WHAT I WANT
John 20:19-23
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked,
where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their
midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he
showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw
the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has
sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them
and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are
forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”
Jonah
– he was in the category of “a head-strong, opinionated, somewhat good person who has
talents
– Jonah is a picture of us in many ways: we want our way, or as I say, we want what we want—it is
what I call the basic problem from which all other problems come
– we want what we think should be done
Henri Nouwen, The Selfless Way of Christ
– in his treatment of the temptations that we all have, we must choose a downward mobility instead
of a upward one, the third and most seductive temptation is the strongest:
(showing Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor and says, “Worship me”)
“There is almost nothing more difficult to overcome than our desire for power. Power always lusts
after great power precisely because it is an illusion. … The result is a spiral of increasing desire for
power which parallels a spiral of increasing feelings of weakness. The escalating arms race is one
of the more dramatic examples. The more weapons we have, the less freedom we have to move.
… Jesus responded to the temptation of power with the words, ‘You must worship the Lord your
God and serve God alone.’ These words remind us that only undivided attention to God can make a
powerless ministry possible. As long as we divide our time and energy between God and others, we
forget that service outside of God becomes self-seeking, and self-seeking service leads to
manipulation, and manipulation to power games, and power games to violence, and violence to
destruction—even when it falls under the name of ministry.” (62-64)
– finally what we need to achieve the self-less way of Christ, the downward mobility, is what he calls
“The Discipline of the Heart”
“For most of us it is very hard to spend a useless hour with God. It is hard precisely because by
facing God alone we are also facing our own inner chaos. We come in direct confrontation with our
restlessness, anxieties, resentments, unresolved tensions, hidden animosities, and long-standing
frustrations. Our spontaneous reaction to all this is to run away and get busy again, so that we can
at least make ourselves believe that things are not as bad as they seem in our solitude.” (86)
Nickelback, “If Everyone Cared”
“If everyone cared and nobody cried, if everyone loved and nobody lied, if everyone shared and
swallowed their pride, then we’d see the day when nobody died.”
There is one thing in your life right now that you should change. Take the time to determine
what it is, and try to do something about it.
