Engaging with God

I had to instruct the students as to the dress code for our team while we were in the villages.

The Bible takes this idea of vocation very seriously. From the very beginning, you and I were created for a very important vocation: to be image-bearers of God.

Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. We are restored to our place as image-bearers, with the more specific vocation now of ambassadors.

God is reconciling the world to himself through Jesus Christ. This is a message that we have experienced first-hand – we know that we are loved by God, that we are forgiven through Jesus, that we are invited into relationship with God through Jesus. Having experienced this, we now have as part of our vocation the mission of sharing it with others.

Ambassadors for Christ, representing Jesus in everything we do , in all of our roles and relationships, and bringing with us the amazing good news.

– indeed, I feel like he doesn't even see me . Now as much as this hurts my pride and raises my sense of insecurity about myself, as I think about this and am honest with myself, there are many times (probably far more than I am aware of) when I have treated others in the same way –

Jesus is more than a prophet who is pointing the way to God. Jesus himself is the way to God .

To describe an attitude that is devoid of God's Spirit and God's values.

Sees each person as someone who has immeasurable value, someone who is created in God's image, who is deeply loved by God, and who Jesus died on the cross to save . 

Let's focus on this simple – yet huge – idea that we are called to see people as Jesus sees them .

When I was in the third grade I got in big trouble . 

As eager as Peter was to be close to Jesus , the issue of his denial still had to be addressed. 

The separation between us and Jesus still needs to be dealt with, and Jesus loves us too much to not deal with it.

God is forgiving our sins through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross. Through Jesus' resurrection God is making all things new, and God is calling us to join with Jesus in his ministry of reconciliation. 

Jesus concludes his conversation with Peter with the same words that drew Peter to him in the first place: " Follow me ."

Issues of faith and doubt and who Jesus is and how we should respond to him are not new – they go back to the beginning, in fact to the first day after Jesus' resurrection.

Thomas was a somewhat dour character, from the few lines he speaks in John's gospel, and he seems to be a practical realist. When the other disciples excitedly tell him about their encounter with the risen Jesus, he is unwilling to reengage his disappointed hopes .

There is a form of doubt that seems to only seek a reason not to believe, to justify not ever making any sort of commitment of faith. But integrity calls us to engage with the truth claims of Jesus Christ, to search and to understand as best we can.

The purpose of John's entire gospel is that we would come to believe. As the final verse of this chapter goes on to say, this is "written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name."

We cannot separate being Christlike from being a Christian, we cannot divorce being like Jesus from believing in him. True belief is what the gospel is all about, because true belief means entering into a relationship with Jesus; it means proclaiming Jesus as Lord and God; and it means entrusting our lives to him – both our lives in this world as well as our eternal lives.