Friday, August 18, 2006

HDJD? (How did Jesus decide?)

Months ago someone in my Connect Group (a group we lead who fellowship around God's Word) was recounting an experience where he was weighing if God was nudging him to help a homeless person sitting at a street corner holding a sign requesting help. This young man asked the question, "How do I know when I'm supposed to help and who?".

You've probably seen a movie or TV show that follows that standard story line where some individual wakes up from a bonk on the head and can hear the thoughts of everyone around him. While novel at first, it becomes deafening and tortuous.

Stopped at a street corner seeing a homeless person with a sign, we don't hear the cries from the life of the person in the car next to us who is at the end of his rope and near the point of taking his own life. Or the car behind us who has had hearing trouble from birth. Or the person passing us in the other lane who is wondering how to find their teen daughter who just ran away from home.

At that very moment God began teaching me something brand new. God revealed to me that as His son walked and taught among the crowds he not only saw the multitude, but he KNEW every single person in the crowds. Jesus knew each person and their life at any given moment. Imagine that same standard story plot except rather than just hearing the thoughts of every person around you at any given moment, KNOWING the complete persons... their life (remember the woman at the well?). How deafening could that be for a mere human?
QUESTION: How did Jesus, who didn't just see a written sign in the hands of someone asking for help, but who 'heard' the lives of a multitude crying out around him, know when to stop and meet the specific needs of specific individuals?

ANSWER: He was always in tune with His Father and did only that which He saw His Father doing.
So Jesus explained himself at length. “I'm telling you this straight. The Son can't independently do a thing, only what he sees the Father doing. What the Father does, the Son does." John 5:19

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