Asking Jesus: What We Requested, How He Replied
Can you imagine what you might ask Jesus if you had a two hour walk with him? That’s the inspiration for this year’s Lent focus. Everyone asked things of Jesus, whether family or enemies, the broken or the proud, the seekers or the demonic. This year's Lent study allows us to be in awe of Christ.
Remove This Thorn!
May 1, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • 2 Corinthians 12:7–10
Jesus tells us, “My grace is sufficient for you.” It’s enough. It satisfies. Your lack of strength opens you to receive my strength. If you could live on your own without me, you would. And you would miss out on what truly makes for life. You would end up with nothing but yourself and you would be lost. My way leads to life. Trust me, this narrow path is hard but it is true. I am leading the very creation through the groans and pains of making all things new. Trust me. The thorns of Satan are meant to lead you to my cross of life. What Satan means to ruin you, I use to take you deeper into myself.
Who Are You, Lord?
April 24, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • Acts 9:1–9
Salvation is the work of God in our lives. I can’t make you repent and believe. You can’t make yourself repent and believe. This is God’s work. If you want it, that’s God prompting you to want it. But that doesn’t mean you’re out of the equation. You want God to show himself to you? Ask him. Are you tired of kicking against God’s reality and getting smacked and bloodied? Turn to the Lord Jesus. Embrace him as he embraces you.
Stay with Us!
April 17, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • Luke 24:28–35
There’s a step of faith that carries you across from where you are into an experience of the risen Christ. If there’s a spark, would you fan it into flame with faith? He’s real. He’s risen. And he’s here. Lord Jesus, stay with us! For the hours fly by and we are far from home. Too much breaks. Too many leave. Our grip is fragile and our hope is frail. Stay with us. Be known to us. Open our eyes to see you ever with us. This day, join us to yourself anew in the sharing of the bread and the cup.
Today, I Must Stay at Your House!
April 10, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • Luke 19:1–10
The truth is that I need to be liberated from myself. I need so desperately to be free from the ruin that comes when I get my will and my way. I need to be retrieved from being lost in trying to create my own reality. I need to be redeemed out of demanding and into gratitude. Redeemed out of proving myself and into the grace of Christ’s acceptance. Redeemed out of the deep pit of swirling around me and into the arms of Christ. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, Jesus said. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Liberation into more of myself is bondage and death. Liberation into Christ is life and health and peace.
Have Mercy on Me!
March 27, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • Mark 10:46–50
Jesus hears your heart cries. When all strategies fail. All pretense blows away. All reasons to commend you are dismissed. Below all that precarious house of cards that is your life. Jesus sees you and he hears you. You drop your pride. You let down your guard. Your heart cries for mercy: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He replies, “I do. Come here. I call you to myself.”
Who Is My Neighbor?
March 20, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson
When you know the depth of the mercy you require and the wonder that such compassion has been given to you by Jesus, then your heart can be open to love. Then you look mercifully upon your fellow humans. Because you are as broken and needy as those you used to despise. And real life, eternal life, means entering that loop of mercy. Christ Jesus picks you up and carries you home in mercy. Then he sends you out to do the same. It’s not outside in: what I should and ought to do to get what I want. It’s from the inside out. How can I show love to the one who put me on his shoulders and carried me home? By sharing the mercy I have come to know.
Come and Lay Your Hands on Her
March 13, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • Mark 5:21–24, Mark 5:35–42
Jesus did not avoid the realm of death to which all humans go. Rather he went there. He died as the sinless one who was made to be sin on our behalf. He went to the inky darkness of the state of death so that we never go there alone. Now he leads us through. We, like Jairus, are dismayed by all this suffering. But Jesus himself went off the map into the wasteland of hell. There are no regions of human experience unknown to him. The Father did not rescue his Son immediately from the cross. He underwent the plummet into death’s isolation so that we cannot leap, no matter how angrily we push off, beyond his embrace of all human suffering. Jesus knows. And still he loves. We have not the power to negate that love even by the rashest act. We are not alone, nor are the most tangled and wayward of his sheep.
Why Have You Treated Us So?
March 6, 2022 • Gerrit Dawson • Luke 2:40–52
It is we who journey away from Christ. And then ask in our misery, “Why have you treated us so? Why won’t you be a savior who arranges life the way I want it?” Jesus takes no delight in our anxiety. He does not sneer at the distress we feel when we’ve lost sight of him. He grieves all the tragedies that flow from the broken communion between God and humanity. He wants us to be reconnected. But he won’t be co-opted. He won’t fix the presenting problem so we can get back to life on our terms. Over and over he reminds us, “Do you not know that I must be in my Father’s house, about my Father’s business? That’s where you’ll always find me. That’s where life begins. That’s where love flows. That’s where reconciliation occurs. The meeting place between God and man, the healing place. I’m always there. Come back to me!”