The Ascension of Jesus is not the end, it's the Point.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWait in the city
until you receive power from on high.
Simon Sinek once said that great leaders
lead from their "why."
I once worked for an art company
that gave the staff random directions
but never told us what we were doing
or why we were doing it.
And I recall the directions were always in bits,
one task at a time.
They never told us what the goal was
or why we were doing it.
It was very frustrating,
and the end goal always suffered
because the staff did not know why or what we were doing.
Eventually I quit.
The Ascension of Jesus
is a bit mysterious,
and even some of the prayers that are appointed for this day
are almost apologetic
about the ending of Jesus life on earth.
Jesus ascended
not to get out of here,
but to fully accomplish his mission.
His ascension into heaven
is just as important
as taking on flesh,
dying on the cross,
and rising from the tomb.
Jesus
tells us in many places,
but most notably in John chapters fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen
why he is going to ascend into heaven.
He is going away,
so that he is no longer limited by the finite
restrictions of space and time.
He is going away so that we can receive
the Holy Spirit.
And the disciples are told
not to do anything
until they receive the Holy Spirit.
And this is very important,
because the last instructions he gives them are this:
“Go into all the world and make disciples
baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
You cannot do this job
without the Holy Spirit.
This is the "why."
The Ascension of Jesus
is the reason
real Christianity works.
And we are given evidence
that Jesus himself
believed the ascension
was the whole point of his mission.
In Daniel 7: 13 we are given a cryptic vision.
“I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
And to him was given dominion
and glory and kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.”
Throughout his ministry,
Jesus refers only to himself as the
Son of Man.
He is referring to Daniel 7:13.
He is the one Daniel saw,
and throughout his ministry,
Jesus was indicating to us
that he is the one who will appear before the Father
and he is the one who will receive the nations
as his own inheritance.
At the beginning of Acts
Jesus walks into a cloud,
and on the other side
he stands before the Ancient of Days.
This act of returning to the Father
is the ultimate act of victory.
Jesus,
a man in the flesh,
has now entered
the realm of the spirit.
By being outside time and this created order,
he can now be in all places at all times.
And because he has lived in this created order,
he can rightly judge
and understand your human experience.
And because Jesus is in the Holy Spirit,
and the spirit of Jesus
lives in us,
by the Holy Spirit
we are in him.
He is in us.
This is the simple
but mysterious reason that
we are seated with him in heavenly places,
and the kingdom of heaven is in our being.
It is all by the Person, Presence, and Power of the Holy Spirit.
Many Western Christians
struggle with this
because we have been heavily influenced by Saint Augustine,
who did not understand the Holy Spirit.
He tried to reconcile his faith with
Greek philosophy,
and he made the life in the Holy Spirit very hard to understand
and impossible to experience.
Western Christians ever since
got trapped in their heads.
He replaced a Person
who is living and active and operating
with abstract concepts like "grace"
and the impersonal bond of love between the Father and Son,
and said that your mental agreement is enough.
This began the error of trying to define and analyze things
that we were created to experience
and participate in.
And of course,
mental agreement
and philosophical definitions are not enough,
because you cannot experience them.
The Holy Spirit is a Person,
not a vague concept.
So Jesus gave the disciples the direction,
wait for power from on high.
This power
was to make disciples.
Jesus said,
that if he went away,
we would be with him.
How?
He has gone away,
and because the same Spirit of God in him
is in us,
we are with him.
Leanne Payne put it beautifully,
No matter how sick or broken you are,
there is always a place deep inside of you
that is whole.
That place is where Jesus is.
Graham Cooke put it this way:
Jesus Christ, by the Holy Spirit is in you.
And if Jesus is in you,
then all the things that Jesus is
are in you.
So,
Jesus Christ is the most powerful person in the Universe.
Jesus Christ is the richest person in the Universe.
Jesus Christ is the kindest person in the Universe.
Jesus Christ is the most loving person in the Universe.
And on and on.
If you need to be kind,
you simply say,
"Jesus you are in me,
and you are kind.
I am not kind, so I am going to get out of the way and let you be kind through me."
And then the Kindness of God manifests.
And if you are in the Kingdom of God,
God is going to give you impossible job descriptions.
You are not instructed to figure it out,
and do it from a worldly perspective,
and then ask God to bless it.
Everything in the Kingdom of God
is about relationship.
Jesus did not ascend into heaven
to leave us to our own devices.
He ascended into heaven
so that through the Holy Spirit
he could be not only close
but inside us.
And this is Christianity.
You are not a follower of Jesus
trying to read the Bible and figure out
what would Jesus do.
No.
You are a little Christ.
If you are born again by water and the Holy Spirit,
Jesus has now taken residence inside of you.
Jesus is abiding in you,
and so you can agree with him.
And when you do this,
you become the temple of the Holy Spirit,
and Jesus,
if you live a life of surrender to him,
will live in you.
And so Paul will say
the mystery is
Christ in you
the Hope of glory.
He says
we have the mind of Christ.
He says his power is manifested in our weakness.
We are woven into the fabric
of the Holy Trinity.
All of this is possible
because Jesus ascended.
This is the victory of the Incarnation,
the victory of the cross,
and the victory of the Resurrection.
Heaven is not off out there.
Heaven is here,
right now.
And all the great saints understood this.
Many of those who were wonder workers
describe
"going up"
and then coming down with the grace to heal.
Others describe
the reality that when you are in Jesus
you are bigger on the inside
than you are on the outside.
And many describe having access
to the resources of heaven
because they are aware of the presence of Jesus in them.
It is this Presence,
of Jesus in you,
that is the life in the Holy Spirit.
Jesus went away,
ascended on high,
and is now seated with the Father.
And because of the Holy Spirit
we are seated in him
and with him.
Our calling is to surrender to this reality,
Christ in us.
Where he is
we shall go.
And by the Presence of the Holy Spirit,
we are given a foretaste
and a pledge of it,
now.
This reality,
and this pledge
are not for you and your experience.
And this is the most important part.
John’s gospel
describes the work of the Holy Spirit
as a flow of water.
Jesus ascended
so that the whole world
could come into his kingdom.
When we receive the Holy Spirit,
we receive this flow
and you are not intended to become a pond
that keeps getting more,
but it never goes out.
A pond begins to get stagnant.
You are called to become a lake
and a river.
The life giving flow
becomes a source of power
just like Niagara Falls.
The Falls generate so much power
that New York City, Toronto, Cleveland,
Buffalo,
and Chicago
all get power from it.
All of this is available
when we wait on Jesus
and sit with him
and learn to let the power flow through us.
Waiting on God
like the disciples did in the upper room
is a ministry of active receiving.
You are being welcomed into ministry
of the Holy Trinity.
And when this happens,
you are given power from on high
to do great things for God.
These great things
are what God uses to make disciples.
And that’s the point.
We are being transformed
into the image of Jesus
so that we can be Jesus on this earth.
And when we do this
others are drawn
and they too want to be like Jesus.
Everyone wants a king like Jesus,
and this is how it happens.
Wait in the city,
until you receive power from on high.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThanks for reading my work. If it encourages you, share it with others, and consider supporting me at buymeacoffee.com/christjohnotto. Follow the link below to find out more. I have written 12 books of theology for artists, just search my name. Shalom.
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