An ‘A-ha’ moment from The Shack

I was fairly certain that I was the only person on the planet who has not yet read The Shack, by Wm Paul Young.  That is until I found out last week that a friend of mine hasn’t read it either.  So the two of us pledged to one another that The Shack would finally be our summer read.

On my.  I’m not yet half-way through, but I can hardly put it down.  And what really surprised me is the ‘a-ha’ moment I had last night as I read it, involving something I already knew, but didn’t quite put the pieces together.

Phil.2:6-8 reads like this: “Who (Jesus), being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.”

My study Bible describes Jesus as having laid aside his glory and emptying himself of the prerogatives of being God in nature.  Fully God, yet fully human in that he now chose to live with the limitations that all humans live with.

So if Jesus was a man, such as you and me, how did He do all of those miracles?  Read this excerpt on pages 101-102:

Jesus is fully human.  Although he is also fully God, he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything.  He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being.  He is just the first to do it to the uttermost – the first to absolutely trust in my life within him, the first to believe in my love and my goodness without regard for appearance or consequence.

“So when he healed the blind?”

He did so as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life (God’s) and power to be at work within him and through him.  Jesus, as a human being, has no power within himself to heal anyone.  Only as he rested in his relationship with me, and in our communion – our co-union – could he express my heart and will into any given circumstance. So when you look at Jesus, you are actually seeing me, my life in him.  That’s how he lives and acts as a true human, how every human is designed to live – out of my life.

WOW! As a human being, Jesus had no power of his own, but only received God’s power by resting in God and staying close and connected to him.   Is this the way I live?  Is this the way you live?  Staying close and connected to God, resting in Him and receiving his power to live our lives, no matter what they look like? This is how God designed every one of us.  When we choose to live as Jesus did, how can we be anything but victorious?  And sadly, when we choose not to live as Jesus did, how can our lives be anything but a mess?