Category Archives: John

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God’s New Temple on Planet Earth—You!

You Represent God to a World that Doesn’t Know Him

Getting Closer to Jesus: “You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

That is a pretty amazing promise Jesus made to his disciples—and by extension—to you and me!

Jesus was laying out his succession plans for God’s kingdom. He told his disciples that he needed to go back to the Father, and in his absence, they would carry on his works in the world, extending the kingdom wherever they went. And although he would no longer be with them physically, he would be with them—and more importantly, live in them and work through them, by the indwelling Holy Spirit:

Literally, to his followers who would completely yield their lives in obedience to his word, commitment to his purposes, and availability to his work, Jesus promised, “My Father will love them, and we will come and make our home with each of them.” (John 14:23)

Make his home in them! What a thought: through the initial infilling and ongoing indwelling, the Holy Spirit—the third person of the Holy Trinity—would actually take up residence within Christ’s followers, making their whole lives—body, mind, and spirit—the new temple of God on Planet Earth.

Those words are from the lips of Jesus himself, and they are meant for you! As you go about your life—wherever you go, whatever you do, whoever you are with—you are God’s temple on Planet Earth, the dwelling place of God’s presence. Do you believe that? If you do, Jesus’ words will transform you to the core of your being. They will radically alter the way you perceive yourself and interact with your world. And they will lead you to have the kind of impact for Christ in this world you have always dreamed of having.

The story is told of a private in the army of the Greek general, Alexander the Great, who ran after and retrieved the general’s runaway horse. When this lowly soldier brought the animal back, Alexander offered his appreciation by saying, “Thank you, Captain!”

With one word, the private had been promoted. When the general said it, the private believed it. He immediately went to the quartermaster, selected a new captain’s uniform and put it on. He went to the officer’s quarters and selected his bunk. He went to the officer’s mess and had a meal. Because General Alexander had said it, the private took him at his word and changed his life accordingly. He was simply now doing life under the authority of Alexander.

Why don’t you take the word of Someone far greater than Alexander and change your life accordingly? If you will, greater works will you do!

Take the Next Step : Offer this prayer for radical alteration of your existing life: “Lord, I believe what you said. On this day, I ask the Father, as you have commissioned me to do, to empower and embolden me to do the very kingdom works that you would do if you were in my place. And may all glory go back to you!”

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The Wheelbarrow of Ruthless Trust

Talk About Faith is Cheap, Trust is the Acid Test

Getting Closer to Jesus: In his book, Ruthless Trust, Brennan Manning tells the story of ethicist John Kavanaugh, who traveled to India to work with Mother Teresa in “the house of the dying.” Kavanaugh was searching for what to do with the rest of his life, so he asked Mother Teresa to pray for him that God would grant him clarity. She refused, saying, “Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.” When Kavanaugh protested that Mother Teresa seemed to have such great clarity, she responded, “I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust.”

Manning goes on to say it is trust—the simple but ruthless childlike trust that we place in God—that is the defining spirit of authentic discipleship. I agree. That is what Jesus called his disciples to in the first century—to trust in God, to trust in him—and that is the challenge that Jesus lays down for his would-be followers in our age.

No matter how you slice it, the basic minimum requirement for following Jesus always comes down to this: Will you give him your total trust? If you will, you are on your way to the most exciting and rewarding experience of life a person will ever have—walking with Jesus. And from what Jesus said in John 14:1, we can deduce that one of the basic blessings of placing our trust in God is a trouble-free heart. Not a trouble-free life, mind you, but a heart (and a mind, Paul adds in Philippians 4:7) that is guarded by Jesus himself.

However, if you won’t give God your total trust, your Christian experience will never get out of the harbor to set sail on the rewarding voyage of risky discipleship. You will find yourself nursing a troubled heart and travelling a less-than-satisfying journey with God.

“Trust in God,” Jesus says, “and trust in me.” So, are you? When your faith is boiled down to its basic elements, will we find there, despite life’s circumstances and in scorn of the consequences of living out your faith, a simple but ruthless childlike trust in God? Or is trust something that merely gets talked about but never fleshed out?

A lot of people talk about trusting God, fewer people ever place the totality of their lives in the Father’s hands and unequivocally say, “into your hands, I commit my spirit. May your will be done.” If you are one of the courageous and committed few who do, you have given the greatest gift a human being can place before the God who has everything—the rare trifecta of extreme dependence, radical faith, and resolute obedience. Nothing brings a smile to the Father’s heart quite like that.

One of the best illustrations of this kind of ruthless trust came from the life of the famous tightrope walker, George Blondin. In the 1850s, for a publicity stunt, George decided he would walk across Niagara Falls on a rope that had been stretched from one side of the falls to the other. Crowds lined up on both the Canadian and American sides to watch this unbelievable feat. Blondin began to walk across, inch by inch, step by step, and everybody knew that if he’d make one mistake, he was a goner. He got to the other side, and the crowd went wild. Blondin said, “I’m going to do it again.” And to the crowd’s delight, he did. Then, to everybody’s amazement, he crossed again, this time pushing a wheelbarrow full of dirt. He actually did this several times, and as he started to go across one last time, someone in the crowd said, “I believe you could do that all day.” To that, Blondin dumped out the dirt and said, “Then get into the wheelbarrow.”

In a very real sense, that is what God is saying to you and me. Our talk alone is cheap. At some point, we need to get in the wheelbarrow of trust and prove that our discipleship is real.

Take the Next Step : Pray this honest and humble prayer: “God, I trust in you. Help my lack of trust!”

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The Blessed Distress

Jesus Cares Deeply About You

Getting Closer to Jesus: I have always had an easier time accepting Jesus’ divinity than his humanity. I suppose that’s because I tend to think of human emotions—anxiety, disappointment, temptation, fear—as flaws and weaknesses. How could the Son of God be flawed or weak? No way; not my Messiah! Jesus in “great anguish”! How could this be?

Jesus was God, so he knew all things in advance. He knew what he would face, but he also knew the outcome was pre-set, so there would be nothing but victory and glory for him at the end of the day. Even though he would allow hurtful and harmful things to happen to him in his assignment as the world’s redeemer, he had power over those things; he would turn them toward his Father’s ultimate purpose. How then would he ever be upset, feel overwhelmed, and weep over things that didn’t go his way?

Yet over and again in the Gospels we see Jesus expressing a variety of emotions that we mistakenly attribute to humans only: tiredness, hunger, anger, grief, disappointment, distress. The truth is, those emotions are resident in the Creator, and we, made in his image, simply are able to feel and experience what he felt and experienced, too. We feel because God feels. In fact, the writer of Hebrews tells us that not only does he feel what we feel, we ought to be supremely grateful for that since that makes him our empathetic High Priest:

But Jesus the Son of God is our great High Priest who has gone to heaven itself to help us; therefore let us never stop trusting him. This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses since he had the same temptations we do, though he never once gave way to them and sinned. So let us come boldly to the very throne of God and stay there to receive his mercy and to find grace to help us in our times of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)

In the case of his betrayal, knowing in advance that Judas would hand him over, for a price, to the Jews, having deliberately selected him with that knowledge in advance, Jesus was still distraught as he announced to his disciples that one of them would stab him in the back. And his distress was not hidden behind a stiff upper lip. The disciples were very aware that Jesus was terribly upset, so much so that Peter tried to counteract these messianic emotions with some bravado of his own: “Don’t worry Lord, I’ll be with you through thick and thin!”

Many times during my two daughters’ growing-up years, they would come to me for comfort when they had experienced fear, frustration, disappointment, and hurt in their lives. And being a little thick-headed as a father (I know, that’s a bit redundant), it took me a while to realize that they didn’t always want me to fix their problems, they simply wanted me to listen to their upset and offer an emotional response that assured them I identified with their hurt. They wanted me to “feel their pain.” They wanted, and needed, an empathetic father. To be sure, they sometimes needed me to fix things, but most of the time they just needed to know that I cared.

Here’s the thing: They didn’t care how much I knew; they needed to know how much I cared.

The fact that Jesus cared so much about Judas’ betrayal—even though he knew in advance it would happen and that God would leverage it for his eternal plan—proved to his disciples that he cared for them, too. They knew how much he cared, and that made him a perfect, empathetic High Priest they could come to for anything they were facing.

What a drag it would be to serve an uncaring, unfeeling Messiah. Thankfully, that is not the Messiah you serve. Jesus was distressed—but what a blessed distress! It proves that even as one who is fully God, he is still perfectly capable of feeling emotions for you, too.

Take the Next Step : Where are you hurting today? Boldly—with unmitigated fear, anger or hurt, if necessary—go to Jesus and pour out your heart to him. He cares! And he knows what to do for you, too!

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What Makes You Bless-able

Seize Interruptions as Invitations

Getting Closer to Jesus: If we are to be the kind of Christ-followers that God can bless, our behavior must align with our beliefs. What we “know” must become what we “do.” Specifically, we will have to live like Jesus lived, which means serving like Jesus served. Jesus made that perfectly clear when he said,

You call me “Teacher” and “Lord,” and you are right, because that’s what I am. And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.” (John 13:13-15, NLT)

So, how did Jesus serve? Well, an entire book could be written on that, but among the many characteristics of Jesus’ servanthood, he was simply available to people. Reflecting on my own life and the lives of many people I know, my sense is that the critical need for most of us who will read this devotional is to reorient our busy schedules so that serving Jesus by serving others becomes our top priority in life.

Think about how Jesus did that. Matthew 20 tells the story of Jesus walking to Jericho when some blind men start yelling at him: “Lord, have mercy on us!” And it says, “Jesus stopped and asked. ‘What do you want me to do for you?’”

Now think about that: Jesus stopped! God turned aside to make himself accessible to those whom society had cast aside. Jesus did that a lot! Do you realize that most of his miracles were interruptions? What we see as an intrusion, Jesus saw as an invitation—an opening in his schedule to serve God’s purpose by serving God’s people. If we are to grow into a Christ-like ministry mindset, that is the attitude we must cultivate. And here is what that means:

First, we will have to realign our crowded calendars. Matthew 6:33 says, “More than anything else, put God’s work first and do what he wants. Then the other things you want will be yours as well.” What that means is that if you make God’s concerns your priority, he will make your concerns his priority. In other words, that will make you bless-able.

Second, we will have to refocus on others. That means we will need to think a lot less about ourselves and a lot more about others. Philippians 2:4 reminds me that in becoming like Christ, I must “forget myself long enough to help other people.” That is truly the preeminent attitude of Christlikeness. And it is one of the things that leads to a truly satisfying experience of life, giving yourself to others. Again, that is what will make you bless-able.

Third, we will have to relax our perfectionism. Too many Christians wait for perfect circumstances to serve: when life isn’t so hectic, when the kids are out of the house, when the right ministry comes along, or when other stuff gets done first. Ecclesiastes 11:4 says, “If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get anything done.” Christlike servants do their best with what they have for Jesus today, not someday. Like Jesus, they are available when the opportunity presents itself! By definition, a servant always makes themself available to their master, and that is what will make you bless-able to the only Master that matters.

Jesus served because at the core of who he was there was a consuming desire to connect people with the grace, mercy, and love of his Father. Serving was the primary means of that. Since, as a Christ-follower, you are being transformed into his character, that must be characteristic of you, too.

God has made—or more accurately, remade you—to serve him by ministering to others. Actually, “you are God’s workmanship, made to do good works that God himself has prepared in advance specifically for you to do.” (Ephesians 3:10)

Interestingly, and quite deliberately, the Greek word in that verse the Apostle Paul chose for workmanship is poiema. We derive our English word poem from that. You are God’s poem, and when you serve in the mindset of God’s Son, you become poetry in motion.

And when you do, you are at your most bless-able!

Take the Next Step : There is one vitally important question you must answer after you have been saved: Where are you loving God by serving others?

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The Delightful Demand of Discipleship

Serving Puts You at Your Christlike Best

Getting Closer to Jesus: If you and I are going to be a fully devoted follower of Christ, we will have to think, speak, and live like Jesus thought, spoke, and lived—not the least of which is to take on the attitude, exhibit the actions, and live the lifestyle of a servant. Yes—you will have to serve as Jesus served!

Serving is what Jesus did because servanthood was at the very core of who Jesus was and why Jesus came. The Gospel of Mark, the first written biographical account of Jesus, sums up the life and ministry of Jesus with this simple, clear, and compelling mission statement:

“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

Fleshing out this mission statement, John 13 presents the servanthood of Jesus in action in the most unusual and unforgettable way: He washed his disciples’ feet. Then, as he completed this humbling task, he said to them, “I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.” (John 13:15, NLT) It is abundantly clear from this passage, along with other scripture, that serving is an unmistakable, unavoidable demand of discipleship. Not only is serving a demand, but when we look at Jesus’ example, we find that serving is also a delight. It is what makes us bless-able: “Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.” (John 13:17, NLT)

Think about it: Serving like Jesus is what puts you at your Christlike best!

You are called to serve! Paul writes in Philippians 2:5-7, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God…took on the very nature of a servant.” Galatians 5:13 says, “Serve one another in love.” If you are serving, you are fulfilling your basic Christian calling. If you are not, then you are not!

You were created to serve! Like fish swim and birds fly, Christians serve! Ephesians 2:20 states, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Before you were even conceived, God laid out specific plans just for you. You are not an afterthought; you do not just exist; you are on this earth not just to be a potted plant, you were born not just to consume, but to contribute. God deliberately shaped you to serve his purposes, which means that he has placed an important responsibility on your shoulders that only you can fulfill.

You contribute to the Body of Christ when you serve! God specifically created you, converted you, and called you to contribute to the life, health, and mission of a local church. Paul taught in 1 Corinthians 12:27, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Verse 12 says, “The body is a unit, though it’s made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ.” Verse 18 says, “God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.” Why? Verse 7 tells us it is “for the common good.” 1 Peter 4:10 says, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” Perhaps you didn’t realize this, but as you and others serve in your church, serving becomes the primary means by which others receive God’s grace. Your serving is the conduit of God’s grace to those around you.

You capture the world’s attention when you serve! Our humble, authentic acts of service put God in a good light. Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father. (Matthew 5:16, NLT) Jesus said John 13:35, “By this will all men know that you are my disciples: That you have love for one another.” It is by authentic servanthood that you become living proof of a loving God.

Jesus ended the washing of his disciples’ feet by issuing this very simple challenge: “Now that you know these things, God will bless you for doing them.” (John 13:17, NLT) It doesn’t get any clearer than that!

Take the Next Step : Having read this devotional and meditated on the scriptures quoted, there is a simple question you are obligated to answer: “Where am I serving?”

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Unconditionally Loved

If Jesus Loved Judas, He Will Love You, Too!

Getting Closer to Jesus: It is hard to fully fathom and completely embrace God’s immeasurable, inexplicable, crazy love that is revealed in this moment as Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. The story, which connects us to Jesus’s final hours before his sacrificial death on the cross, begins with this shocking statement in verses 1-2:

Just before the Passover Feast, Jesus knew that the time had come to leave this world to go to the Father. Having loved his dear companions, he continued to love them right to the end.

What makes that so shocking is that Jesus knew full well that not only would his love for these disciples not be reciprocated, but there were also two in that group who would publicly deny him, and actually betray his love: Judas and Peter. Verse 2 goes on to say, “It was suppertime. The Devil by now had Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, firmly in his grip, all set for the betrayal.” Verse three adds, “Jesus knew…” what the Father had put before him. Then, in verse 38, Jesus responds to Peter’s promise to stand with him through thick and thin, “Actually, Peter, the truth is that before the rooster crows, you’ll deny me three times.”

Now with that in mind, let’s go back and explore what the “full extent of Jesus’s love” looks like in what he did in that intimate setting for his disciples—and more importantly, by extension, what he did for you and me.

For one thing, the full extent of his love means you are fully loved, when, from a human perspective, you aren’t fully lovable. Verse 2 says, “It was time for supper, and the devil had already enticed Judas to carry out his plan to betray Jesus.” Verse 11 adds, “Jesus knew who would betray him”; that Judas would hand him over to the Jews later that night. I don’t suppose we could think of anyone any more unlovable and unworthy than Judas—yet Jesus loved him, nonetheless.

He humbly knelt as Judas’s servant to wash his feet, knowing everything in his past, present, and future. Yet Jesus still showed him the full extent of his love! What that means is that if Jesus loved Judas, then knowing everything about you—past failures, present junk, and even your future sins—he will still stubbornly love you. If Judas was worthy of love, then certainly you will always be the object of Christ’s unstoppable love. In fact, you don’t have enough sin or darkness to even slow his love down! You are fully loved!

That leads to another thing that you ought to know about the full extent of Jesus’s love for you: It is a love that is rooted in his nature and is not dependent on yours. Verses 4-5 say, “Jesus got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel he had around him.”

Now think for a moment about those whose feet he washed. Of course, there was Judas, whose betrayal Jesus knew was just moments away. But there was also one he knew would deny him—Peter—who, in spite of his insistence otherwise, famously and publicly denied Jesus. And of course, there were ten others around that room he knew would desert him in his hour of greatest need before the night was out.

Not their character—nor yours—motivated Jesus’s love; no, it flowed out of his own loving character. That’s why you can always depend on being the recipient of the full extent of his love.

Finally, what you ought to know about the full extent of Jesus’ love is that it will transform your worst nature so radically that you, yourself, will become a conduit of his love. Jesus said in verses 34-35, “So now I’m giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I’ve loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

That’s what the “full extent of his love” will do—if you let it! Again, that love flows from his character, not yours, but when you surrender to it, you can then enter what will be your most satisfying experience in life: You, yourself, becoming a conduit of his full love to others.

And that is the answer to the deepest longing of your innermost heart: To know the full extent of God’s unconditional love and become the conduit of that inexhaustible love to others!

If nothing could stop Jesus from loving Judas and Peter, certainly nothing will prevent Jesus from showing you the full extent of his unconditional love.

Take the Next Step : Take time today to enjoy God’s love. And if that is hard to imagine, just visualize in your mind Jesus, arms stretched wide as he hangs on the cross, saying to you, “I love you this much!”

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The Divine Leverage of Willful Unbelief

Don’t Let Your Agenda Get in the Way of God’s

Getting Closer to Jesus: John 12 is a pivot point in the Gospel of John that marks Jesus’s last public movements before his arrest, crucifixion and post-resurrection appearances. It is one of the most stunning accounts you will find in Scripture because of the unbelief of the characters in this chapter.

Jesus has just performed the greatest miracle you could ever hope for: the raising of Lazarus from the tomb four days after he had died. Yet the reaction of Judas, the priests, and the Pharisees, respectively, to this outstanding miracle is flat-out rejection of Jesus’ deity, if not blind hatred of him. Their unbelief is stunning, given the fact that the now-resurrected Lazarus is standing before their very eyes, living proof of Jesus’s authority and power over death.

Fortunately, this story is more than the sad history of the Jewish establishment’s rejection of Jesus. As is always the case with Scripture, there are valuable lessons to be learned from this about the willful unbelief of humanity and the unstoppable purposes of God.

The first lesson we learn is that miracles alone will never lead people to the full surrender of their lives to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. People often demand a miracle before they will place faith in Christ, but the record of the gospels indicates that miracles alone won’t wash away willful unbelief. They should—but they don’t. Time and again, Jesus performed a miracle, only to have people, in the very next moment, demand not another sign, but a sign—as if the one he had just given hadn’t been given at all. Such is the utter blindness of illogical unbelief. Beware, the next time you find yourself insisting that God grant you your miracle.

The second lesson we learn is that the motives of sinful people will always irreconcilably conflict with the purposes of a holy God. When human beings’ agenda collides with God’s agenda—and it always does, sooner or later—something’s got to give. The Jewish leaders were more interested in protecting their religious and political way of life than in discovering the life of abundance that the Messiah had come to reveal. In this case, unbelievably, they not only rejected Jesus, but the creatures killed the Creator! Keep in mind that early and often in your voyage of faith, you will be called to untether from the shores of comfort and risk what you cling to in order to go with God.

But the third lesson we learn here is that even the inflexible unbelief of man always gets leveraged for the irrepressible glory of God. That is why Jesus quotes Isaiah in John 12:40, “God has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts—so they can’t see, can’t understand, can’t turn to me and have me heal them.”

Now this is one of the Bible’s hard sayings that seems to say God predestines some people to unbelief. But understand that Isaiah’s complaint springs from the broken heart of a prophet who is bewildered that his message and his calls to repentance only made the people of Israel worse, not better. Yet in their painful and willful rejection of the word of the Lord, Isaiah knew that even this could not take place outside God’s purpose nor thwart his unstoppable plan. Nothing can—which means we best get on board with God’s agenda. So, in that sense, even when people rejected Isaiah’s message, their unbelief was still contained within God’s purpose.

That is not to say that humanity’s unbelief is God’s purpose; rather, it is to say that God sovereignly uses even our unbelief for his sovereign purpose. For instance, in Romans 11, the Apostle Paul said that God used the unbelief of the Jews for the conversion of the Gentiles. God didn’t predestine certain people to unbelief—they chose unbelief—but he used their unbelief to further his agenda. In John 12, the Jews’ unbelief isn’t God’s fault; it’s the Jews’ fault. Yet even then, God is so great that not even this sin of stunning unbelief is outside his power, so he leverages it to bring about the cross and the redemption of all who believe.

Now, if all this is theologically true, what does it mean for you practically? Simply this: God will leverage humankind’s unbelief for his ultimate glory—even yours. But you have a choice. You can either stubbornly hold on to your unbelief—that is, where your agenda conflicts with God’s—or you can surrender it to Jesus so that you can get on board with God’s glorious plan.

What is your area of unbelief, the place where you are fiercely clinging to your agenda? Have you ever withheld money from missional work because it was dedicated to something that you “needed” to do? Have you ever held back from an appeal to serve in your spiritual community because you felt unqualified or too busy or frankly just didn’t want to make the commitment? Have you ever criticized a change in the church that the pastor felt was necessary to reach more outsiders because it conflicted with your comfort and your preferred style of worship? There are a hundred ways we hold on to our unbelief—with spiritual justification—but here’s what Jesus said in John 12:24-25 about letting go of your agenda for God’s:

Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it’s never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it’s buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.

If you hold on to what you want, you’ll kill any chance of what God wants for you! To experience the resurrected life—not just in eternity, but now—you must die to your unbelief.

Before you finish this post, I implore you to determine that your agenda and unbelief will no longer control you.

Take the Next Step : Where are you stubbornly holding on to your own spiritual agenda, and thus, expressing willful unbelief? Ask God to reveal to you where you need to surrender your preferences to his ways. Then be ready to obey him ruthlessly.