Day 37
Everything the Father has
To Start
You have to have quiet to hear. Get some quiet.
Pray
Spirit, glorify Christ to us and glorify Christ through us. Make us one—one with You and one with one another.
Read
Read John 16:14-15.
Read it three times. Read more slowly each time through. Try to emphasize a new word with each new reading.
Try to picture the relationship between the Father, Son, and Spirit.
Then read John 17:20-26 (Jesus’ prayer for all believers, a prayer He prays at the conclusion of the 14-16 Farewell Discourse).
What does the trinity relationship tell us about our relationship with God?
What does it teach us about our relationship with one another?
Try to summarize the passage in your own words.
John 16:14-15 (CSB)
14 “He will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you. 15 Everything the Father has is mine. This is why I told you that he takes from what is mine and will declare it to you.”
John 17:20-26 (CSB)
20 “I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in me through their word. 21 May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me. 22 I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one. 23 I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.”
From JL
How much time do you spend contemplating the mystery of oneness with God and His people?
Contemplating mysteries is a habit of mine. I used to do it in a very logical way—explore, observe, question, hypothesize, test. Undo the mystery. Untie the knot. I still do that some, but these days I find myself regularly just staring into the fog, surrendered to whatever’s in front of me, even what I don’t understand. Staring and surrendering don’t always lead to understanding, but sometimes they really do, especially when the mystery is God, especially when I’m welcomed into the fog, especially when the fog isn’t fog but rather the cloud that is the presence of God.
No, understanding is the wrong word. I stand in the cloud and receive the cloud. I breathe in and the cloud dwells in me as I dwell in the cloud. I don’t understand the cloud, but also I don’t need to. The cloud is. And somehow, in some way I can feel but can’t explain, I become cloud.
We’ve talked some about contemplative practice already in this study, but yet again, we find ourselves face to face with something a human mind cannot comprehend, which is, of course, fertile ground for contemplation.
Martin Laird writes in An Ocean of Light:
Contemplation reveals our immersion in the mystery of God in Christ, where Saint Paul says our lives are hidden (Colossians 3:3) and where God is revealed as the Being of our being; the Love of our loving; the Life of our living.
Fourteenth century German monk Meister Eckhart wrote of the results of contemplation,
All that God asks you most pressingly is to go out of yourself … and let God be God in you.
Saint Athanasius:
What God is by nature we become by grace.
All they’re saying is something like this: God is in you and you are in God. All that is God’s belongs to you, because You are His child and dwell in His house AND because He is the Spirit in You, the very center of who you are. SO, consider paying attention to the God in you.
In our texts today we saw the web of our oneness on full display:
All that is the Father’s belongs to Jesus.
Jesus gives what is His to the Spirit, and the Spirit gives it to Jesus’ people.
Jesus’ people, then, have all that belongs to the Father through Jesus and the Spirit.
In John 17, Jesus says he wants the same unity He has with the Father and Spirit for us with one another. He wants you to belong to me in the same way He belongs to the Father—for us to hold everything common, for us to depend on one another and dwell with one another, for all the love I have and all the love you have to be poured out and shared.
And then again—the oneness isn’t just with one another. We are one with Christ. We have unity with Christ in the same way we have unity with one another.
We have the Father’s glory, given from Christ, through the Spirit.
WE ARE ONE THING.
What?!
It is a crazy sentence, easy to misconstrue, but it’s the truth: You are God. You are not all of God. God is (obviously) much, much bigger than you. There may still be parts of you that are unsurrendered to Him, parts He’ll prune in time. But you, you’re a branch. And a branch is just vine.
From the very beginning, God made humans in His image. For most of history we have tried to be less.
What if we stood up straight and received who we were made to be? What would happen then?
In the Comments
I have no idea what the answer is to the question I just asked. I have thoughts (maybe).
What do you think? What would change if we embraced our oneness with God?
Similarly, what would change if we embraced our oneness with one another?
For me, this is kinda everything. I have spent the majority of my life feeling bad about being a sinner, and apologizing every time I came into the Father’s presence, always cringing and hiding because of my glaring unworthiness. About five or six years ago, while meeting with a spiritual director for the first time, she asked me to pray and ask God what He wanted for me. I wasn’t accustomed to this kind of prayer at the time, but tried it anyway. First there was silence, then I heard, “holy confidence.” I immediately wept, because I knew I would never have chosen that phrase on my own.
Again, about three years ago, I was being led through EMDR and imaginative prayer by a mentor, and in the midst of a painful memory, I saw myself hunched over and crying in front of a mirror; then Jesus came behind me, and gently placed his hand in between my shoulder blades, pushing until I stood straight, shoulders back. Then He grinned, proud to see me that way.
I still struggle to receive and walk in this good news most days, especially when I see too many examples of what seems like the opposite end of the spectrum: Christians claiming God’s name while blinded by the damage their own pride, arrogance, and lack of accountability cause. I don’t want to be that. But I do want to live like a saint, like I’ve got God in me, because I am, and I do. 🙂
I think of all the doubt and insecurities and overthinking that would just dissolve. I don't imagine a vine spends much time questioning itself or comparing itself or hustling, but is content to be part of the whole- scars and quirks embraced, dependence (co-dependence?) is celebrated. Fully present to that precious moment without the past or future distracting. Less striving, more being.