Building Discipline Ahead of Time
“A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
John 16:32-33 NIV Read More
Jesus taught everything He said out loud by a living example. You can see it in the gospels; after Jesus teaches about something, He typically does some action or miracle related to what He had just taught. Here He is still setting them up for when He will be gone, but first, they are going to leave Him. Since they won’t be around to see it, He is assuring them of what will happen. He knows they aren’t going to get it while they are sitting there around the table, but in a few days, it will all be clear to them.
Jesus’ confidence that He wouldn’t be completely alone didn’t come because He psyched Himself up for what was going to happen. He had practiced a lifestyle of depending on God so much that when the time came that He didn’t feel like God the Father was close by, He knew the Father was still close by. Discipline is learning to do things and believe things in spite (or even in direct rejection of) how we feel. You might not feel like getting up in the cold and running 3 miles, but your discipline helps you do it. You might not feel like God loves you when things go awry, but the discipline of growing in love with Him every day helps you maintain your faith through troubles.
Jesus has overcome the world. Even better, He said that He overcame it before He ever died on the cross. It was Jesus that dismissed Judas to go do his dirty work. Jesus knew full well what was going to happen to Him and had at least three opportunities to get out of it and change the course of history.
Jesus overcame the world by submitting and yielding to God’s will. By being obedient to God, He reversed the curse that Adam brought upon creation and began remaking the world into the Lord’s rightful Kingdom.