On Google-Earthing Your Life

PRAYER OF CONSECRATION

Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 

Jesus, I belong to you.

I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.

Jesus, we belong to you. 

Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. 

Acts 25:6–12

After spending eight or ten days with them, Festus went down to Caesarea. The next day he convened the court and ordered that Paul be brought before him. When Paul came in, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him. They brought many serious charges against him, but they could not prove them.

Then Paul made his defense: “I have done nothing wrong against the Jewish law or against the temple or against Caesar.”

Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, “Are you willing to go up to Jerusalem and stand trial before me there on these charges?”

Paul answered: “I am now standing before Caesar’s court, where I ought to be tried. I have not done any wrong to the Jews, as you yourself know very well. If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die. But if the charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!”

After Festus had conferred with his council, he declared: “You have appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you will go!”

CONSIDER THIS

The other day I checked something online I hadn’t checked in a while—at least I hadn’t done it since I moved to Gillett, Arkansas. I Google-Earthed myself. As soon as I saw my location via the GPS dot, I began zooming in. I went down far enough to see that the church garden behind my fence held a crop of winter greens. After looking around my backyard and a few of the neighbors’, I began zooming back out. I’ve lived here for one year now, so I wanted to see where I was with respect to the rest of the city of Gillett . . . then Arkansas County . . . then Pendleton (my mom and dad’s home about ten miles away) then Dumas and Desha County (hometown). Then I decided to zoom back out and trace the steps of my journey over the past thirty 30 years in a kind of “There and Back Again” path. That meant going to Kentucky and then to Texas and back to Kentucky and then to Tennessee and then Texas again and back to Arkansas. (With Google Earth, you can take a trip and never leave the farm!)

All that zooming in and zooming out gave me enormous perspective. I also find this practice to be essential on a regular basis when reading the Bible. I call it “zooming out.” Were we to zoom out on today’s text we would first locate ourselves at Casarea, on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Zooming out a bit we would see Jerusalem to the northeast. Further out we would see Turkey to our north and Athens to our west. Further still we would see Rome, the place where Paul will soon be headed.

The physical geography alone is fascinating. Then there’s the geography of the will of God—the cartography of the Holy Spirit. Just as zooming out on physical geography gives us perspective, so does zooming out on our present set of circumstances and challenges. As we zoom out on Paul we see his life completely out of his control. He is caught in the swirling chaos between the courts of the Sanhedrin and courts of Caesar. Paul seems to be sidelined, riddled with problems, and surrounded by enemies. He’s completely stuck.

Here’s the surprise. Despite his challenges and desperate circumstances, Paul remains in the center of the will of God. The Holy Spirit is working out the movement of the gospel and not wasting a millisecond of Paul’s time. Jesus, who called Paul, was not caught off guard by these kangaroo court proceedings. Jesus was not sitting at the right hand of the Father wringing his hands and scratching his head wondering what to do next. No, he was working out the will of God right in the middle of Paul’s disastrous dilemma.

Christian, I want you to remember that. No matter how desperate or dire the situation you find yourself in, look to Jesus. Call out to the Holy Spirit, and rest in the refuge of Abba Father. No matter how conflicted and chaotic your circumstances, do not be anxious. Wait on him. Rest assured. He sees you. He knows your apparently unsolvable problem, and he is committed to working mercifully in the midst of it; not from a distance, but by your side. He is bringing it and you to a good end.

Be it a badly broken marriage, a wayward son or daughter (or worse, their untimely death), the endless labor of caring for a spouse or parent with some form of memory loss, the loss of a job, the ordeal of cancer, or the otherwise collapse of our best-laid plans, we must take the time to zoom out.

In the midst of the hardships and trouble and chaos of life, it’s easy to start thinking we’ve stepped outside of the will of God. We’ve done something to deserve or merit the problems before us. On the other hand, it’s easy to push the button and just claim the randomness and meaninglessness of it all. The way of the cross calls us to interpret our difficulties and sufferings as perhaps one of the most confirming signs we are in the center of God’s will. 

Most of the time it takes regularly zooming out to see it.

Of three things I have become brazenly certain: 1. In this world we will have trouble (see John 16:33). 2. We can take heart because Jesus has overcome the world. 3. The way forward is made by the perseverance of the Holy Spirit to manifest the suffering love of Jesus to us and in us and through us (see Colossians 1:24).

The hard thing about these seasons is how they want to bully us into a spirit of resignation. There is a counterintuitive move we must make in the face of this—relinquishment. The more we fight resignation, the more it grips us. We must surrender ourselves and our struggles to Jesus again and again until we have finally done it. This is the way of the cross. That’s our Google Earth. 

THE PRAYER OF TRANSFORMATION

Lord Jesus, I am your witness. I long to be like you. 

I receive your righteousness and release my sinfulness.
I receive your wholeness and release my brokenness.
I receive your fullness and release my emptiness.
I receive your peace and release my anxiety.
I receive your joy and release my despair.
I receive your healing and release my sickness.
I receive your love and release my selfishness.

Come, Holy Spirit, transform my heart, mind, soul, and strength so that my consecration becomes your demonstration; that our lives become your sanctuary. For the glory of God our Father, amen.

THE JOURNAL PROMPTS

Are you personally encouraged by today’s entry? Do you know someone who needs this kind of encouragement today? Send it on with your love.

THE HYMN

Today we will sing “All to Jesus I Surrender (I Surrender All)” (hymn 607) from our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise. Get your copy here. 

For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt

P.S. UPDATE ON THE EUTYCHUS OPPORTUNITY

You will remember a few weeks back we lifted up the story of Eutychus on the Wake-Up Call as a sign and symbol of the enormous challenges facing our young in this hour. We launched the Eutychus Opportunity, an opportunity to receive $60,000 to help Seedbed design and launch discipleship bands into younger generations. We are at $35,000 with gratitude to so many of you who have heard and responded to this invitation. The Holy Spirit has me wondering two things. 1. Is there someone out there who might be hearing an invitation to reverse-match these gifts in some dimension? and 2. Are there others who might like to contribute at any level? You can read the post at the link above. You can give here. 

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