Hey everyone!
Back for another blog, but this one is going to be a little different than all of the others. It’s not going to be on ministry or specific experiences, but on something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.
As I sat in Thai church a few weeks ago, they said we were going to take communion after the service. I was a little surprised because it’s been months since I’ve taken communion, and I had honestly forgotten about it. They handed me my rice cracker and grape juice and started speaking in Thai, so I started to think about what communion is, and suddenly God hit me with a revelation. Jesus says in Matthew 26, “Take and eat, this [bread] is my body,” and, “Drink from it all of you, this [wine] is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” In John 6 he says “For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from Heaven and gives life to the world,” later saying, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Now I’m sure many of y’all have already heard or read those verses a number of times, but take a second to reread them and really let the meaning settle in. Jesus is LIFE. Jesus is the source of all true satisfaction. Jesus is the source of all true joy. Woah. The second my mind was flooded with these thoughts in church I immediately knew that this does not accurately reflect the way I look at Jesus. I’m sure the equation of mission work = reliance on Jesus is very easy to believe, and, frankly, it is what I totally believed prior to coming on the race, but let me tell you, it is not the case.
The race is amazing. It has been a time of learning and growth that I have never before experienced. I have seen Jesus move in amazing ways and he has shown me so much of who he is that I had never seen before, and for that I am more thankful than I could ever express. However, through all of that is still a lot of hard times, and in the hard times is when I have to make a choice: am I going to lean into Jesus or am I going to ignore him and cruise through life finding satisfaction in other things? In that church service I realized that I have frequently been choosing the latter. Most of my time on the race has been awesome, and it hasn’t been hard to be close with Jesus and rely on him everyday, but the times where it has been hard I’ve often chosen to just hit cruise control and ignore the things I need to do. Just because I’m living in Asia serving him doesn’t mean that I automatically am growing closer to him. I still have to choose to spend time with him and put in the work to be close with him.
Jesus has not been my only source of life. He has not been the only thing I rely on whether or not things are going my way. He has not been the only person or thing I have gone to in search of satisfaction. I often treat Jesus just like a friend, and don’t get me wrong, he is our friend, but that’s not all he is. He is the creator of Heaven and Earth, He is my perfect Father, He is the man who died so that I may live, He is the victor over all evil, and again, He is LIFE. Maybe y’all already know this, and you live your lives accordingly, but I know that I had never really felt the full weight of that until I was sitting on that plastic chair in Thai church. For some reason I had never realized the insane depth to that fact. Every single day I need to draw closer to Jesus and receive satisfaction from him alone. He is life and I need to live like I really believe that.
All of this to say, I am still learning what it really looks like to fully rely on Jesus alone, and I don’t expect to be there anytime soon. As we all know, sanctification is a process, not a one time thing. Every day we have to choose Jesus, and I now understand much better why that is: we will never be satisfied unless we do.
I want to challenge everyone reading this blog to really think about this. Are you living for Jesus and Jesus only? Are you relying on him with the core of your being every day? Are you finding satisfaction in other things while just treating Jesus like a friend? I don’t ask these questions to make you feel bad, I have just seen the incredible joy that Jesus offers and I want everyone else to know this same joy, and it’s the joy that comes from living our lives for Jesus. It may not always be fun and easy, but it is so worth it.
