A book entitled The Shack by William P. Young has deeply impacted me in ways that have been surprising to me, yet refreshing in that I have a new outlook on the possibilities of my Christian walk with Christ Jesus. Though there have been several key ideas that have really touched my heart, I just want to focus on one key idea that has been a true paradigm shift in thinking for me.
Although The Shack is fiction, the author was a missionary’s kid and is a Christian himself who has gone through some very hard things in life many of us have not had to endure. He expresses how he internalized his own story through this fictional writing and exposes his understanding of God’s unconditional love for him, his understanding of the Trinity, his understanding of forgiveness, his understanding of where God is in the midst of suffering, and more. I felt like I was drinking out of a fire hose when I read this book.
The section of the book I want to focus on for today is how the author depicted where Jesus got his power from while he was living on the earth as God Incarnate. I have been a Christian since age 10, and for all of these years I believed that the reason Jesus could raise Lazarus from the dead, or heal a blind man, cast out demons, or turn water into wine, et al, was because he was God in the flesh. (Our Christian doctrine as supported in Scripture reveals that Jesus Christ was the God-Man, i.e. 100% God and 100% man while on Earth.) The author depicts God explaining to Mack, the main character of this book, that Jesus drew his power from his Father while on Earth because Jesus chose human limitation to walk among us and model for us how to live the Christian life and to give us a glimpse of the Father.
The author uses the analogy of a bluebird that has the autonomy or free will to use its power to fly any time it wants to, but as soon as the bluebird lands and stays on land, the bluebird is choosing limitation. At any time the bird may by its free will exercise its power to fly, but until it does so, it is limited. In the book the author suggests that when Jesus chose limitation by coming in human form, Jesus had to draw his power from God the Father to do all of the miracles we read about in Scripture. This does not negate that Jesus was still God in the flesh. What a huge shift in thinking this is for me. If Jesus was the human model of the kind of power God is giving us as his children, then why aren’t we doing powerful things for God? Why aren’t we healing more people, or casting out demons, or seeing more miracles in general?
John 14:12 quotes Jesus who says, “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” I believe this with all my heart, yet I find myself completely disappointed that I have not expected that by having the Holy Spirit in me that I could do similar things that the disciples did that have been recorded in Scripture. My pastor and I got to dialogue about this several days ago, and he brought to mind Phil 2:5-7 that says, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.”
This whole idea that Jesus “emptied” himself makes a strong case that Jesus had to look to the Father for his power because he had “made himself nothing”. I am stunned. Now I look at my life realizing that I really never expected God to do “greater things than these” and have lived a life with the power of the Holy Spirit in me, but I haven’t figured out how to appropriate it to do the “greater things” Jesus talked about. Perhaps this explains why so many lost people don’t see much of a difference between Christians and themselves. Perhaps this just illustrates that we really do depend on our own humanly limited power to do God’s work. Perhaps we don’t wake up each day with a high level of expectancy that God wants to do mighty things through us, if we would just be available and accessible to Him. Perhaps we just don’t visualize God-sized tasks that would absolutely make us depend upon his power rather than our own to accomplish them.
So I am now praying that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit as a Triune God would live in me with complete unity and bring my thoughts and heart into complete unity with Him. I really want to understand how to use his power through the Holy Spirit to do great and mighty things for Him. So I am asking Him to show me that in a way that is clear as God knows I can be dense! In the meantime this week’s takeaway is to live with expectancy that He wants to do great and mighty things through his believers, empty myself (heart) of my own personal agendas and self-centeredness so that I can be filled up with His agenda for my life, and engage the power of the Holy Spirit that is already sealed in me the best way I know how until He reveals to me what I may be missing as it relates to appropriating His power within me.
If any of you have insights into this topic, please share them! I really want to wrap my mind around what He wants to accomplish through my life with His power – not mine.
Blessings,
Lee Ann
