No more world

My mind was blown listening to this sermon! Darrell brings up the concept of the world and the question that people ask most often in response to John 17 – Why does Jesus not pray for the world? When in reality, we learn that Jesus does pray for the world because everything he prays for has a world orientation.

The part that made me “woah” was this: Jesus does not come to change the world, rather to challenge the world to stop being the world. And once the world knows that Jesus has been sent into the world…. It will no longer be the world!!!!! I have never thought about this concept in that way before! When all of the world knows and recognizes that Jesus is king, there will be no more world. Dang. During this time of political campaigning and the upcoming election, I can’t help but think about the time when we finally stop attempting to organize ourselves without God.  

DJ also talks about the three things that the evil one does to get Jesus’s disciples to stay stuck in the world: divert our attention, distract our devotion, and destroy confidence that God is good (lots of D’s). Evil’s major goal is to get us to doubt God’s goodness – which Jesus counteracts by praying that HIS JOY made be made FULL in us!!  DJ says that joy is the emotion that says “this is what I was made for.” I appreciated this definition because sometimes joy is a hard concept for me to grasp, especially knowing that joy can exist during great sadness and grief. Joy is the emotion of being in relationship with God and knowing his goodness, which is why it can co-exist with pain.