Day 38 - Issue 23
John 14:6 NLT
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.
I have had many so-called crises of faith throughout my life. The first I can recall is when I was forced to take six months off through physical exhaustion. This was a result of rushing around as a youth worker, paying little attention to the needs of my body and my spirit. I loved the platform and opportunities, and allowed them to squeeze out my personal time with God. In reality, I’d removed God from my life, believing doing his work was somehow the same as knowing him. I ran into a brick wall.
At that time I was upset that God hadn’t treated me better. After all, I was doing his work faithfully and well. I was working flat out, harder than many others I observed. I was sincere, but sincerely wrong. As I recovered, I explored other jobs almost to spite God. I was self-absorbed, flexing my independence muscles. This cycle of reaction and apparent rejection of God, a sulky, inner resentment was ignited and smouldered on many subsequent occasions when life didn’t work out in ways I believed were best for me.
It was a failure to recognise that Jesus is the Way. My moments of resentment were diversions of my own making that only led me off God’s path. The problem with a diversion is that most times it is a longer route than the one planned. So it was with me and God. However, along the diversion I had time and space to reflect. My initial reaction against God slowly dissipated. Having told God everything I was going to do in reaction to my disappointment, I made my peace with God once I recognised I had nowhere else to go. What I really desired was peace within and realisation of who I knew myself to be, a self that proved elusive. Known to God, it was only in him that I might find my true self, as opposed to the many false selves I so easily manufactured.
QUESTION: Is there any tension between the way you are seeking to walk out your life, and God’s way?
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, you are the Way on which I will walk and base my life.
