SENT! – reflecting on writing out the book of John

For those who wrote out the Gospel of John, you scrawled out every one!  I found it a fantastic experience, and look forward to doing it again with another Bible book.  But, now, I have been rereading and gathering up some of the big takeaways.

One of the biggest emphases is Jesus relation to God the Father.  There is some gold on this theme, in just about every chapter.  Jesus talks about how much love is the foundation of that relationship.  He highlights how determined He is to always do the will of the Father, how He knows the Father, wants to glorify the Father at all times, and that the Father is always with Him.  But, the reality that Jesus mentions more than anything else, and is highlighted in almost every chapter – He was sent by the Father.

Jesus never lost sight that He was on a mission. Sent. Sent. Sent.  And then the kicker comes, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” (John 20:21)  Man, it is so easy to lose sight of that.  You are sent.  Wherever you go, whoever you are with, whatever situation you are in – you are sent there by Jesus, as surely as Jesus was sent to Palestine 2000 years ago.   You are sent to live Jesus, to depend on Jesus, to glorify Jesus with the same singleness of purpose that He had when He was sent to this planet.   It changes how we look at meetings, conversations, frustrating lines at the grocery, encounters with irritated people….. we are sent… to them… to those circumstances.  None of them are random, unexpected, or outside of God’s sovereign purposes for you.  You are sent to each one. To each person.  And leaning into the Spirit’s power (as Jesus always did) empowers us to live as sent ones.