Category Archives: The Good News of Jesus

All the Difference

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The third time the disciples saw Jesus after He came back to life, it happened like this:

Just as day was breaking, Jesus stood on the shore; yet the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, do you have any fish?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in, because of the quantity of fish. …  (John 21:4-7a)

This wasn’t just a startling way for Jesus to identify Himself.  Jesus didn’t spread His arms and shout, “Ta Da!”  It was a lesson for them, a lesson for us.   If you want to work with Jesus, pay attention to what He tells you to do.  It makes all the difference.   Notice, I said, “If you want to work WITH Jesus,” not, “work FOR Jesus.”  That too makes all the difference.  Jesus had taught His disciples:

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.   (John 15:5)

Nothing.  A nice round number with a hole in it.  If you decide to work FOR Jesus, you will probably accomplish nothing.  That is, unless you pay close attention to what He tells you to do, in which case you will be working WITH Jesus.  A friend of mine used to say, “Always ride a horse in the direction he is going.”  The same principle applies for those who would work with Jesus.  And that makes all the difference.

Fisherman’s Tale

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This wasn’t about the one that got away but the ones that didn’t.

So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, 153 of them. And although there were so many, the net was not torn. (John 21:11)
Not “about 150” but “153.”  Why that exact number?  Fishermen always counted their catch because their next stop would be to sell them.  John said 153 because that is how many they caught.  And because he was there!  When you read the Gospel of John you are reading an eyewitness account written by a close personal friend of Jesus.  Friends know friends better than anyone else.  When John wrote his account of Jesus, he tagged it with these words, referring to himself in the third person:

This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.  (John 21:24)
In the light of that, reflect on this other statement by John:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.  (John 20:30-31)

Powerful Love

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What would you do if your power was unlimited?  If you had the power to do anything, what would it be?  You could find a phone booth, grab your cape and be like Superman, flying about avenging injustice and stomping out evil.  Sound good?  It did to Jesus.  Except Jesus  didn’t use a phone booth and a cape.  No x-ray vision, no powerful explosions.  The first equipment He used included a bowl, a washcloth, and a towel.

 It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love. … Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God;  so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist.  After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.  –  (John 13:1–5 excerpts (NIV84))

This was an act considered so demeaning, it could only be required of a gentile slave.  Jesus knew there was no limit to the power God had given Him, so He humbled Himself and did what seemed to be the least powerful thing.  What He did seemed weak, but in fact, that act of love still powerfully rips through the earth, destroying evil wherever it is remembered and imitated.

I suppose Jesus, with all power at His command, could have refused to go to the Cross.  But He used His power to endure the assignment given by His Father, knowing it would ultimately defeat evil forever.  At the time of His arrest, as Peter whipped out his sword to resist,

 Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”  –  (John 18:11 (NIV84))

When Pilate was looking for an excuse to release Him,

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”  –  (John 18:36 (NIV84))

In this world, people try to overcome evil with increasingly powerful acts of violence.  We brag about “shock and awe.”  We post signs saying, “This property protected by Smith and Wesson.”  Of course, the bad guys are using the same tactics.  Violence proliferates.  But Jesus’ Kingdom is not of this world, and He knows those ways don’t work.  Because He had unlimited power, He chose unlimited acts of humble, powerful love.

His way works.  His way wins.

 

What Joy Looks Like

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Whenever I get a chance to spend time with Sam (not his real name), I come away filled with excitement and a kind of deep joy.  This morning was no exception.  He travels the world, visiting and encouraging small outposts of Jesus’ followers in some of the most unlikely places.  Like Lebanon, Syria, or Egypt.  He was bursting with enthusiasm and told me, “All over the world, people are coming to know Jesus in amazing numbers.  More than that, Christians of all different denominations and backgrounds, many of whom have been stuck in centuries of dead tradition, are waking up with renewed life and working together in creative ways to spread the good news.”  And then, with the same gleam in his eye, he said, “And everywhere this new life in Christ is cropping up, the opposition is really ramping up.  It is an exciting time!”

Sam is not exaggerating.  We are good friends and I know him well.  I’ve traveled with him on some pretty wild adventures.  When he says the new life of the kingdom of Jesus is popping out all over, you can take that to the bank. And, when he talks about opposition that naturally follows, he does so with the same credibility.  You might think the opposition, much of it extremely violent – churches being torched, Christians hauled off the bus and shot in the head because they cannot quote the Koran – would discourage him.  But he justs gets more excited.

Reminds me of Paul’s attitude when he wrote:

…I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.  (1 Corinthians 16:8b-9)

Sam understands something Paul knew: The greatest opportunities for introducing people to Jesus frequently lie in the midst of your greatest opposition.  He knows his enemies are not any of the people who attack him, but rather the spiritual forces in league with Satan who have them in their grip.  The more someone fights against him, the more he knows that person needs a Savior.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

In the previous post, I wrote about Jesus giving us Real Joy.  If you met Sam, you would  see what that joy looks like.  It isn’t dependent upon how successful or tough his circumstances seem to be, but emanates from the thrill of walking and working with a powerful Savior.  And it is infectious!

Real Joy

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A toddler picks her first dandelion seed ball and marvels at the symmetry.  She blows on it and delights to watch each tiny parachute in flight.  Can you see her face, lit with joy?  Now, imagine the kinds of things that will occur in her life that will work to erase that look of joy, replacing it with caution, suspicion, sorrow, weariness, insecurity – the list will be long.  Who among us does not yearn for our bygone innocence and unadulterated joy?  Someone who also yearned for you and I to recapture real joy was Jesus.  Just before He went to the Cross, He said these words to His disciples:

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.  (John 15:11)

The Creator of all things (John 1:2) wanted His followers to be filled to overflowing with His joy!  It is a sad irony that so many people who believe they are following Jesus are known for being joyless.  But how can we attain this joy?  What were “these things” He spoke in order to give us His joy?  Let’s look back to see:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.  (John 15:9-10)

Jesus loves you – His words, not mine.  How much does He love you?  He loves you like the Father, all-perfect, all-loving God loves His only Son.  Jesus loves you with the kind of love that prompted God to give His only Son to rescue you.  His love is unconditional, perfect, thorough, unchanging and powerful.  The kind of love that prompted Jesus to willingly lay down His life for you.  Jesus loves you, right now, in the condition you are in right now.  No matter what you have done.  He loves you.  We cannot earn that love and we cannot do anything to shut it off.  

But we may not be able to experience it.  That’s why Jesus tells His followers to “abide” – literally, to make their home in – His love.  Let His love surround you, let it be the environment within which you live.  And how does one do that?  How do we “make our home” within His love?   He tells us.  We do it by keeping, or following His commandments.  Jesus says, if we keep His commandments, we will live in His love, His joy will be in us, and our joy will be full.

Again, a sad irony.  People get the idea that to follow Jesus’ commands would rob us of joy.  We would have to dress in black, live within the confines of harsh and strict “thou shalt nots.”  We would not be able to laugh, but would have to sing mournful Gregorian chants and stare at candles.  No way!  Jesus came that we might have a more abundant kind of life, the kind of life we were designed to have, that would fill us with light and that by living according to our “Manufacturer’s” instructions, we would be filled with His kind of joy!  Following His commands would naturally lead us away from the kinds of things that change the face of a young child into the face of a wounded, disillusioned adult.  And return us to joy.
PS – Don’t misunderstand: I am aware that some have sensed a call from Jesus to dress in black and sing chants, etc.  In voluntarily obeying that call some have found exquisite joy.  I am not denying or diminishing their experience.  But those who reluctantly surrender to such a life, thinking that they are earning Jesus’ approval, have misunderstood His grace, the idea of abundant life and have missed out on His joy.

Believing is Seeing

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Online dating is risky.  We imagine the person with whom we have connected, but rarely get it right.  When we actually meet, it can be quite a shock.  Believing in God is similar.  The God of our imagination may be very different from the character and personality of the real God.  This can be disillusioning, to say the least.  I know a man who genuinely believed that God would never allow anything bad to happen to him.  When tough times clobbered him, it was a real crisis for his faith.  He told me he no longer believed in God.  I suggested he consider if perhaps the God he no longer believed in was not  the real God.  This is a common problem.  You frequently hear people say, “My God wouldn’t let that happen…”  Understandable, since no one has ever seen God.  Our relationship with Him is a bit like online dating.

Except for this:  God sent His Son.  A “son,” in first century Jewish thinking, was someone who embodied the character and personality of another person.  Jesus called a couple of his disciples “Sons of Thunder,” because their personalities resembled rolling thunder.  He spoke of how His followers might become “Sons of light,” might take on character traits of His “light.”   To say Jesus was the “Son” of God was to say He was the embodiment of God’s character and personality.

As the author of Hebrews stated it,

“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature…”  –  (Hebrews 1:3a)

Jesus affirmed this.  He said, 

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”    –  (John 14:10b)

Therefore, our belief in God will align with Who God really is, what He is really like, as we believe in Jesus.  To put it another way, if we say we believe in God, but do not accept Jesus, then the God of our belief does not really match the character and personality of the True God.  That is what Jesus meant by these words:

“Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me.”  –  (John 12:44b-45)

If you believe in the real God, not merely an imaginary god, you believe in the One Who so loved the world so deeply that He sent Jesus, His Son.  And, in your belief in Him, have attained eternal life. (Paraphrase of John 3:16)

Ready for the Test

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Maybe you wouldn’t have participated, but Jesus said things that got Him killed.  They did not go down easy.  And maybe you still struggle with some of what He said.  Jesus’ teachings shake us up.  They challenge our normal way of thinking.  Before we can accept them, we have to know: Are they true?  Are they good?  Lot’s of people give out advice.  How can you decide between them?   With Jesus, there is an easy way because He said His words came directly from God.

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.  (John 14:10)

If what He said didn’t really come from God, then there’s no point in paying attention to them.  If He lied about that, He wasn’t speaking the truth.  But how can you know?  Here’s the test: You can ask God directly to show you whether or not Jesus spoke His truth.  Simply ask Him.  If you really want to know, God is fully capable of showing you what you need to know.  The kicker is whether you really want to know!

So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.  If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.  (John 7:16-17)

The way to test the authenticity of Jesus’ teachings is to ask God to show you.  But first, carefully assess your own motivations.  Do you sincerely desire to do what God wants?  Is it possible that you would prefer to argue, and prove your own ideas to be superior?  Or, perhaps you are afraid?  The only one who can answer these questions is you.  Which makes it tricky because we like to deceive ourselves.  As strange as it seems, it is possible for us to try to fool ourselves!  Astonishing, really…   But with the questions about wanting to do God’s will, it is important for us to be brutally frank.

When we stand in the place of really wanting to conform to God’s design and intention, we are completely humble and surrendered.  We let go, put down our own pride and ideas, standing defenseless before Him.  And it is there, Jesus said, in that condition, we will know if what He spoke was from God.

You ready?

Father Knows Best

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Does this make sense to you?

Now the Jews’ Feast of Booths was at hand.   So his (Jesus’) brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.”  For not even his brothers believed in him.  –  (John 7:2-5)
You might think  Jesus’ brothers encouraged Him to go to the big Feast  because they believed in Him, not because they did not.  If they didn’t believe in Him, why bother?  But what John means by “believe” – what Jesus means as well – is fully recognizing Who He really is, and then acting in ways consistent with that understanding.  The point here is that if the brothers really understood that Jesus was God Almighty, they would not have presumed to tell Him what to do.  

And yet, we make that same mistake, even as “believers,” when we presume to tell God how we think He should handle the various prayer requests we bring to Him.  To be sure, we have been encouraged to bring the requests and to honestly express our desires to God.  But there is an attitude sometimes missing that reflects humility before God’s perfect understanding and power to do the best thing possible.  His best sometimes does not conform to what we wish for. 

People who say, “If God was really good and  powerful, He would put an end to wickedness and suffering in the world,” are also on the same shaky footing.  They presume to know, better than God, how to deal with the evil in the world.   As though God should chase back and forth, stopping a beheading here, a racial insult there, and unjust hunger on the other side of the planet.  It’s hard to imagine any of these people coming up with a more elegant solution to evil than the one God ordained on the Cross, even though, in His wisdom, the full realization of His plan was “time release.”  

If you remember “The Godfather,” played by Marlon Brando, you will recall that nobody but nobody told the Godfather what to do.  They would’nt have dared because they were well aware of his position and power.  The same humility and respect is due God the Father.

Thirsty?

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The thirstiest place I ever visited was Israel. Talk about hot and dry….  Chug a whole bottle of water and feel dehydrated a few minutes later.  Especially out in rural areas, like where Jesus said some pretty intriguing things about thirst to a woman who had come to a well to fill her water jugs. He had asked her for a drink and she balked, because Jews didn’t ordinarily have anything to do with her kind, much less drink from the same cup.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

When she missed the point,

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”. (excerpts from John 4:8-14)

Obviously, Jesus was talking about a deeper kind of thirst, spiritual thirst. What makes you spiritually thirsty? For me, it was when life seemed pointless and aimless. Even working for myself in a job that seemed somewhat glamorous, I was frustrated by doing the same things over and over, day after day, without accomplishing much of anything except a paycheck. Other times felt thirsty to me when I came face to face with my own moral failings. Death of friends and family made me thirsty.

Notice that Jesus referred to His “water” as a “gift of God.”  You cannot earn it or pay for it; it is a gift, one that God Himself gives.  It is important to note that Jesus was saying this to a woman who was a social outcast among a people considered too defiled for Jews to associate with.  And yet she is (and also by implication, you are) offered the gift.  The gift is “living water,” which means it continuously flows, clear and pure.  It comes from an inexhaustible supply.  This “water” quenches spiritual thirst forever, and gives “eternal life!”   

If you have ever experienced spiritual thirst, if that kind of water sounds good to you, notice carefully how Jesus told the woman she could receive it.  He said, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”   It’s a matter of knowing you are thirsty, understanding that God has what you need, knowing Who Jesus is, asking Him and accepting it as a gift.  No expert in theology, nevertheless this woman knew real thirst and knew how wonderful an offer she had been given.  She accepted it right then and there.  

How about you;  are you thirsty?

Above My Paygrade

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A friend who writes sophisticated software was losing sleep over a tough problem.  I made the mistake of asking him to explain, in simple terms, what the issue was.  For the next 20 minutes he did his best, but I was dumbfounded.  I couldn’t understand anything he said!  And he was really trying to dumb it down for me.

Jesus had the same problem trying to explain spiritual reality to a guy who couldn’t fathom what He was saying.  Of course, the man was merely a religious expert, one of the temple leaders at the time.  Jesus told him:

I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?  (John 3:12 (NIV84))

Translation?  “Hey, this thing I’m telling you is basic stuff.  If you can’t understand this, there’s no way for me to explain about heaven.”  Makes me pretty curious about the “Heavenly things” since what Jesus said was the basic level stuff was about being “born again.”  Literally, “born from above.”  He was talking about having the Spirit of God coming alive in your soul, so that you could come to life – being born, so to speak – in a whole new way.  Into eternal life.  Here’s some of the rest:

Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”

“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!”

Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’. (John 3:3–7 (NIV84))

I cannot fully grasp this beginner level truth. Analogies help but it remains a swirling mystery. Even after having experienced the effects of this spiritual new birth I still struggle to fully comprehend it. Imagine how amazing the “heavenly things” must be… Religion has a way of reducing such mystery down to where even the experts can master it. But Jesus knows we ain’t seen nothing yet!