At New Life Christian Fellowship in Pacifica we begin each year with 21days of Prayer and Fasting. During this time we are encouraged to find ways to set things aside and find time to focus on things that God might want to impress upon us for the new year. Often the sacrifices that release the most time to spend with God are related to media, no TV or Social media! However, fasting from food in some way has the additional element of allowing real hunger to remind us of our need to hunger after God.
During this time it can be helpful to find something new to read or meditate upon. This year one of the things I decided to do was to read very slowly and meditate on John Ch 14-17 as these where Jesus’s final conversations with his closest friends before his death, “Final instructions before…” He is preparing them to found the church following his ascension. I am particularly trying to focus on what it must have been like to actually be there and listen to Jesus talk. What did they understand? What did He hope they would understand.?
The first passage I spent time thinking about was Ch 14:1-5 and I noticed that, first, Jesus reassures them and encourages them to trust him. Then He says something that must have been pretty mysterious to them. It seems he must have realized that they would need that trust to accept those things they did not really understand yet. When He stated that they “knew where He was going” I think I would have had said as Thomas did ” we have no idea where you are going so how can we know the way?“, (v5). As I thought about it for a while I could not help wondering what were the things that Jesus had taught them that made Him say v4 ” you know the way to where I am going‘? Did they miss them or just misunderstand them?
So for me, this was a good reminder often there are aspects of our walk with Jesus that are mysterious and we need simply to trust Him. It also made me want to take some time to contemplate lessons I have learned in my walk with Jesus and ask if there are parts of those lessons that have still more significance for the future. For that day I stopped my meditation there and made some notes in my journal knowing there was more to come in these pivotal chapters.
Do you have any thoughts on this passage or are you reading anything specific during these 21days that you would like to share?
From the Zebra Bag 
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