Building off what we read yesterday, I will once again state that the works of God are a profound mystery. He has surprised me more times than not. When I am certain He hasn’t heard my prayer, He turns around and answers it with precision. When I have considered His work to be done, He decides to completely bless me through the unexpected. I can always ask to see God, but often do not recognize Him until He has passed by.
I’m convinced that this the way the disciples felt after the crucifixion of Christ. They expected a King on their own terms. They desired freedom that gave the Israelites power again. Why would the Messiah spoken by the Prophets allow Himself to be humiliated by a people unworthy to even be in His presence? The disciples had lived daily with Jesus, witnessed many miraculous things, and now in their eyes, He has let them down.
They were receiving a blessing, they just didn’t understand it.
When I was younger, I remember writing an overly ambitious list of goals for myself to reach by the time I was where I am now; in the "prime" of middle-age. It included learning the guitar, speaking different languages, and have everything paid off, amongst other things. Over the years, the list became misplaced and likely tucked away in a drawer somewhere and then lost in the shuffle of life.
Toward the end of my 20's and into my early 30's, I found myself becoming frustrated with my life. I wasn’t happy with underachieving my expectations. Why couldn’t I meet my goals? If only my wife did this… if only my family was more like that… if only I lived here or there.
All of these complaints about life not being the way I wanted it to be flooded my perspective and caused me to begin to be unhappy with myself. All the while, I knew Jesus and I trusted Him. I just didn’t understand the blessing.
Psalm 16:10-11 says, “…you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay. You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” You see my list, while noble and worth achieving by many standards was falling short of the goals Jesus instructs in His word. In a simple statement, my list wasn’t eternal.
When I imagined my future, it looked like me. When God looks at my future, it looks like Jesus.
His ways are holy and our ways are being made holy. Freedom isn’t the abuse of the liberty of life, it is the pursuit of the more abundant life! Abundance is only found in the Holy Spirit of God!
When Christ died on the cross, the curtain of the temple was torn and the separation of the sacred and the profane was relinquished. Jesus had reclaimed God’s people. The disciples were being given the promise of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, humanity was forever changed by God’s radical freedom to reclaim the body as a temple where the Holy Spirit may abundantly live in and through us!
The disciples were right to expect a King, they just didn’t understand that this King would change everything.
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