John 14.8-11 8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the
Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so
long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the
Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am
in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not
speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on
account of the works themselves. (ESV)
According to John 1, Philip was one of the first disciples
called. Philip had been with Jesus from the beginning and Philip was the one
who called Nathanael; Philip was a believer. But Philip had belief issues – he’d
tried since the beginning of his calling to figure it all out – that’s what we
do: we bump into Jesus, take Him at His word, become part of His company of
believers and then spend most of our Christianity trying to figure it all out rather
than faithing it all out.
Jesus’ question to Philip was probably a follow-up to
many like-questions Philip had had in his walk with Jesus: “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip?
(Are you still trying to figure it all out?”). How can you say, ‘Show us the
Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?’ (“Don’t
you, Philip?”) I notice Jesus never once said to any of them who were trying so
hard to figure Him out: What’s wrong with
you!?
So what is wrong with us? Why is it we struggle so hard
to let go and let Jesus? Why is that
even a well-worn, lame cliché? Because, methinketh, we concentrate so hard on how Jesus is going to pull off some
wonder-work and cannot, or will not, accept Him for Who He really is: in the Father and the Father in Him.
Jesus is, was, and always will be: God.
Today, I have a good old case of the Monday Blahs. I
played hard all weekend (playing
meaning doing stuff other than work) and today I am just blah. But I have to
rattle my cage a bit when I see how much time I spend trying to figure Jesus
out rather than spending time honoring Him, praising Him, and emulating Him.
(Emulating Jesus is a big, big deal…). I have to stop and consider how, like
Philip, foolish I am in trying to analyze Jesus and just walk in a manner of
complete confidence and trust, doing what He did and living like He lived:
completely sold-out to the Father in Him, because He was in the Father.
Following Christ means living like Christ: in the Father
because the Father is in me – if ever there was a cure for the Monday Blahs, it’s
that: God in me and me in God. I’ll have to take a few deep breaths and get my
act together, but the truth is, today I am in God and God is in me. There is no
greater calling on a person than that, and there is no greater waste of time
than trying so hard to figure it all out…
Lord God, bring on the day: here we go!
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