Participate don't anticipate.

What if it IS True? Blog

Discovering, wrestling with, and trying like crazy to live Gospel virtue.

04/04/14

John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

Jesus moved about within Galilee;
he did not wish to travel in Judea,
because the Jews were trying to kill him.
But the Jewish feast of Tabernacles was near.

But when his brothers had gone up to the feast,
he himself also went up, not openly but as it were in secret.

Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said,
“Is he not the one they are trying to kill?
And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him.
Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ?
But we know where he is from.
When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”
So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said,
“You know me and also know where I am from.
Yet I did not come on my own,
but the one who sent me, whom you do not know, is true.
I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”
So they tried to arrest him,
but no one laid a hand upon him,
because his hour had not yet come.

What do we expect out of life? Chances are we have some sort of dream or ideal of what our lives will look like eventually. And also likely is that the vision we have for that outcome has more to do with what we've seen in other peoples lives than what journey we are actually on. This seems to be the issue with the people of Jerusalem in the first century. They had their expectations of how everything was supposed to turn out. The prophesy of the coming messiah was well entrenched in the culture. They knew that Jesus was from Galilee and that no where in the legends of the coming Christ did this part of the story remotely play out. Therefore, everything else had to be false.

We have expectations everyday. We assume that there is a natural course of events that will take place and that most all we do will have some degree of predictability. When something doesn't go the way we expect we can easily be thrown for a loop. But what if those loops are God's way of trying to get your attention. When my wife and I did youth ministry we always asked our groups to participate, not anticipate. If they came to an event with anticipations they were likely not to get the point of the experience. We intentionally did unexpected things in order to get their attention. And ultimately to set the stage to allow God into their lives.

Some of the people of the first century were willing to trust what they were experiencing with the person of Christ regardless of what may have seemed to be a little off in the prophesies, even thought they weren't, of course. The result of their faith and trust was that they were healed, fed and guided in a way that those who had immovable expectations were not. So where are we? Are we so set in our ways, our schedules, or expectations that anything that seems to veer from the course throws us into a tailspin? Or, are we willing to be led? Even if that leading seems maybe even to be meandering off the course of what we expected. There's a simple word with a hard application and that is trust. When we trust we will always participate in what God brings our way. What about you? Can you participate and not anticipate?

Good luck and God Bless,

Leo Brown