My friend and longtime pastor Tom Melton once shared with me a sweet memory from his early parenting. As a young father he carried his toddler son into a swimming pool for the first time. As the water crept up around them, his son clung to him more desperately. And the feeling Tom had as he slowly walked toward the deep end of the pool was a profound sense of intimacy with his son—the deepening water forced the false hubris of independence out of his son, replacing it with the stark reality of his desperate dependence. And the deeper the water, the more the little boy squeezed his tiny body into the refuge of his dad’s strength, and the more a sense of cavernous love swept over Tom.
Here on the doorstep of the Incarnation our lives are also shadowed by the Great Sacrifice. And this is life for us, even during “the most wonderful time of the year.” Hope looks like a little baby born in squalor and hope looks like the son of a stone mason submitting Himself to torture and death. And these two angles of hope reveal the mystery of our life with God—light and darkness intertwined. When we walk with Jesus into the deep end of our life we are offered sanctuary in His strength as our hollow independence is exposed. Rescue drives us closer to Jesus, and closeness is what God is after.
Jesus longs for us to live desperately dependent upon Him, because He wants to draw us near. But He will first have to expose, then undermine, then starve our hunger for control. This is why He carries us into the deep ends of our life…
Since Adam and Eve first betrayed God, control has been our great temptation and our great addiction and the root of all our sin. To be in control is to perpetuate the false security of our safety and success and empowerment. It’s as essential as breathing to us. And therefore, more than anything in life, we hate the suffocating feeling we have when our control is stripped from us—a loss of control is the essential and effective leverage of the prison door clanging shut. “Born as a baby” and “crucified on a cross” are both visceral expressions of a Savior surrendering independence and control to make space for radical trust and dependence. Likewise, as we journey through Advent, Jesus is inviting us into a desperately dependent relationship with Him, one that is abandoned to Him and marked by both an easy intimacy and a fierce sense of purpose.
But our great temptation in life, as God’s enemy insinuates from the very beginning, is that we can be “little gods”—a people well capable of charting our own path, independent from God. Like the “Good Thief” on the cross, a man historians have named St. Dismas, we turn to Jesus only after we’ve been crucified. St. Dismas is the face of desperate dependence, and the outcome of his brief encounter with Jesus is an invitation that shoots to the core of all our longings:
“One of the criminals hanging alongside cursed him: ‘Some Messiah you are! Save yourself! Save us!’ But the other one made him shut up: ‘Have you no fear of God? You’re getting the same as him. We deserve this, but not him—he did nothing to deserve this.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, I will. Today you will join me in paradise’” (Luke 23:39-43, MSG).
The dependence we hate is the dependence we desperately need; it is the antidote to a life dominated by the terrorism of our controlling urges. But even as we admire St. Dismas, we don’t want to be him. The question is this: In my everyday life, how can I have a desperately dependent relationship with Jesus? Jesus points the way here, when He says: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
We are not little children, but we become like them when we give away control and practice dependence. What would happen if we “lost” ourselves by relinquishing the control we so staunchly defend? Well, Jesus says we will “find” ourselves: “For whoever wishes to [control] his life will lose it; but whoever [gives over control of] his life for My sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). We are not truly “masters of our domain,” no matter how hard we try to convince ourselves otherwise.
The Good Thief’s beautiful act of dependence frees him from the prison of his own control, and our own chosen dependence produces “freedom indeed”—the intimacy with Jesus we’ve always longed for. There is a way to escape the tyranny of control in our life, and Jesus not only shows us the path, He is the path. And, of course, that path begins for us at a manger…
Just for You!
My new book Editing Jesus is now out. Just click on this link and you can download a pdf of a long excerpt from the book.
Help Is Here!
Fall is here, and Advent isn’t far behind… Check out our innovative, practical resources for help infusing your ministry environment with “rich soil” for transformation. Our newest resource is The Sacred Stories Project. This multi-media resource offers your people a simple, safe, and “normal” way to share aspects of their story in natural, genuine ways. And you get a more connected, honest, and “known” congregation. It’s four guided sessions with accompanying video segments from Adam Young, trauma counselor and host of the podcast The Place We Find Ourselves.
And check out our new resource Listening to Jesus Together. It’s a set of six carefully crafted “listening encounters” designed for three people to experience together—online or in-person. The goal is to give people in your congregation a weekly “reminder habit” to help them listen to Jesus in the context of a short-term small-community experience.
Next, Following Jesus is a curriculum resource you can use with both adults and teenagers in your church this fall—help them explore what an ABIDING/REMAINING relationship with Jesus is like. It’s an experiential, highly interactive, co-discovery way to invite people into deeper intimacy with Jesus.
And The Life of Jesus TalkCards is a simple, devotional way to invite small groups into the heart of Jesus.
Rick Lawrence is Executive Director of Vibrant Faith—he created the new curriculum Following Jesus. He’s editor of the Jesus-Centered Bible and author of 40 books, including his new release Editing Jesus: Confronting the Distorted Faith of the American Church, The Suicide Solution, The Jesus-Centered Life and Jesus-Centered Daily. He hosts the podcast Paying Ridiculous Attention to Jesus.