Dear Friends,

Human nature tends to resist change. A lot of things motivate that resistance — pride, comfort, the threat of loss, fear of the unknown and disruption of familiar patterns and relationships would be some of those things. Yet, because we are mortal with limitations and inadequacies, change is inevitable.

Jesus faced change as a human on this earth. He was always on the move in obedience to his Father’s will. But we know from his prayer struggle in Gethsemane that the path forward could be hard for Jesus — another way he identifies with us (Luke 23:39-46).

This week’s message and the next one are meditations on a change Jesus experienced because of the opposition of the Pharisees. They resented his popularity and his message which challenged much of their thinking. It was early in his ministry before it was time for open confrontation with these leaders. So Jesus with his disciples left Jerusalem and moved north toward Galilee where he had started his ministry.

I think such a move and change of direction is something that everyone experiences at sometime in their life, if not multiple times. There is always wisdom to be found and strength to be gained in reflection on how Jesus faced the problems that challenge us. Let’s reflect on the change described in the first two verses of John 4.

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” — although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized–he left Judea and started back to Galilee” (John 4:1-2)

You are likely to resist going back to your Galilee. You moved on up to the “big time” when you came to Judea. “Doesn’t it mean you’ve failed if you start back to Galilee?”

“Judea” is the place that you know in your heart by the conviction of the Holy Spirit that you are meant to be. How can you leave where you were meant to be before you’ve accomplished what you were meant to accomplish there? What do you do about the people who resent and oppose you there?

You can try to please, “play the game,” work hard to keep up with expectations, seek to appease the critics, and do things the way that they are urged upon you. When you are measured by the size of the crowd you attract, the temptation is great to be a “crowd-pleaser.” But you will have lost your way if you succumb to the size of the crowd as a measure of spiritual success (Luke 13:21-24).

Or you can stay and battle for your vision. You can “fight the good fight” for hearts and minds to accept your cause and your methods. You can react to the lack of acceptance by keeping a perverse “body-count” of those you have confronted and offended. The temptation is great to be a “spiritual warrior” for what you “know” is right regardless of whether or not your point of view is accepted.

But you will have lost the humility of the petition, “Father, if it be your will . . .” if you succumb to this idolatrous obsession (Luke 22:42). There is no darkness quite as oppressive as that which surrounds those who validate their zeal by the number of those who they alienate and destroy.

To go back and be considered a failure, if only in your mind; to stay and give up your vision and submit to the popular will; or to stay and fight to the bitter end, inflicting as much damage as you can on those who oppose you and seeking vindication by your martyrdom–those are your choices when your calling and work are misunderstood and opposed.

Are you open to the fact that God may have other plans for you? Your purpose on this trip to Judea may have already been fulfilled. Do you believe in a Savior who would go looking for one lost sheep out of one hundred (Luke 15:3-7)?

Disciples have been made on this journey. There have been baptisms and healings. So much good is being done. But are you caught in the trap that you are only as good as your next performance?

Galilee is where you are “at home” (Mark 2:1) with room to breathe and solitude to pray (Mark 1:35). There are demons to be exorcised, a woman bleeding out with fading faith, a leper begging to be made clean, a young man paralyzed by sin and unforgiveness and illustrations for new messages waiting for you in Galilee. And on the way there waits a woman thirsty for the water of life. Would you limit the Father’s call on your life to only one place and time? Are you only worthy of the big stage?

The key to the choice that Jesus makes is in the phrase, “When Jesus learned. . . he left.” There is an open humility implicit in those words that reflects a healthy grounding in God’s reality. Conditions change. The winds of the Spirit can change direction (John 3:8). God still has more to teach you. “Are you a teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?” (John 3:10).

What Jesus learns is that the thinking of the Pharisees about his mission and his methods was wrong. If he gives in to that thinking, the Pharisees, not the Father’s will, will be the driving force in his ministry. If he fights and argues with the Pharisees now, then their smug labels and contentions, not the Father’s will, will be the driving force in his ministry.  Either way, the Pharisees will drive him and he refuses to be driven.

By leaving, Jesus acts upon what he learns from his Father, not on rigid ideas of how he is to accomplish his destiny. The cross and resurrection morning are still to come. There are times when the Spirit says “Go ahead” and times when it says “Go back.”

True faith rests in our certainty that our God is in control, not in our certainty of direction.  A faith that will not yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit is a faith that’s lost its purpose and its life (John 16:13-14). Such a faith will collapse under pressure.

I often pray to the Lord to make me like a stalk of water grass in a desert stream–with a strong root wrapped around the rock to hold me fast against the flood and nourish me in drought and with the flexibility to ebb and flow with the current, but always growing up toward the light.

Lord, grant us the grace to be supple and willing to start back to Galilee when the Spirit leads that way, but “to set our face like flint to go to Jerusalem” when the time comes for that journey (Luke 9:51).

In next week’s message, I will talk about what it means to have to “cross Samaria.”

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Psalm 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.