becomes that, the stuff of life is easy to inhabit because changing a diaper or taking the trash out is not what defines us. In fact, His love extended to us and through us, no matter the task, is our reality. Simple things become an altar of worship. And when we practice inhabiting the ordinary with our full selves, not longing for some other existence, we’ve begun to experience Him. Remember, it is not in the “extraordinary” that we experience Him (a wind or an earthquake or a fire) but in the sound of silence. (1 Kings 19:11-12)

When we do experience an extraordinary event, it is nothing more than a window into His divine mercy that fuels our existence in the ordinary. But, even this, we do not seek but we entrust ourselves to the One who provides all that is necessary.

Oswald Chambers commented: “We have all experienced times of exaltation on the mountain, when we have seen things from God’s perspective and have wanted to stay there. But God will never allow us to stay there. The true test of our spiritual life is in exhibiting the power to descend from the mountain. If we only have the power to go up, something is wrong. It is a wonderful thing to be on the mountain with God, but a person only gets there so that he may later go down and lift up the demon-possessed people in the valley (see Mark 9:14-18) We are not made for the mountains, for sunrises, or for the other beautiful attractions in life— those are simply intended to be moments of inspiration. We are made for the valley and the ordinary things of life, and that is where we have to prove our stamina and strength. Yet our spiritual selfishness always wants repeated moments on the mountain. We feel that we could talk and live like perfect angels, if we could only stay on the mountaintop. Those times of exaltation are exceptional and they have their meaning in our life with God, but we must beware to prevent our spiritual selfishness from wanting to make them the only time.”

Consider this … seek Him in the ordinary and life will have an extraordinary nature. However, seek Him in the extraordinary and life will seem very ordinary.

Make a commitment to give up seeking the extraordinary and live each ordinary moment in His love and provision. What might that look like for you? How will you receive His love and provision in the ordinary?

What do “The Fault in Our Stars” and a relationship with Jesus have in common? Maybe nothing. Maybe a lot. However, I was moved to think through several things as I watched the movie and then reflected in the following days. First, let me share a disclaimer: I am a firm believer that the fingerprints of God are everywhere in His creation, including the people He has created. The stories we tell are never, ever, ever divorced from the reality of who He is. We may realize it or we may not, but our ability to recognize truth is in no way consequential to whether something is truth or not. However, when we realize and see that everything in life is dripping with the glory of God, we are able to interact with life in redemptive and loving and life giving ways.

So, “The Fault in Our Stars” is a great story and an honest one, but what gripped me most was the juxtaposition of two kinds of love. There was the sappy, immature relationship between Isaac and Monica punctuated with the sharing of the word “always” back and forth between the lovers. It was their mantra to mean that things would always be “this way” and they would “always” be there for each other. Of course, in a touch of dramatic irony, we could see that this word would come back to haunt them. The relationship didn’t last. Because tragedy was about to strike Isaac, Monica preemptively breaks things off. “Always” as a way of thinking about love was no more! As an immature love often goes, no room was made for suffering.

On the other hand, Augustus and Hazel have a relationship built on a brutal commitment to truth and honesty forged by the shared reality of cancer. Neither have a desire for a shallow, typical relationship, but one resting in truth. The word which becomes their mantra? “Okay.” The word represented a shared acceptance that reality is enough. They didn’t desire to lie or pretend or make something more of life than what they had been given. And, it was in this very acceptance that life took on a depth and richness that circumstance could not steal.

It was indeed interesting that Jesus made a bit of a cameo appearance in the film. The young man who led the cancer support group sang “sappy” songs about Jesus always being there. He wove a carpet depicting Jesus and invited people to come to the “literal” heart of Jesus. The immaturity and misunderstanding of relationship evident in this leader seemed to mirror the immature love of Isaac and Monica.

However, as the film seemed to challenge us to move on from immature love (and, perhaps, by inference, Jesus), I saw the development of “okay” as a similar invitation that Jesus extends to us again and again.

As I sat in a worship service recently, I was struck (having just seen “The Fault in Our Stars”) with the usage of the word “always” in a worship song. Jesus will always come through. He will always be there. Certainly, there is a beautiful truth in the “always-ness” of God, but there are also times when it doesn’t feel like He is there … when cancer strikes, when a child dies, when we are suffering. In addition, there are times when Jesus doesn’t relate to us in the ways He used to. He often seems absent and it has nothing to do with circumstances.

There is a need to mature to a place of being able to say “okay.” Certainly, there is a deep appropriateness to singing songs about the “always-ness” of God and for young love (even love with God), there is a need for emotions that might not stand the test of time. However, there is more to a relationship with Jesus than suggested by the support group leader in “The Fault of Our Stars.”

Richard Rohr, in his book “Everything Belongs”, comments that “Everything belongs and everything can be received. We don’t have to deny, dismiss, defy, or ignore. Whatever is, is okay. What is, is the great teacher. I have always seen this as the deep significance of Jesus’ refusal of the drugged wine on the cross.”

Please note that I am in no way critiquing the fact that a “Christian” leader was portrayed as a bit of a dork and clueless. It helped tell the story and was honest. Many Christians stay in the place of immaturity. By God’s grace, He loves us and meets us where we are. However, He always desires for us to move into maturity and the ability to say “okay.”

Indeed, whatever is, is okay because He is present and He is at work. How does He desire to move you from “always” to “okay”?

It is ironic, to our modern minds, to think we could be free while in captivity … but please hear me out.

We are all captives, or slaves, to something. The great theologian Jonathan Edwards commented that “we are free to choose but we are always a slave to our greatest desire.” In our modern world, we like to believe that we are totally free creatures but freedom is an illusion, of sorts. Certainly, we do have freedom but it is freedom within a defined space. And, that space is defined by the nature of our humanity. We have limits. For example, we are not free to exist without oxygen. That is a limit, or a boundary to our freedom. We have other limits and boundaries as well.

A fish is truly free when it is swimming in water. If a fish self-reflectively decided that being confined to water was a slavery that he no longer desired, he would not be truly free if he “freely” decided to leave the water. He would become enslaved to his inability to live outside the water. Indeed, his greatest freedom comes from choosing the right captivity.

As humans, we are most free and therefore “alive” when we choose the captivity the best corresponds with our design as humans. Many would suggest that being self-determined is what makes us most human. In fact, for those living in a “free” democratic society, this idea gets ingrained into our collective self-consciousness. As a result, we are often completely unaware that we even think this way. And so, even as we think about concepts like God, we often conceive of God in terms of our own making and liking.

However, clearly, we have limits as created beings. But, it can be so difficult to perceive this reality. If living within the confines of a relationship with God is our true nature (and that is my thesis!), then why it is often so difficult to live there?

C. S. Lewis once commented that it was perhaps easier for someone who lived under a dictatorship to understand the rule and reign of God in their lives than someone who lives in a democracy. Gary Moon and David Benner write that “Christian spiritual formation involves awaking from the dream that we are God and remembering our true identity, our ‘beloved-of-God-in-Christ’ identity, and then saying yes to the pain associated with the mortification of our false self.” So, is it our cultural bias that deceives us? Is it the pain the derails us? Certainly, these play a role in aiding and abetting the more fundamental issue: a bent toward self-determination that is hidden in each human heart. Romans 1:18-23 calls it futile thinking and foolish heartedness. However, also, plain to our heart is the reality that there is a God (Romans 1:20), an eternal realm (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and for the follower of Jesus, the indwelling of God in our hearts (Ephesians 3:17).

So, which captivity do we desire? Being captive to self-determination? Or, being captive to the indwelling Christ? It begins with desire and meditating upon the glory of living under His rule and reign. It progresses with identifying and releasing those old thought patterns and strategies based in self (self-protection, self-promotion, etc).

At a very basic level, I can ask myself the question: am I the owner of my life or is God? As I answer that question (each day throughout the day), I choose my captivity.

Several months ago, I went for an early morning run. It was an hour and a half before the sun was going to rise (yes, I am a morning person!) and there was no moon to light the night sky. It was dark … really dark. The neighborhood through which I ran had no street lights and almost none of the houses had exterior lights on. The bits of light my eyes could glean were used to keep me in the middle of the street. I could just trace the center line and I discerned that my best bet was to stay in the middle of the street, away from the curb where I might stumble and fall. Then, as a car would approach, I used that light to guide me to the edge and then back to the center after car had passed. I also found myself listening intently to gauge my surroundings.

It was running through that darkness that I began to grasp the beauty of darkness. I felt so alive as I just ran in that darkness. I didn’t have all the normal things to keep me feeling secure and safe and it stripped me down to nothing. It was beautiful and invigorating because it was just me … no distractions, just simplicity and quiet and purity.

Ancient spiritual writers such as John of the Cross wrote extensively about the fact that God often uses darkness in our lives to draw us to Him. He spoke of a dark night of the soul. Brother Lawrence said, “He sometimes seem to hide Himself from us.” The idea is that He takes away those things that we often rely on for a sense of security and value and control. Even those experiences of Him are often removed. It is in the dark that He frequently does His best work.

But, we usually don’t want to believe it. Often, we think of darkness as the worst of all possible scenarios. As kids (and still sometimes as adults), we are afraid of the dark. The darkness is where we might trip and fall or be blindsided by something we never saw coming.

We experience darkness all the time … the darkness of waiting for the results of a medical test, the darkness of a strained relationship, the darkness of a potential layoff, or the darkness of doubts about the nature of God. The darkness can also be one of not feeling particularly close to God … through no fault of our own. In these situations, we want to get light and get it quickly, but God leaves us in the darkness. It can feel like He’s abandoned us but the truth is that He is at work … deep work of the soul.

In John 9:39-41, Jesus talked about the advantage of being blind, or in other words, being in the darkness. Jesus said:

“For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”  Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?”  Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”

Jesus used blindness as a metaphor to talk about how we perceive reality and the arrogance that can come when we think we see. It is common to look at our experiences and use them as the judge of what is really going on. Experiences and feelings and circumstances become the evidence for our understanding of life. None of these things are bad but they aren’t always reliable indicators of truth. The advantage of blindness or being in the dark is that a humility emerges that requires a dependence on something more, something deeper than what we can perceive with our eyes. The blind have to rely upon what they can hear, what that feel, what they smell. What the mind can perceive through these other sense gives a much fuller picture of reality than the eyes alone can give.

Spiritually, what we can see (perceive through whatever senses) is not the full picture. Ultimately, in light of the vast spiritual realities around us, we are blind. Learning to truly see means learning to acknowledge this. It is absolutely true that God is nearer to us than our very breath and yet we often are unable to perceive this. We rely upon things like positive circumstances and the lack of trauma in our lives to tell us that God is near but do we really see if we believe that the evidence of His presence or favor is in those things.

Do you see the beauty of darkness? Do you see its potential? Brother Lawrence writes:

If we but knew how much He loves us, we would always be ready to receive both the bitter and the sweet from His hand. It would make no difference. All that came from Him would be pleasing. The worst afflictions only appear intolerable if we see them in the wrong light. When we see them as coming from the hand of God and know that it is out loving Father who humbles and distresses us, our sufferings lose their bitterness and can even become a source of consolation.

Do you see the beauty of darkness? Take a few moments and think about a current situation of darkness in your life. As you bring that to your mind, ask God to shed the light of His love on it. Sit with Him and tell Him that you trust Him. Sit quietly and keep bringing that darkness back to Him … trusting His love and goodness in your life.

Luke 24:6-7; Ephesians 1:19-20

He has risen. Death is defeated, sin is atoned for, and new life assured. The central claims of Christianity are historically verifiable and tangible. He died, He was buried, and He rose from the dead. He appeared to many starting on that first Easter and for several weeks thereafter before ascending into the heavens.

Easter is a singular event, encapsulated in history and yet it transcends history to provide new life for any would come and drink from the fountain of life in Christ. Easter is celebrated on a particular day each year, but its reality is available every day throughout the year. What a shame it would be to celebrate on one day and then leave behind that transcendent reality, essentially forgetting it for 364 days.

I plead with you … emerge from this Easter with a renewed focus on experiencing Easter every day. Ah, but the question becomes: how? How do we live a resurrection kind of life that is filled with the power that defeated death and ushered in eternal life?

Two challenges …

First: trust with all your heart that you have resurrection power residing in your bones. Ephesians 1:19-20 is part of a prayer in which the Apostle Paul implores his readers to know (i.e., experience) “the greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places.” The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to the follower of Jesus.

Take time each day and remind yourself of this truth. There is an old “you” that was buried in the tomb with Jesus and often we walk around in the grave clothes, but resurrection is available.  Sin has been forgiven but new life is waiting to emerge. No matter how frustrated you are with the old, remember that the new is more powerful. No matter how fearful you are to let go, remember that new life is real life. No matter how helpless you feel, remember that His power is stronger than your past, your habits, your fears, and your “whatever”. Daily time in meditation, rehearsing the truths of who you are allows your soul to inhabit new responses to old scenarios.

Second: decide each day to let go and wait for new life to emerge. What of the old life is still held in your hands? Daily, ask God to search your heart (Psalm 139:23-24) and show you where the “old” is in play. To experience the new life, something has to die. Certainly, our position before God is that we have died and our lives are hidden with Christ. (cf. Colossians 3:3), but this truth still has to work itself out in our lives.

In John 12:24, Jesus said something incredibly simply and yet very profound: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” To experience new life, something has to die. What, in you, needs to die? Will you daily let things die? Old responses? Old ways of finding significance? Old ways of finding satisfaction? Old ways of finding strength? And, then, are you willing to wait like a gardener waits for a buried seed to sprout with new life?

To experience new life, something has to die … will you let parts of you die this year, remembering that resurrection power dwells in your bones?

Matthew 27:62-66

Everything is quiet. It would have felt like a pit of despair for the disciples. After what seemed like a great run with their rabbi … huge crowds, incredible teaching, miracles, touches from divinity … it all came crashing down in one day. “It’s over.” Saturday was the Sabbath, a day of quiet but the quiet must have been deafening and excruciating for Jesus’ followers.

The only “movement” of Saturday was the Jewish and Roman leaders conspiring to make sure that the tomb would not be defiled. This would have added to the despair. “It really is all over.” Seemingly, all that was left was to clean up and the authorities were in charge of that. Guards were posted and the tomb sealed with a Roman seal. It is fascinating that the religious leaders couldn’t even honor the Sabbath … a day where rest and release of the burdens of life was offered by God as a gift. A day to let go all responsibilities and trust that God would take care of all things. They didn’t trust God but ended up being used by Him. How wonderful to know that the posting of the guards and the sealing of the tomb prevented the potential propaganda that the disciples simply stole the body … but that insight comes through looking back through the lens of Sunday.

We know from John 20:9 that until Sunday the disciples still didn’t get it. The words that Jesus shared about rising from the dead after three days hadn’t sunk in. Saturday’s quiet would have ushered in all kinds of thoughts and doubts and misgivings and fears and suspicions. “What we were thinking?” “We wanted to believe our rabbi was special.” “Why did He have to die?” “Why didn’t we do something?” Prayers of lament were certainly offered.

Indeed, modern day followers of Christ have the luxury of being able to see the events of Friday and Saturday through the lens of Sunday. However, I want to challenge you to let go of Sunday for a period of time today and let that time be a reminder throughout the day.

Take 10-15 minutes of quiet and put yourself in Jerusalem on that Saturday. Imagine yourself sitting in a dark room with just a few slivers of sunlight poking through some cracks in the walls. You’re not hungry. Your thoughts are bouncing around but more than anything you feel despair. Imagine that your rabbi had been brutally murdered and you can only ask “why?”

Now, put yourself in your life today and consider what your life would be like if Jesus had not been raised from the dead. How would life be different? How would your life be different? Where would you put your hope? How would you experience peace? Sit with those questions but don’t go to Sunday … yet.

Stay in this place today as a preparation for Sunday … 

John 19:30

As Jesus hung on that cross, beaten … bloodied … humiliated … naked, He uttered a simple statement just before He committed His spirit to the Father and breathed His last. He said, “It is finished.”

“It” was finished. The journey. The sacrifice for our sins. The ushering in of a new way to live life. “It” was finished.

The fact that He was finished means that we can be finished. Finished with the old us; a person who tries to make life work in their own power, with their own resources, and with their own goals and agendas. The atonement for our sins means that we are finished with being separated from God, in this life and for all eternity. And then, we can progressively be finished from all the remnants of the old us. Day by day, we can be finished because he said “it is finished.”

The great songwriter, Paul Hewson, wrote these words: “Every day I die again and again am reborn. Every day I have to find the courage to walk down into the street. With arms out, gotta love you can’t defeat. Neither down or out, there’s nothing you have that I need. I can breathe.”

Every day, we can die (be finished) and be reborn with the new us taking more territory in our hearts. When we put our trust in what Jesus did on the cross, He has reclaimed as our hearts as His own. However, it is daily that He possesses our hearts more and more as we die … as we make the choice to be finished. The cross means that sin no longer has to have power over us and we can choose to be finished.

Take a few quiet moments and meditate on the words “it is finished.” Sit quietly, in a prayerful stance, and let the words reverberate in your soul. Gently and silently repeat the words within your heart. 

Next, prayerfully read the following statements and then prayerfully add your own … Finished with doing life in my in strength/Finished with worrying what others think about me/Finished with be independent of God/Finished with defending myself/Finished with making my life about what I have/Finished with medicating my loneliness/Finished with focusing on what I do rather than who I am/Finished with trying to prove myself/Finished with worrying about my appearance and image/Finished with focusing on myself rather than others.

Thank you, Jesus, that I can be finished with self because You were willing to pour out Yourself for me. May I live today with an awareness of being finished and the courage to live in dependence on Your love and provision.

“See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down. Did ere such love and sorrow meet or thorns compose so rich a crown? Oh the wonderful cross … bids me come and die so that I may live.” When I Survey the Wondrous Cross

John 13:1-16

On Thursday afternoon of Holy Week, preparations for the Passover meal would have been in full swing. From 3:00-5:00, lambs all over the city were being slaughtered for the meal of remembrance that was to take place. It was a meal that ultimately pointed at Christ and it would be partaken just hours before Jesus was going to be the fulfillment of that meal. In John 13:1, we are given a window into the heart, mind, and soul of Jesus in the moments that were leading up to dinner: “Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”

He loved them to the end! What an amazing, beautiful, haunting statement. With that the He knew and was certainly experiencing internally, He stooped down and washed the feet of the disciples. If you have ever had someone wash your feet, you know what a vulnerable and intimate act it is. About 10 years ago, a mentor washed my feet and I was drawn to a place of feeling so out of place. I felt like Peter … no! I should be washing your feet. What I realized in the moment was that I am very comfortable loving and serving others (as imperfectly as I do that) but I don’t do well at letting others love me. Sure, I don’t mind being served and given gifts or encouraged, but having someone love me in my vulnerability, in intimacy is difficult. And, in the first century world, added to the feelings of vulnerability were the cultural expectations that only a slave or perhaps a child would wash someone’s feet.

Jesus took on the form of a servant (in His most vulnerable moment on earth up to that point) and He did it joyfully. He loved the disciples by serving them, by letting go of His vulnerability to reach them in theirs. And, He does that even today. He desires to reach into the vulnerable places of our lives and love us by gently cleaning us up.

Do you let Jesus love you in the vulnerable, intimate (maybe hidden) places of your life? Take a few moments and put yourself in the scene of John 13. Read through the verses and see yourself there. Think about a vulnerable, hidden place of you and let it reside in your feet. Imagine Him scrubbing and cleaning your feet. See the sweat on His brow and the firmness and gentleness of His touch. Sit with this image for several minutes.

What do you feel? What is it like to be served by the God of the Universe?

Jesus says, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” (13:7) He was referring to the fact that this act of washing the feet was done as a loving gesture by itself (to be emulated as we serve others in various ways) but also as a picture of the spiritual cleansing that comes when we confess our sin to Him. We receive a “bath” through the forgiveness that comes as we put our faith in Christ based on His sacrifice on the cross. Because of that bath, we are in a secure relationship with Him, but we still sin and are in need to spot cleaning in the day to day.

As we come to Him with our sin, He bends down to wash those sins away.  What vulnerability do you need to share with Him? What sin do you need to confess? Confess in 1 John 1:9 means “to say the same thing as.” Take the time to talk to Him so that you can say about your sin what He does. This process, however, slow is part of allowing Him to wash your feet. Make sure that you hear Him talk about the sin from His perspective and that you heart Him speaks words of love and forgiveness and acceptance and that there is no condemnation.

Luke 22:1-2

We don’t know a lot about what Jesus did on Wednesday. Perhaps he rested in Bethany after several very busy, emotional days of teaching and interacting with the crowds. What we do know is that plans were beginning to be set in motion for his crucifixion. The motive for the religious leaders’ plot to kill Jesus is revealed in Luke 22:2: “for they feared the people.” But, what did the leaders fear? Certainly, they were afraid to lose their power and control. If Jesus was allowed to continue to stir the people’s hearts and passion for God, the people would be free and therefore not controllable.

What stands out significantly is that Jesus knew that this was going on and He continued, undeterred. He didn’t defend Himself. He didn’t initiate a preemptive strike. He lived in the freedom of His relationship with the Father and the Spirit. Whereas the religious leaders lived in fear (the fear of losing their power, their significance, their positions), Jesus did not. While He might have had some fear or trepidation related the cross (consider Luke 22:42), it was the freedom of the divine relationship in which He moved.

Jesus is always leading us to freedom … the freedom of relationship with the Triune God where we are most truly us. We live in a world that wants to keep us in the chains of being dominated by values that are not truly us … being defined by what others think (our image), what we do (our jobs), and what we have (our possessions). Theologian Walter Brueggemann discusses this conflict as he comments: “Passion as the capacity and readiness to care, to suffer, to die, and to feel is the enemy of imperial reality. Imperial economics is designed to keep people satiated so that they do not notice. Its politics is intended to block out the cries of the denied ones. Its religion is to be an opiate so that no one discerns the passion alive in the heart of God.”

And so, we see the battle that is before us every day. Do you see it? Are you aware? If not, perhaps the “imperial reality” (this world system) has satiated you. Are you able to discern the heart of God? If not, perhaps the values of this world are alive and well in your heart.

It all begins with beginning to see. And then, freedom emerges as we rely deeply upon the provision of God accomplished through the cross. What the religious meant to do through killing Jesus (stamping out any notion of possible freedom) actually initiated the ultimate provision for freedom. This is just what God does … He takes the foolishness of mankind and redeems it. In Genesis 50:20, Joseph says to his murderous brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

Where you today? Are you swimming with the current of this world … letting fear rule you as you strive to attain to values that don’t really define you? Or, are you swimming free in the water of relationship with God … allowing Him to define you by His protection, His love, and His riches?

Take a few moments and ask God to search your heart. Talk to Him about the way of freedom.