Where How or Who?

Jesus sat in the upper room with the disciples as he faced the cross and give them this assurance.  “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.  In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.  And where I go you know, and the way you know.”  John 14.1-56

But Thomas protested.  Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”  To the question of where and how, Jesus gives the answer of who! Jesus said, “I am the way.” Jesus answer to Thomas’s question about how to find the location of the Father and how to get there, was to find the person of Jesus Christ. It’s not where or how but Who. God did the same with Abraham saying “Go out of your country to the place that I will show you”  So Abram went out not knowing where he was going. He didn’t know where he was headed or how to get there. God said just walk before me. The point of reference for Abraham to arrive at God’s chosen place was God himself. What was important was the way he walked before the Lord and when he got there, God told him.

Our walk with the Lord is like that. Maturity, perfection, full stature is a destination that we can’t pinpoint and it’s impossible to know the steps of how to get there.  Really our journey with God is always toward a place that we have never been before. We don’t know where it is or how to get there.  It is a walk of faith and abiding in Christ. Jesus was saying “You don’t know what the end will look like and you don’t know to get there but if you pursue the Way, respond to the Truth and the draw from the Life I provide, you will arrive at your destination.  Our walk with Jesus is a journey, not a destination. No body learns anything on the exam day but on the weeks of practice leading up to it.  It is always on the journey that we learn. Abraham didn’t come to know God by arriving in the promised land after only a few months, but from his journey of 100 years with God.

Friends, arrival is only guaranteed by abiding. Trying to find how we can get to our spiritual destination, is like asking how a lily grows into its full glory. The way it grows is never by trying or striving or even thinking but by abiding in the conditions for life. Growth is then possible, inevitable and beautiful.