Today, I am feeling quite undone by Jesus. Very likely not as undone as Isaiah felt when, after King Uzziah had died, he experienced the holy presence of God in the temple, but I am feeling undone nevertheless. This is good, the kind of good that comes from hope and future grace. After knowing and following Jesus for over 20 years, I know well enough that His work may initially bring discomfort and hurt but, once finished, is always worth it. I can look back and say that I have never regretted saying "yes" to Jesus, neither the big "yes" at the beginning of the rescuing relationship nor all the other "yeses" along the journey.
My experience today is as if Jesus is rearranging the furniture without asking my permission; he doesn't need it after all. Yet, I am giving it, because I so want to live in agreement with him. I want to walk as Jesus walked, doing only what I see the Father doing and speaking only what I hear Him speaking. It is not enough just to passively believe Him or to believe in in Him, solely giving mental assent to Him, His works and His words; He desires and commands discipleship, actual following. Not "following" like we "follow" someone on Twitter nowadays. Following Jesus is, through surrender, recognizing that I am not my own, that he bought me with a price, and then actually living the Jesus life. And this "living the Jesus life" is not just asking what Jesus did and then trying to mimic it; it is looking at his actual life in the Gospels and then giving myself over to the authority and leading of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, that I am baptized by and into.
Surrender is a wonderfully painful gift; at first approach, it never feels good. Surrender, even to a perfect Father, offends my rights and my control, well, at least the illusion of them. However, it is only through this yielding to my Master that I will finally know peace and wholeness. For it is only when I recognize that I am His, and therefore all I am and have is His, that I am living in my true identity.
In the midst of so many "voices" crying out to give me identity and a purpose, he alone actually delivers. Nothing else, when I have truly tested and tried it out, when I have trudged all the way to the source of the stream, ever satisfies. In those times when I have so closely encountered the presence of Jesus, I have never come away thinking, "There's got to be more than this!" Encountering Jesus leads me to want to know Him more but never leaves me thinking that there must be more.
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