Where He Goes

When Jesus had finished these parables, he left that place.  Matthew 13:53 

Left – Jesus just left Chicago and He’s bound for New Orleans.  ZZ Top made those lyrics famous.  What they did not realize is that Jesus really does leave.  He follows the Father’s will wherever that leads.  He is not rooted to the Moody Bible Church in Chicago or the Anchor of Hope Baptist Church in New Orleans or to any other house of worship.  When His work is finished, He goes.  The Greek is metairo.  It is literally “to lift up from one place to another.”  We need to remember this.  Jesus does not stick around just because we build a temple to honor Him.

Henry Blackaby once said, “Find out where God is working and go join Him.”  That’s great advice.  It also sounds a warning.  No man commands God to remain.  The Spirit is like the wind.  He goes where He wills.  Our task is to follow, not to lead.  When Jesus lifts up from one place and goes to another, we are called to follow Him.  How long He stays where we happened to be is measured by our obedience and God’s purposes, not our construction budget.

It is absolutely true that Jesus will never abandon us.  But His promise does not mean that we cannot abandon Him.  Where we seek the Kingdom and God’s righteousness, we will find Jesus in our midst.  Where we move forward with our own agendas, even if those agendas appear “spiritual,” we will discover that Jesus took another path.  We forgot to follow.  We thought it was about becoming leaders, but we weren’t listening when He said, “Come after Me.”

In contemporary Christian circles, it is easy to forget that Jesus can leave.  Surrounded by the trappings of religion and the good feelings of fellowship, we can be lulled into a false sense of security.  We begin to think that Jesus will always show up at our church just because it is the church.  But Jesus follows another path.  We are more likely to find Him in the prisons, the half-way houses, the twelve-step circles, the hospitals, the shelters, the orphanages, the gutters and the crisis clinics than we are sitting in a comfortable pew in the back.  No church that serves the Kingdom from its knees, pouring itself out like spilled wine will ever have to pray, “Lord, be with us in this place today.”  A servant church finds out where Jesus already is, and goes there.

As Jesus said, “Let the dead bury the dead.  You follow me.”