Food for ThoughtJohn 5:19 Do What the Father is Doing
Food for Thought
An all-creatures.org Guide to Kingdom Living

By Marni Montanez

This is my New Year's verse.  Of all the things I must learn this is the most important. 

John 5:19 New International Version

19. Jesus gave them this answer: 'Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.

If the Son, being God and man, knew the importance of laying down His authority and submitting Himself to the Father so that he was completely at God's mercy, we as humans who are weak must see our desperate need for God.  Jesus spent time alone in prayer and kept Himself in the presence of the Holy Spirit because He relied solely upon Him.  He went where God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, told Him to go. He spoke the words that God was speaking through Him. He never wavered or went off course and because of His obedience to God things happened that humanly were hard to understand. Yet He did exactly what the Father was telling Him to do.  Jesus trusted in God so much that He even allowed Himself to be crucified and to die.  

Jesus is modeling what our walk should look like. In this statement, the Son can do nothing by himself; He is revealing the truth of how God created us.  On our own, as men and women, we haven't the power or ability to make anything happen.  We are weak and in His word we are compared to sheep. Jesus understands His limitation as a human being and wants us to see ours.  Too many times we do things in our own strength. When we fail to pray daily and stop reading our bible we are behaving like we don't need God. God gives us breath and life. It is in the reading of His word where we find wisdom that gives us the ability to live in this world. It is the power and grace of the Holy Spirit that helps us do what God has called us to do. The last line of the verse shows Jesus' great desire to obey His Father.  Not only does He know that in His human form He needs to depend on The Father, but His heart is so submitted that He wants to submit to and obey His Father.  

No one can teach us how to submit to God.  It is in our time where we immerse ourselves in His presence, we heal and mature and it is in these times with God where we learn what it means to submit to Him.  It is a process and not without many painful lessons.  This complete submission to God is the only way to walk and minister in power.  We have to see ourselves as He created us; completely dependent on Him. After all how can we know the choices to make when we don't know what our future holds? Only God has that secret information.  

Challenge:  Read the bible and spend time with God.  It's as simple as that.  Ask God for a new year's bible verse.  

God bless you

Marni 

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lamb-rightThe purpose of this series is to encourage people to live as loving, compassionate, and peacemaking children of God: Jesus tells us to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." (Matthew 6:10) God tells us through Micah (6:8), "He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God." And we know from Revelation 21:4 that there will be no more mourning, or crying, or pain, or death. Thus, Christian living requires us to set the standards of these conditions here on earth for our fellow human beings, and for the other animals, as a witness to the rest of the world. To do otherwise is not Christian.