Ephesians 3:14-21

Have you ever wondered if you are a “whole person”? We all have struggles in life that could make us feel incomplete, but the apostle Paul says we can be “filled up to all the fullness of God” (v. 19). What does that look like?

A “whole person” is generally satisfied with life. He feels loved and is able to love others in return. Difficulties and hardships don’t devastate him, because he is able to go through them with confidence in God. He isn’t a complainer or someone who is quick to blame others. A positive attitude guards his mind since he knows that the Lord will work everything out for good (Rom. 8:28).

Being a Christian doesn’t automatically make us feel complete. Fullness comes only when we experience God’s love for us. For many years, I knew theologically that the Lord loved me. I even preached about it, but I didn’t really feel it. Only after I took a deep look at my life and started dealing with events that had fractured my soul in childhood did I begin to experience His love in an intimate way. Once I felt the security of His love for me, I discovered great joy in walking in obedience to His will. The reason was that I knew I could trust Him to meet all my needs in His time and way.

Do you feel God’s love, or is it just a biblical fact to you? If you long for wholeness, the key is to experience an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. This is possible only when you’re willing to open up and let the Lord search your heart. He’ll reveal what’s holding you back from accepting His love.

There is a part of me that feels the twinge of being scolded whenever my name is spoken to me. “Jill, what are you doing?” “Hurry, Jill, we need to go.” (Perhaps those of us that share this idiosyncrasy got in trouble a lot as kids.) But I have often wondered how Peter felt when Jesus’s scathing rebuke confronted not “Peter,” which would have yet had its sting, but “Satan.”

In those days, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law. He began to explain to those who loved him that he would be put to death. Peter, like most of us reacting to the suffering of our loved ones, swore to protect him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” I can only imagine his shock at Jesus’s response. Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”(1)

I cannot read that story without picturing my own reaction to those words. I probably would have been devastated. But I also know that when Jesus seems to say something devastating I should probably pay attention all the more. The intensity of his reaction to Peter portrays the intensity with which he knew he had to suffer, the weight of history, prophecy, and purpose he felt on his soldiers, and his severe understanding of the world’s need for his affliction. To get in the way of his necessary suffering, a refrain uttered repeatedly in the gospel accounts and especially by Luke, was to be as an enemy obstructing the plan of God.

As I look at Peter standing before Christ with good intentions, not wanting to see the one he loved broken or defeated, I wonder how many times I, too, have obstructed suffering God deemed necessary for reasons I do not understand. My gut reaction in the face of pain—my own and others—is to make it stop. Like Peter I vow to fix it, not knowing what I mean, just wanting it gone. Yet in the midst of suffering, Jesus says, we can have in mind the things of humanity or the things of God. This is not to say that Jesus wants us to suffer. On the contrary his own suffering is an attempt to put out the sting of suffering and death.

But the Christian understanding of suffering is forged at the foot of the cross. At the cross, we are reminded that God’s purpose will not ignore suffering but will confront it fully and personally and painfully. Christ was wounded and crushed for our iniquities. By the suffering and shame he endured, we are offered a balm for our own mortal wounds. Can God not also have a plan for our own pain?

As one theologian notes, “Jesus did not die in order to spare us the indignities of a wounded creation. He died that we might see those wounds as our own.”(2) At the cross, we see our sin and the suffering that we have caused because of it. But we also find meaning even in suffering that doesn’t come as a direct result of our sin. We see, as Paul observed, that suffering can mysteriously move us, that in its injustice God weeps with us, and that what was meant for ill God can move for good. We see that Christ who suffered for us, so walks with us in our own suffering. “For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ” wrote one disciple who suffered much. At the cross, we see that some suffering is not only necessary but meaningful.

Peter not only picked himself up from a rebuke more severe than anything he heard Jesus give the Pharisees, he took Jesus’s words to heart. In a letter meant to encourage fellow believers, he wrote, “It is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God.” Having witnessed the unimaginable suffering of one he loved in a most scandalous, unthinkable way, Peter saw the mysterious gift of somehow keeping in mind not the gut reactions of humankind, but the strange and wonderful ways of God.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

 (1) Matthew 16:23.
(2) Peter Gomes, Sermons (New York: Morrow, 1998), 72.
(3) 1 Peter 2:19.

To whom do you belong?

1 Samuel 30:13

In the life of faith, neutrality is not an option. We are either ranked under the banner of the Lord Jesus, to serve and fight His battles, or we are slaves of the dark prince, Satan. “To whom do you belong?”

Reader, let me assist you in your response. Have you been “born again”? If you have, you belong to Christ; but without the new birth you cannot be His. In whom do you trust? For those who believe in Jesus are the sons of God. Whose work are you doing? You are sure to serve your master, for he whom you serve is thereby owned to be your lord. What company do you keep? If you belong to Jesus, you will keep company with those who wear the uniform of the cross. “Birds of a feather flock together.” What is your conversation? Is it heavenly or is it earthly? What have you learned from your Master? For servants learn a great deal from the masters to whom they are apprenticed. If you have served your time with Jesus, it will be said of you, as it was of Peter and John, “they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”2

We press the question, “To whom do you belong?” Answer honestly before you fall asleep for the night. If you are not Christ’s, you are in a hard service–run away from your cruel master! Enter into the service of the Lord of Love, and you will enjoy a life of blessedness.

If you are Christ’s, let me advise you to do four things. You belong to Jesus–obey Him; let His word be your law; let His wish be your will. You belong to the Beloved; then love Him; let your heart embrace Him; let your whole soul be filled with Him. You belong to the Son of God; then trust him; rest on nothing or no one but on Him. You belong to the King of kings; then be decided for Him. Thus even without being marked with a sign everyone will know to whom you belong.

2 Acts 4:14

The family reading plan for March 12, 2012

Job 41 | 2 Corinthians 11