May 10,2007

“So when they met together, they asked him, ‘Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?’” Acts 1:6.
They wanted so badly for a king….the king….the long-awaited Messiah/King to come and release them from the harsh, oppressive rule of the Romans. Their nation had been subjected to tyrannical rule for such a long time, and they were desperately looking for the fulfillment of the prophecies from the past. Jesus’ disciples were meeting with their leader one last time before He was to return to His Father in heaven, and they had this burning concern on their hearts. They were looking for external answers to their question. They were looking for a political/military solution, and evidently were not satisfied with the type of answers that Jesus had been giving.
All of the internal, heart changes that Jesus had called them to, such as were delivered in the sermon on the mount in Matthew, chapters 5, 6, and 7, were very nice…really, but they weren’t going to throw the bums (the Roman rulers) out. They could not get their minds around the radical nature of Jesus’ revolution. It was a revolution unlike any before or, for that matter, any to follow. It was a revolution of the heart, for Jesus knew that if He had a person’s heart, He had their whole life and allegiance. And this type of follower would run through a wall for you, if necessary. Yet, at this point, they did not understand. One day soon, they would get it, but right at that moment they were stuck in their old paradigm. They could only imagine that the Messiah was to come to set them free in an external, political manner, like King David had done hundreds of years before.
In relating this to my experience, I realize that I have my own pre-conceived notions or ideas of what God should do or how He should act. For example, I lived under the false idea that God would always protect me and keep me safe. Some harsh realities our world today have caused me to rethink and reexamine this idea, and I have come to realize that this is not necessarily a scriptural concept – that God will keep us safe. But what I did discover is that He will always be with me in the middle of the trouble and turmoil, whatever it may be. The point is, I may have any number of false concepts of life that have sprung out of my life experiences, and I need to process these in the revolutionary, heart-transforming way that Jesus ushered into our world. How revolutionary is Jesus in your life? Does He have your heart? Take time today to reflect on a God who does not necessarily promise to keep us safe, but promises to always be there, in our turmoil and trials, with us.