Jesus Leads the Way

As I am writing this, we are a full month into the new year, and I pray that your heart is still filled with hope for the future. Our younger daughter works at a gym and there is always a rush of hopeful, determined new people at the start of each new year. But it's quite surprising how few of those stick it out. Somehow, Life As It Has Always Been too often and too easily wins out over making any sort of lasting change. ​

I’ve been thinking and reading so much lately about the momentous impact that Jesus' resurrection had on absolutely everything. I have always known that Jesus conquered death, at least in theory I have known it, but I am afraid I have never let it sink deeply into my doing and being. What does it actually mean?

First and foremost, what it means is that Jesus conquered death. How funny that it is so easy for me to type and for you to read such a sentence. But those of us who have been followers of Christ for a long time can say this and let it roll right off without any fanfare. We are so used to the idea that we have forgotten how momentous and revolutionary this fact is: death has been defeated! 

Death is our common enemy. It was never supposed to be a thing, and all of us know it, deep down. Death is what we all fear and worry about. Death is actually the thing that everyone is fighting with hair color and little tweaks here and there, all the way up to the strange experiments now with trans-humanism. People are afraid of death and want instead to live forever. And that is what is so amazing about Jesus' work on the cross! He has made away for us to follow Him into the new path he has created for anyone who will: namely, taking a detour away from death into everlasting life.

This astounding truth is what motivated the earliest believers to face literal lions in the Colosseum, and figurative lions of every kind. They were courageous and brave, and furthermore shared their faith so eagerly because the great enemy of us all has been defeated—death. And I love that people called Jesus' new path "The Way"—He has truly made a new way to walk through the chaos of the world into peace, order, beauty, and life. ​

But now many long centuries have passed and philosophers have thought their thoughts and made their impacts, and the momentous reality of death's defeat has been toned down and forgotten. We think very generally and somewhat hazily that sure, one day we will live again somewhere, somehow, but it does not impact our everyday life as much as it could. We are much too easily derailed off the new Way of the resurrection power of Jesus back into the chaos. We are content to think that His resurrection power is for someday, never quite grasping that it is also for today. 

I don’t know about you, but recent events in my life have stretched my faith very much. When life is easy, we can go weeks, months, even years on something like auto-pilot, without having to really wrestle with what we actually believe. But occasionally circumstances in life suddenly require serious thought about our choices. We can go for years doing the same old thing, running with the same people, going to the same places, doing all of our normal routine without much deviation. But then comes an explosion...or is it an opportunity to see which path I am choosing?

​It would be very difficult to know what kind of shape our faith was in if we never had some difficult choices to make. And here is the major choice in life—do we believe that what God says is right and true, or not? Are we going to walk with Jesus along His Way, or choose the way of chaos?

I have found in my own life, and I would encourage you to search your heart along these lines, that an easy tell for whether I believe God or not is my use of the very small conjunction, but.

As in, I know what God says about forgiveness, but...

Or I know what Jesus said about loving your enemies, but...

Or I know what the Bible says about generosity, but...

That little tiny word betrays so much! I shows that we don't truly believe God knows what He is talking about, and it shows that we don't fully believe that He is good. It shows that we have not put all of our trust in Him and His ways. Worst of all. it betrays that we think we know better than Him, which is pretty much the oldest trick in the book from an enemy who wants to steal your soul. 

Here are some real-life examples:
Surely Jesus would not have said we had to forgive people if He knew how deeply this particular person hurt and betrayed me!

God certainly would not have said we had to love our neighbors as ourselves if He saw that my neighbor actually voted the way they did!  

I know what the Bible says, but God would ever ask me to love and respect my spouse if He had known what real life with them would be like!

This tiny, three-letter conjunction BUT is the most dangerous word of all. 

Anytime any of us turn on the news, whichever kind of news we read, we can see once again that the world is broken. Wars and rumors of wars, division, dissension, factions, envy—all of the bitter fruit of the sinful flesh are on display every day, every year, everywhere. It is so frustrating that the wall of chaos is constantly there.

And for those of us who follow Christ, the seemingly endless trudge surrounded by chaos can become discouraging. If we forget to keep our hand firmly in Jesus' hand, to keep our eyes on Him, the author and perfector of our faith, and instead keep our eyes on ourselves, we will be constantly tempted to make decisions out of self-preservation and self-promotion. For example, when we find ourselves in a difficult relationship with a friend or family member, we might be tempted to say in our hearts or out loud, "I know what the Bible says, but…you were treating me very badly, you have hurt my feelings, you are taking something that I perceived to be mine", and so on.

This is a very normal occurrence in all of our lives, and one we have a decision about quite often. And what I would like to introduce for you to think about goes right back to the fact that Jesus has conquered death, and that he has blazed a trail through the chaos towards the kingdom that God always intended. "Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

God loves people, and wants to live with them forever in His beautiful garden. Death knocked us out of our rightful home, and that is why it is so amazing that Jesus conquered it! He has personally paved the pathway for us to come home. Not just someday, not just eventually, but today. Now. We can walk with Him along His Way. 

Each and every day that we live, we have the opportunity to work with Jesus in His great mission of reconciliation and restoration. What we do really matters, and how we live truly impacts everything around us. Each time any of us chooses to believe God and not add the "but", we help eliminate some of the chaos. But each time we choose to not believe God, we just perpetuate the chaos. Our choices impact not just ourselves, but also our families and neighbors. He has graciously given us the choice to walk with Him in trust, and even the tiniest trusting choice along His Way makes the world better. 

Let's believe that God knows exactly what He's talking about. Let's allow Him to make a beautiful path of beauty and peace through the ugliness and chaos in our own lives and relationships. None of us can change the entire world singlehandedly, but all of us can impact our little corner of things. How lovely to know that we all have access to this path of truth and life! It will be worth the wait to see how much difference our choices can make in so many hearts and lives.