Wednesday: God Invites Us to Share His Throne
WEEK 7
WEDNESDAY
GOD INVITES US TO SHARE HIS THRONE
John 14:12-14
Let us pause one more day to note the significance of Acts 1:6-8—“Will you?” . . . “But you . . .”—the shift from the disciples looking to Jesus to his looking to them. Hereafter everything he does, he will do through them.
This simple fact is the most astonishing revelation of the nature and purpose of God I know of. If it means anything, it means that the divine is tying its hands to the human and limiting itself to what the human will do. Of all the delegations of authority that is the most astonishing.
After all the ages of preparation to redeem humanity, bearing with their sins and stubbornness and blindness, he then takes incarnation, dies upon the cross for their redemption, rises again, goes off to heaven, and. says to a handful of his followers: “From this point on I’m trusting my movement of redemption to you. From now on I’m working only through you. The movement survives or perishes through you. I’m trusting you.” That is a breathtaking act of faith in people on the part of God. And it reveals God’s purpose. God is not jealously sitting tight on the throne of the universe demanding that we grovel before him; God is determined to produce beings who will share God’s authority, carry out God’s plans voluntarily, and cooperate with God in the remaking of the world.
Jesus shows God moving over, as it were, and inviting us to share the throne. “As for those emerge victorious, I will allow them to sit with me on my throne, just as I emerged victorious and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Rev 3:21). God is producing not puppets but persons great enough to share God’s authority. That reveals the nature of God and of God’s purposes. It also reveals our destiny. We are to be the heart of Christ, loving others through us; the brains of Christ, thinking his thoughts; the hands of Christ, stretched out in helpfulness; the feet of Christ, seeking the lost; the lips of Christ, speaking his message. We are to be an extension of the incarnation.
This is the greatest entrustment ever entrusted to man. It puts back my shoulders, makes my blood run faster, and sets me on fire to be at it and to be true.
O Christ, your blessed faith in me sends me to my knees. I am humbled at your confidence in me. Now help me to be in some measure worthy of your faith. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: My brain, my hands, my feet, my lips, are sacred; for he has no other.