DAY TWELVE | John 1:10-13

He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

When Following Jesus Doesn’t Work

Recently, I had a hard conversation with one of my closest friends. We try to spend time together each week to encourage each other in the way that we follow Jesus and love our families. On the morning of our conversation, he told me about an interaction that he had with someone that he had tried to love and point to Jesus.

Without getting into the details, the relationship did not turn out the way that my friend had hoped. Even the simplest conversations seemed filled with misunderstanding and mistrust. As I looked into my friend’s eyes, my heart could feel the pain that he was walking through.

In moments like this, it can really seem like the thing that you thought that you were doing to follow Jesus simply didn’t work. The feelings of frustration, disappointment and sadness can all mix together and you are tempted to wonder where things went wrong. When I have walked through these moments, I struggle with feeling like a failure, and look for ways to never let the situation happen again.

Have you ever felt this way? Have you extended yourself to love someone, only for it to backfire? These moments are painful and anyone would want to avoid them. But these are the moments, where it is imperative to look beyond what seems to be the end-result, and fix our eyes on Jesus.

These verses from John 1 are tucked in between the beautiful Light of the Word being released to this earth-realm from the very beginning, and the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. Here, the One in whom was life that was the light of men, is misunderstood and rejected.

When I read this passage, I am dumbfounded how those who walked the earth could have missed the Messiah. The accounts of the life of Christ make me wish I could have been there to see the miraculous wonders that He performed, or to be there to hear Him share the Sermon on the Mount. But truth be told, there are plenty of times that I misunderstand what it means to follow Him today.

Can you imagine what it would have been like for Jesus coming out of the carpenter shop? We don’t know exactly when He stepped out of the workshop for the last time, but we know that He was faithful for a long time, just waiting on the Father to show Him when it was His time. Shortly after His baptism and the gathering of those who would walk with Him through His last few years on the earth, Jesus shows up at a wedding. Even on the day that He would perform His first public miracle, He begins the day by saying, It’s not my time.

But when it became His time, He walked throughout the region, releasing the power and love of His Father by proclaiming and demonstrating the Good News of the Kingdom of God. He healed the sick, cast out demons, and touched the untouchables wherever He went. You would think that everyone would be rushing to Him to shower Him with love and honor, but instead of worshiping His Majesty, many were offended and missed Him altogether.

Out of love for His Father, Jesus humbled Himself as Son, and came unto the world, but the world that He created didn’t know what to do with Him. The glory of His incarnation was met with rejection from the ones that He came to serve.

He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.

This is heartbreaking. It is hard to read about in Scriptures. It is hard to write about now, not just because the people a long time ago misunderstood who He was, but because it is so easy for me to do the same thing today.

I want to think that if I love God, and follow God’s principles that everything should always work out well. I know that includes hard times, but certainly it shouldn’t include failures, should it? While this thinking matches certain ideologies offered by various parts of the church, I am struck by the words of Jesus.

If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you… John 15:20

Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven… Matthew 5:11-12

And what about the parable of the soils? Jesus says that every message in the Kingdom is like a man sowing seed. Of the four different soils, only one of them ended up producing fruit in the end. Jesus didn’t tell us these hard things to discourage us, but to prepare us for the cost of what it means to follow Him.

When we follow Jesus, if we are truly walking step for step with Him, then there will be times that we are rejected and misunderstood. In those times, it it so important that we do not react to the rejection as if it were failure. The moments where we step out in faith to follow Him may lead to fruit, thirty, sixty, or hundredfold. It may also lead to what feels like failure and a waste of time.

The question in these situations should not be How do I keep this from happening again?, but instead How do I keep focused on following Jesus in the midst of the disappointment?

I have to admit, that there have been times that I have felt embarrassed to fail in ministry. I am quite certain that some of those failures were due to my immaturity, or maybe I misunderstood what following Jesus looked like in those moments. But there are other times that we stepped out on the limb, knowing that we were following Jesus, and it seemed like the limb broke.

Those moments were hard and extremely painful, but when we are able to see those moments through the eyes of faith, God has been faithful to reveal His presence and purpose to us. In fact, some of our greatest moments in following Jesus have grown out of those circumstances that I would have tried to avoid.

My friend, Erik Fish, says that failure is fertilizer for future fruitfulness. This is often a hard word to receive in the moment, but just because it is hard doesn’t make it any less true. After all, by most every standard imaginable, Jesus left the earth a failure.

Rejected by His own. Betrayed by one of the twelve. Denied by one of the inner circle. Only one of His disciples can be placed with Him at the cross. These are not impressive points on His resume, but He wasn’t living to build an impressive image, nor was He trying to grow a following as an influencer. Actually, He made Himself of no reputation, all for Love.

And that heart of humility is what allowed His life to deal with the rejection without being defined by it. While He wept over and prayed for those who rejected Him, He spent most of His time with the few that said yes to His invitation to follow Him. Even in their fumbling and failing, He received them and empowered them to become sons of God. It is almost unimaginable that the band of unschooled, ordinary men would turn the world upside down in just a few years.

As I sat with my friend, talking about the ways things have gone so far, it was so refreshing to be able to look beyond our pain and disappointment, and look into the eyes of Jesus. His life paints a picture of hope for us when we get discouraged following Him. He is honest with us about the cost of being His disciple, but promises to abide with us forever.

In this world we will find trials of every kind, but we can be of GOOD CHEER, because He has overcome this world…

I pray that your heart will be encouraged to lean into Him for healing of every hurt and disappointment that you have experienced trying to follow Him. I pray that frustration wouldn’t be able to rob you of walking by faith and not by sight. I pray that the Helper would Help you have courage to stay vulnerable to walk with Him step by step. And finally, I pray that you would be free to follow Jesus each day and in every situation, whether it works or not.

Love and Blessings.

JOURNALING QUESTIONS // LINK TO PLAYLIST

Examine – How would you describe what this passage reveals about the life of Jesus?

MindShift – Is there anything about what you read in this passage that challenges the way you think about what it means to follow Jesus?

Prayer Focus – Is there any prayer that you can pray to co-operate with Holy Spirit to see your mind renewed to become more like Jesus?