In and Within 30 The Real Revolution

[HKHaugan]

Here we are at the thirtieth ‘in and within’ moment. We are still in the personal context observing Jesus at prayer. If we have encountered anything up to this point it is the passion with which Jesus prays. He ‘knows’ His Father. He is conscious of His presence. He is absorbed in the Father’s will for Him. He is fully aware that on the other side of His prayer choice awaits. At anytime those who are set on having Him killed will arrive to take Him away to achieve their goal. He could have chosen to call for help and a myriad of angels would have come to His rescue. If He had done that all of humanity would have been lost forever, Creation would have collapsed into an endless cycle of death and self-destruction in hell. What did He say? “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name (Jn.12:27-28 NIV)!”

For Jesus it’s all about making a faithful choice. Faith in His Father, His Father’s will and His Father’s will for us. He knows we are images of Him lost without Him, separated images looking for God but substituting man-made idols and gods instead. He came to redeem our moments into the spiritual reality of the present presence of God.

Modern expressions don’t do justice to this moment. Expressions like, ‘The chips are down’- ‘It’s crunch time’- ‘Whatcha gonna do, fish or cut bait?’- ‘Here’s where the rubber hits the road’- ‘Now you’ve got to walk the talk’- ‘OK, so whatcha gonna do about it?’ They carry some of the feeling but none of the weight. What they do is to localize in our minds and hearts when a stand has to be taken. It’s all about the moment demanding a choice, a decision. In Jesus choice is choosing Him to be our shepherd at that moment. Again, life is about choice and decision. What is right for the moment, any moment? He is ‘right’ personified.

Here Jesus is localizing every moment for us in His Father, in Himself, in the Spirit and all in prayer. No moment is more important than any other. ‘Minor’ and ‘major’, ‘large’ and ‘small’, lose their validity as qualifiers when choice is at hand because Jesus changed the world’s rules about man defining what is and what is not important. That changed when Jesus went to the Cross. That choice redefined ‘choice’ and ‘moment’ for everyone from that event into eternity. The Cross tells us each moment is given us to experience the will of the Father, to lean on Jesus’ words and to follow the Spirit’s move in our heart. Every moment is no longer about me alone but about Him and making choices because of Him for Him.

The Cross lifts up each moment as a moment of faith and every faith choice is a cataclysmic climactic climate change in the fallen spiritual atmosphere of this world. The Cross is the ‘choice revolution,’ the revolution of choice against time, against living just for self. Choice is the moment-by-moment picket line tearing down the gates of hell and exposing its prince, the devil, whose end is sure. It is a revolution against the world’s dehumanizing standards.

It is this absorbing centrality of the Cross Jesus conveys when He says that we must take up our cross and follow Him everyday (Mt.16:24). For us it is the cross of faith, being faithful to Him at the point of choice.

This is the real revolution.

His moments before and on the Cross take the concept of time out of every moment, the concern for self out of every moment, the fear of rejection and death out of every moment. His birth to death moments were events and each one a spiritual event in the present thus redeeming the present. Therefore for us every choice made in faith in Jesus is a spiritual event in eternity. It is not lost in space like some errant meteorite. It radiates the sense of the “I Am” that is God in timeless eternity, personal eternity and relational eternity.

When we choose to be part of the ‘choice revolution’ we stand on the threshold of eternity in every next moment. But we are not alone, never alone. He is always there in His Holy Spirit because of His choice to accept the Cross and its death as the way to live each next moment trusting His Father. Come,---join the revolution!

[Karen McMahon]

Once again, though I neglected to read these posts for a week, this post is timely.  Thank you again.