Lord's Prayer: Who's will?

"Your kingdom come, your will be done."

Really? I’m not so sure I always like this portion. As my mouth utters “your will be done” my heart sticks an asterisk on it.  Scroll down to the footnote in my subconscious and you find something like this.

“What I really mean, God, is that I like to think you are in charge; it helps my self esteem to think that I’m submitting to you. And it is great to do your will when it fits into my schedule and dovetails with what I have planned anyway. So please take my plans and bless them so that they can be called yours. After all, frustrating the plans that I have already made while thinking that I was doing your will probably won’t go well for me. It would result in me having to spend a lot of time and energy to change; as an American, time and energy are always in short supply. In fact, my time and energy could be better spent if you bless my plans rather than make me shift to yours. So, since I’ve already made plans while deceiving myself that I know what is best, let’s just avoid the frustration altogether and let’s call my will yours. Amen.”

For me, living out “your will be done” is not the hard part. What trips me up is honestly desiring “your will be done” in the first place.

John 5:16-47; Like Father, Like Son

Jesus' argument is not that complicated here. He basically said "I am God because I do God things." Wouldn't it be great if we were able to say the same thing regarding our Christian life, i.e., "You can tell that I am a follower of Christ because I do Christ things." Here is how we might say 5:16-47 about ourselves (bascially picking and choosing verses since all would not apply to us).

"My Jesus is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working. . . I can do nothing by myself; I can do only what I see Jesus doing, because whatever he does, I do also. For Jesus loves me and shows me all he does. . . By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear and my judgement is just for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me."

Ironically, this is not the way I was raised to think. I was reared to defend my faith and increase my confidence by being able to point to scripture for all my actions. The disturbing thing is that pointing to scripture for justification is what the other guys in the story were doing. I have no interest in ignoring scripture; I do, however, desire a life that is upright not because I have scriptural backing but rather because my life looks like Jesus.

John 3:1-21; Followership

It is ironic that most of the messages I have heard from this passage deal with the "born of water" portion. Was Jesus talking about baptism or physical birth? I've heard both argued and have my opinion; however, I don't think that was the point of the conversation.

The conversation was about following the Christ through spiritual rebirth. How hard that must have been for a Pharisee. How hard it still is for us. When this entire Christian thing gets boiled down to its basic ingredients, it is still simply submitting my human experience to the leadership of Jesus. It is a spiritual decision to follow the God-man Jesus.

I don't know what Nicodemus anticipated hearing from the lips of Jesus that night, but I doubt he anticipated a statement of faith ("we know you are from God") to be met with a challenge ("You must be born again"). Apparently Jesus makes a clear distinction between verbal assent and followership. Unfortunately many Christians don't seem to make the distinction while much of society does. While most Christians seem content with hearing another say, "I am a Christian", most of society wants to see followership in action. Verbal assent and kingdom living are not the same; in fact, Jesus says that if all you have is verbal assent, you have not even seen the kingdom yet.

Jesus concludes with the statement, "But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God." To rephrase it, "It will be obvious when someone is a true follower."

May today be spent in obvious followership and not simple verbal assent.

Acts 11:1-18; Following

The Jewish believers were upset that Peter had associated with Gentiles. Their particular hangup was that he went into the home of non-Jews -- not that he had baptized them. There was a direct command against the former; the latter was still new to everyone. In his defense, Peter explained that God had communicated through visions, direct words of the Spirit and signs. His conclusion statement was basically "If God is doing this, who am I to stand in his way?" It came down to who was in control; who was running the church?

I admire Peter for his openness. He allowed God to be God and stayed in the role of follower. Through dreams, direct revelation and signs on top of his years of walking with Jesus, Peter was leadable. He was truly a follower.

We don't talk much about followership. We all want to change the world rather than let God change it using us. We see needs and respond; that's easy. Seeing God meet the needs and falling in line with what he is doing is a little more challenging. It might not make sense to everyone around us; it might not make sense to us. Yet Peter followed with total commitment because he could point to specific interventions by God and the overall outcome looked a lot like what Jesus had often done. I think that radical ideas proposed by those who have a "leading" void of specific interventions (direct voice, vision, signs) and the outcome of which does not necessarily look like one of Jesus' priorities, should be suspect. Yet radical ideas backed by specific interventions of the Spirit that lead to outcomes like those in the life of Jesus, need to be embraced.

I anticipate that the Spirit is much more active in guiding us today than we recognize. I also anticipate that the attribution of personal desires to the Spirit's leading is becoming more and more common, even when the Spirit probably has not done a thing. Hence the two ends of the pendulum swing, i.e., ignorance of Jesus with attribution to the Spirit for a license to do what I want versus an amazing depth of Biblical understanding resulting in an orthopraxy so strong that not even the Spirit could break us out of it. It seems that Peter found the middle ground where a rich understanding of the nature and goals of Jesus were married to a clear vision of the work of God in the world today.

Mark 9:1-13; Peter

According to Irenaeus (2nd Century), Mark wrote from the teachings of Peter. With that in mind it is interested to read the narrative comments in this section. The description of the whiteness of Jesus' garments strikes me as coming from an eyewitness. Yet is is the comment of "he did not know what to say, they were so frightened" and the comment that they did not understand what rising from the dead meant that strike me the most.

Peter really didn't understand Jesus for most of Jesus' life. Yet, he had a deep enough conviction to stay near Jesus. He might not have been able to write a systematic theology, but he understood that this man was special. Peter would go on to mess up even after Jesus was raised from the dead (in Galatians Paul talks about confronting him in his error). Yet the heart of the man was never in doubt.

If ever there was a person that Jesus (and God the father in this story) had reason to give up on or cast out for failure, it was Peter. Jesus' patience with him and even inclusion of him into the "inner circle" inspire me. Whenever I feel like I don't understand God or have just acted ignorantly or totally failed in my faith, I think of Jesus' patience with Peter.

If I had three years to save the world, Peter would not have been my first choice of followers. How grateful I am that God looks at the heart and not just the actions.
1 Samuel 16: 7 But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

Mark 8:27-38; Following

After Jesus feeds four thousand and heals a blind man, he asks the disciples "do you get it? Do you know who I am?" Peter gives the right answer but does not understand what it means. I wonder how common that is?

According to everything I read, our society hears us proclaim that we follow Jesus but then notes that our lives declare that we really don't know what that means. How do we say we follow Jesus and then move our buildings to the suburbs when the neighborhood becomes too _____ (the blank can be filled in with words like violent, racial, poor, etc.).

Yet it is always easier to point the finger at others than look at self. I proclaim that I follow the Messiah (not just recognize him) but when my children look at my life do they see me follow him? Do my conversations with students, actions on a golf course, attitudes while driving proclaim the same?

The most amazing thing to me is that Jesus knew we would all fall so short. Yet he came anyway. And he let's us use his name. Would I let a bunch of people that I knew were doomed to fail call themselves by my name? It makes the failures seem even more sad.

Luke 18:15-30; Coming to Jesus

Jesus had just compared the attitudes of a Pharisee and a tax collector coming to the temple. Now he compares children with his disciples and a rich man with his apostles. All three stories are "come to Jesus" stories. All three stories seem to go against conventional wisdom.

A follower that does not have the faith and pure heart of a child will not make it into the arms of Jesus. A follower who holds more tightly to this life than the next will not make it into the arms of Jesus. The Pharisee, disciples and rich man all seemed honorable and religious. Yet none of them made it to Jesus. Only the tax collector, little children and poor apostles connected with him when they came.

These stories are a wake up call to look at the heart and ignore the external trappings. Education, profession, age and wealth are not indicators of spirituality. Yet in a world where we are trained to pour time, money and attention into the superficiality of life, it is hard to not follow the same pattern in the spiritual realm.