Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Wednesday, 17 December 2014 "I am in the Father and the Father is in me"

Leawood, Kansas, United States - The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection Daily Guide grow. pray. study. for Wednesday, 17 December 2014 "I am in the Father and the Father is in me"
Daily Scripture: John 14:6-7 Jesus said, “I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him. You’ve even seen him!”
8 Philip said, “Master, show us the Father; then we’ll be content.”
9-10 “You’ve been with me all this time, Philip, and you still don’t understand? To see me is to see the Father. So how can you ask, ‘Where is the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you aren’t mere words. I don’t just make them up on my own. The Father who resides in me crafts each word into a divine act.
11-14 “Believe me: I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can’t believe that, believe what you see—these works. The person who trusts me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing. You can count on it. From now on, whatever you request along the lines of who I am and what I am doing, I’ll do it. That’s how the Father will be seen for who he is in the Son. I mean it. Whatever you request in this way, I’ll do.
Reflection Questions:
The gospel of John began with language similar to that we read in 1 John: “No one has ever seen God. God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made God known” (John 1:18).
John did not invent such words about Jesus out of thin air. He recorded that Jesus himself, on the night before his crucifixion, told the disciples, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
• In some Bible stories, God sounds angry, brutal or unloving. Those stories may reflect human misunderstanding, shaped by ancient culture, or perhaps loving acts that only seem unloving to us because of our partial understanding. But in Jesus, who came to be “lifted up” on the cross so we can have eternal life, we find the definitive picture of God’s heart. Has knowing Jesus reshaped any of your images of God? How deeply are you able to trust the truth of Jesus’ saying?
• Jesus asked, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been with you all this time?” It is still possible to go to church for many years, to know many facts about the Bible and the church, and yet not know Jesus. For how much time have you been around Jesus and his message? In what ways do you wish to grow deeper in knowing Jesus, not just knowing about him?
Prayer: O Jesus, Revelation paints a picture of you knocking at the door of my heart, seeking leave to enter. This Advent season, I seek to open that door more widely to you than ever before, to commit myself to knowing you. Amen.
Insight from Angela LaVallie
Angela LaVallie is the Worship Logistics Program Director at Resurrection. She oversees preparing the Sanctuary for worship, supports Vibe worship and volunteers in the Student Center, provides oversight for Holy Communion at the Leawood campus, and assists with worship logistics at conferences.
As Pastor Adam mentioned in his sermon this past weekend, one of the reasons Jesus came was to show us more accurately what God is really like. It is our responsibility, as his followers, to continue to show people what God is really like by following Jesus’ example of living a life of love and service.
No matter how much we tell people about Jesus’ love, they’ll never truly believe it until we show them his love. And sometimes it’s more about the attitude with which we say or do something than what we actually say or do.
I had the opportunity during the summers of 1998, 1999, and 2001 to visit San Pedro Sula, Honduras on mission trips. On the first trip, I got to meet three upper-elementary-school age girls – Heidi, Nancy, and Heidy – at a morning church service at Colonia Gonzales. That afternoon, our mission team traveled to the beach where I was stung by a jellyfish and had an allergic reaction. For the next couple of days, I was in bed with a fever, chills, and exhaustion. On Wednesday, I joined my team and went back to work at the church and school. While I was taking a break that afternoon, the three girls I had met on Sunday morning came up to say hello. They asked if I was coming to the church service later that evening, and when I somehow conveyed that I didn’t know because I was sick (I speak very little Spanish, and they didn’t speak more than a few words of English), this little girls looked at each other, said something I didn’t understand, grabbed my hands, and started praying.
The next year when I came back to church on Sunday morning at Colonia Gonzales , I again saw Heidi, Nancy, and Heidy. At the end of the worship service, Heidi wanted to take my Bible with her. Since neither of us spoke any more of the other’s native tongue than we had the last year, I wasn’t sure why she wanted an English Bible, but I let her take it anyway, Wednesday evening church rolled around, and Heidi introduced me to her mother who gave me my Bible –covered in a beautiful, handmade yellow cloth cover with lace trim.
It is so easy to get stuck in the mindset that only we can share God’s love because we are somehow more qualified to embody his Spirit. When I first went to Honduras, I (as almost anyone who’s ever gone on a mission trip will tell you) thought I was going to help change lives there – and I might have – but the faith and love I experienced when three little girls prayed for my healing touched me in a way that is still very meaningful to me today. When a woman used material she probably could have used in a more practical way to make a gift for me, a stranger, I got a glimpse of true generosity.
As important as it is for us to be willing to let others see Christ in us, it is just as important for us to be open to seeing Christ in those we wouldn’t initially expect to do anything for us. Those early Christians were expecting to find a much different savior than what they got in Jesus, and their openness in seeing God’s love in Jesus is what blessed them and helped them to understand how to, in turn, share that love and bless others.

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