[Jesus] matters because of what he brought and what he still brings to ordinary human beings, living their ordinary lives and coping daily with their surroundings. He promises wholeness for their lives. In sharing our weaknesses he gives us strength and and imparts through his companionship a life that has the quality of eternity.
~Dallas Willard
I have manifested Your name to the people whom You gave Me out of the world. Yours they were, and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they know that everything that You have given Me is from You. For I have given them the words that You gave Me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from You; and they have believed that You sent Me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. All Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your Name, which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are One. While I was with them, I kept them in Your name, which You have given Me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate Myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. The glory that You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one even as We are One, I in them and You in Me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that You sent Me and loved them even as You loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, may be with Me where I am, to see My glory that You have given Me because You loved Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know You, I know You, and these know that You have sent Me. I made known to them Your Name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them.
~ Jesus, King of The Universe, in John 17
Oh beloved, it is true. There is an end to our lives, at least as we know them. And it often comes much more early than we expect, because we are still breathing and moving among those in our midst. Jesus is praying for us, and His prayers will be answered by the Father.
Many of us start out on our path to knowing Him in much the same way. We become convinced of the truth of the Gospel. We are fallen. We are broken. And our sin has made such a mess of things, that only the very blood of the very G_d of the universe can make things right.
And so, in becoming convinced, we change our minds about a great many things. We repent of our old life, and we repent of our astounding pride that we could have ever stood in His presence on our own merits – and we cast ourselves on His mercy for survival.
And live we do. We sense a whole new aspect of living in our lives. It is a great sense of relief that our past has been paid for, and that eternity is in very good shape. But still, something bothers us. There still seems to be the machinery within us to keep doing the things that got us completely out of kilter with Him in the first place.
We try. We really do. And things waver on in some mildly better, or sometimes decidedly worse, manner. We know that we have a sincere faith in Christ, but something is not working. We strive to take on the form of the believers around us. We adopt their methods. We try to get away from the stuff that plagues us.
For each of us though, there comes this crisis. It doesn’t work. We are like a really good looking car – but without a motor under the hood. And even if we do have an engine, there seems to be no fuel to make the engine run.
Somehow though, we sense there is something so much better, and so the crises hurt, but they bring us to a place where things become exceedingly clear. Something has to change. We come to the very end of our strength, and we just kind of come apart in recognition of our ongoing failure.
We become exasperated. And this is the very best part of our lives up until this moment. For this is the moment, where now, Jesus prayer can be fully answered for each of us.
Can we see it? Up until this point, we had taken on the form of what it means to be a Christian, but had generally ignored the purpose of what a Christian is all about. There is a function to our belief. There is an end in the Mind of Christ about our relationship.
We are to become one with Him. We are to quit trying to believe ourselves into a right relationship. We are to die to even the remote dream that this is even possible – and instead – we are to come to the realization that it is already true in Him. Said more simply, wholeness is about realizing that Jesus prayer has been answered.
We are utterly Loved by a Triune G_d who totally knows what it is like to have everything that They want, and to be so infinitely full of Love that the only thing They want to do with it is to give it away. And the Love They bring to our Lives invites and draws and melds us into Their relationship. The idea of struggle and looking good is utterly foreign in a Space like this. It is, rather, completely real. And wholly other than anything in the universe.
So, are you feeling like you are just not quite good enough to fit in with G_d? Could this fool of a writer suggest something to you? It is time to go beyond the mere form of Christianity and into the purpose beyond your repentance. It is time to believe that, in Him, you have already arrived in the place you have been seeking so desperately to find since you came to believe.
