John 1:37-39 – What Habits Lead to Here?
37 The two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus. 38 Then Jesus turned, and seeing them following, said to them, “What do you seek?”
They said to Him, “Rabbi” (which is to say, when translated, Teacher), “where are You staying?”
39 He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where He was staying, and remained with Him that day (now it was about the tenth hour). John 1:37-39, New King James Version
Christ has positioned me as the world's most unlikely entrepreneur. All the while, He is supporting me with so many visible demonstrations of His watchcare and affirmation that even I cannot quaver or quibble with.
Meanwhile, there are reasons not to pour the sap of this season into more conventional and familiar options just now. I am, in a sense, forced to walk by faith..
I'm starting something new, and the flock I'm ministering to is very small. Scriptural principles like he who is faithful in will be faithful in much, and sit at the end of the table and wait to be asked to a more prominent position assure me that the saints have trod this road before.
God's assurances to Chuck Smith at a relatively late stage in life to be an entrepreneur that if Smith provide the quality God would provide the quantity give the Bible's pattern the comfortable ring of modern idiom.
In my role of perhaps over-nurturing the hopes of the first handful who come through my door, I'm seeking to give good counsel based on experience through which God has brought me. Then I'm seeking to follow that up, to water that seed, with voices different than my own. Google is helpful in this respect. People have said it differently. People have said it better. Sometimes surprisingly, even the adherence to the world's system attests to aspects of the glory of God and the process of discipleship without knowing it.
In trying to support and challenge someone at a crossroads, I came across this blog:https://blog.usejournal.com/my-journey-from-rejecting-an-internship-to-getting-selected-in-microsoft-5297b54fa854.
I like the author's refusal to just drift based on what is conventional and common in the culture around him. There is Gospel in this that preaches to me just now. GK Chesterton says it as only he can. “A dead thing goes with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it.”
I like the author's deliberate focus on his weaknesses and how he can use the next opportunity to address them. There is Gospel there that preaches to me just now. No one says it better than Paul who deliberately turns his back from his own assets to declare that God's glory is shown off in his weakness.
I like that he spends time reflecting on and honing his narrative. With so much sameness in the world's dialogue, and especially in interviewing, he understands what John Quincy Adams's character in the movie Amistad says about a lawyer's craft. He who tells the best story usually wins.
What I LOVE, though, is what he does with his Big Opportunity. After deciding on this course of action because it fit into his narrative, after rehearsing and refining the narrative, it would be easy for his own story to dominate his heart and head and spill out of his mouth. But what bounces with Gospel glory to me is that he focused on the exact opposite.
He penetrates any possible ennui on the interviewer's part by asking the interviewer about the habits that got him to his place in life. As Paul admonishes, he puts others' interest before his own. He, knowingly or not, embodies so much of the book of Proverbs in seeking wisdom and starting with the assumption that he doesn't have the whole of it already.
But there is deeper, sweeter Gospel there. The author doesn't just ask for some of the fruit of the guy's life. Let me pick your brain, as some have crassly put it. He doesn't just want the fruit. He wants to know the roots. He wants to know the habits. I would have hired him on the spot.
He also got me to thinking about the contagion of Christ's glory in John 1:37-39. Jesus has taught little, if at all. He hasn't "popped" on social media. He isn't, in the human sense of the word, used to being famous. His response to a sudden following of two is, if anything, a little brusque.
What do you want? Knowing the hearts of men, as John will say shortly, he is ready to be used for a request. In fact, throughout the Gospels, He will teach and honor such a direct confession of need and desire.
Here, though, He offers James and John a check box for the what. They check "other" and ask for the Who. They don't want the band centuries in advance. They want Jesus rather than what He can do for them.
They want a more prescient Gospel than I'm sure they're aware of at this nascent stage. But they know they want to start by knowing the daily Jesus, the habits and the inflections.
What they intuit and confess at faith's earliest stages, I want as somebody who has, by grace, been following after Him for more than a few strides.
In fact, I want what He insists on for the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:4. I want to reexperience the kind of first love for Him that makes His domestic life a fascination for James and John. I want His habits, in keeping with His warning to the church at Ephesus, to reanimate my habits.
The same good things I have been doing, by grace, I want to do with verve and flair because He inhabits them. That new song He is bubbling up inside of me, that new chapter He is writing by turning life's pages inexorably away from the familiar and controllable, I want to run toward it.
I want to run the wild future he has for me because He is there. Whatever I learn of myself and my growth in the process, I would see Jesus from yet another angle.
They said to Him, “Rabbi” (which is to say, when translated, Teacher), “where are You staying?”
39 He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where He was staying, and remained with Him that day (now it was about the tenth hour). John 1:37-39, New King James Version
Christ has positioned me as the world's most unlikely entrepreneur. All the while, He is supporting me with so many visible demonstrations of His watchcare and affirmation that even I cannot quaver or quibble with.
Meanwhile, there are reasons not to pour the sap of this season into more conventional and familiar options just now. I am, in a sense, forced to walk by faith..
I'm starting something new, and the flock I'm ministering to is very small. Scriptural principles like he who is faithful in will be faithful in much, and sit at the end of the table and wait to be asked to a more prominent position assure me that the saints have trod this road before.
God's assurances to Chuck Smith at a relatively late stage in life to be an entrepreneur that if Smith provide the quality God would provide the quantity give the Bible's pattern the comfortable ring of modern idiom.
In my role of perhaps over-nurturing the hopes of the first handful who come through my door, I'm seeking to give good counsel based on experience through which God has brought me. Then I'm seeking to follow that up, to water that seed, with voices different than my own. Google is helpful in this respect. People have said it differently. People have said it better. Sometimes surprisingly, even the adherence to the world's system attests to aspects of the glory of God and the process of discipleship without knowing it.
In trying to support and challenge someone at a crossroads, I came across this blog:https://blog.usejournal.com/my-journey-from-rejecting-an-internship-to-getting-selected-in-microsoft-5297b54fa854.
I like the author's refusal to just drift based on what is conventional and common in the culture around him. There is Gospel in this that preaches to me just now. GK Chesterton says it as only he can. “A dead thing goes with the stream. Only a living thing can go against it.”
I like the author's deliberate focus on his weaknesses and how he can use the next opportunity to address them. There is Gospel there that preaches to me just now. No one says it better than Paul who deliberately turns his back from his own assets to declare that God's glory is shown off in his weakness.
I like that he spends time reflecting on and honing his narrative. With so much sameness in the world's dialogue, and especially in interviewing, he understands what John Quincy Adams's character in the movie Amistad says about a lawyer's craft. He who tells the best story usually wins.
What I LOVE, though, is what he does with his Big Opportunity. After deciding on this course of action because it fit into his narrative, after rehearsing and refining the narrative, it would be easy for his own story to dominate his heart and head and spill out of his mouth. But what bounces with Gospel glory to me is that he focused on the exact opposite.
He penetrates any possible ennui on the interviewer's part by asking the interviewer about the habits that got him to his place in life. As Paul admonishes, he puts others' interest before his own. He, knowingly or not, embodies so much of the book of Proverbs in seeking wisdom and starting with the assumption that he doesn't have the whole of it already.
But there is deeper, sweeter Gospel there. The author doesn't just ask for some of the fruit of the guy's life. Let me pick your brain, as some have crassly put it. He doesn't just want the fruit. He wants to know the roots. He wants to know the habits. I would have hired him on the spot.
He also got me to thinking about the contagion of Christ's glory in John 1:37-39. Jesus has taught little, if at all. He hasn't "popped" on social media. He isn't, in the human sense of the word, used to being famous. His response to a sudden following of two is, if anything, a little brusque.
What do you want? Knowing the hearts of men, as John will say shortly, he is ready to be used for a request. In fact, throughout the Gospels, He will teach and honor such a direct confession of need and desire.
Here, though, He offers James and John a check box for the what. They check "other" and ask for the Who. They don't want the band centuries in advance. They want Jesus rather than what He can do for them.
They want a more prescient Gospel than I'm sure they're aware of at this nascent stage. But they know they want to start by knowing the daily Jesus, the habits and the inflections.
What they intuit and confess at faith's earliest stages, I want as somebody who has, by grace, been following after Him for more than a few strides.
In fact, I want what He insists on for the church at Ephesus in Revelation 2:4. I want to reexperience the kind of first love for Him that makes His domestic life a fascination for James and John. I want His habits, in keeping with His warning to the church at Ephesus, to reanimate my habits.
The same good things I have been doing, by grace, I want to do with verve and flair because He inhabits them. That new song He is bubbling up inside of me, that new chapter He is writing by turning life's pages inexorably away from the familiar and controllable, I want to run toward it.
I want to run the wild future he has for me because He is there. Whatever I learn of myself and my growth in the process, I would see Jesus from yet another angle.
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