Living Your Dream in Difficult Times

Have you ever wondered what Jesus was like as a boy? Did He argue with His brothers and sisters? Did He cry when He skinned His knee? (Or did He just heal it?) Did He ever "multiply His lunch" when He was extra hungry from working in the carpentry shop?
 
The Bible tells us only one story about the boyhood of Jesus (found in Luke 2:41-52). When He was twelve, He stayed behind in Jerusalem to talk to the religious leaders in the temple. His mother and father were frantic. For three days they looked for Him. Finally they found Him in the house of God. His matter-of-fact explanation was, "Why were you looking for me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?" (Luke 2:49).
 
The message of this story is very simple: Jesus had a dream--a sense of destiny at a very early age. As a twelve-year-old, He understood that His Heavenly Father had sent Him on a mission. It surprised Him that His parents didn't know that. Luke tells us that He then spent eighteen additional years at home developing character, obeying His parents, growing in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
 
At the age of thirty, He began to live the greatest and most fruitful life that the world was ever to record. He knew that He had been born for a purpose and His entire life was consumed with fulfilling it.

Jesus is our perfect example in all areas of life. As the God-man, He revealed to us all the aspects of God's character. "Jesus Christ is exactly like him" (Colossians 1:15). When we want to learn about faith, we turn to Him as the most faithful man who ever lived. When we want to know how to live a life of love, we study His words and actions. When we desire to develop servanthood, the best thing we can do is model the life of the servant king who sacrificed everything to bring us to God.
 
Let's take a look at the greatest life ever lived.
 
Jesus knew where he'd come from.

No one in history had a clearer understanding of where he was from than the Lord Jesus Christ.
More than twenty-five times in the gospels, Jesus explained where He was from. Here are a few examples from the fifth chapter of John:
 
"Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him" (John 5:23).
 
"I try to please the One who sent me" (John 5:30).
 
"Whoever hears what I say and believes in the One who sent me has eternal life" (John 5:24).
 
"The things I do, which are the things my Father gave me to do, prove that the Father sent me" (John 5:36).  
 
When Jesus referred to the fact that He had been sent by the Father, it gave authority to His message. He said, "No one has seen the Father except the One who is from God; only he has seen the Father" (John 6:46). When Jesus stood before a questioning Pontius Pilate, there was no need for ambivalence before this human ruler because He knew where He was from.
 
Jesus answered, "My kingdom does not belong to this world. If it belonged to this world, my servants would fight so that I would not be given over to the Jews. But my kingdom is from anothe place" (John 18:36). Our lives don't begin out of nowhere. We enter this world created and sent by God, linked to families and cultures that contribute to the people we are today.
 
Jesus knew why he was here.
 
Never was a person as secure in knowing why He had been born as Jesus. As a child, His Heavenly Father showed Him what His brief life's work was to be. For years in the carpentry shop, He must have prayed over the detailed aspects of His destiny. With great patience and submission He waited. Then at the right time, He stepped onto the pages of history to be whm he was born to be. Early in the gospel of John, Jesus declared:

"Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, the Son of Man must also be lifted up. So that everyone who believes can have eternal life in him. God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through him....They are judged by this fact: The Light has come into the world" (John 3:14-19).

Notice His complete understanding of why He was sent (to reveal God's love for the world), how He was to die (lifted up on a cross), what His death would bring (eternal life to those who believed), and what His mission was (to be the Light from God).

What clarity of purpose. No wonder people left everything behind to follow Him. In Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman in the fourth chapter of John, He openly states that He is the Messiah from God. "Then Jesus said, `I am he--I, the one talking to you.'"
 
Later on, in what Charles Spurgeon called the golden verse of the Bible, He shares with the woman how the fulfilling of his life's destiny is that which nourishes him, just as food does the human body: "My food is to do what the One who sent me wants me to do and to finish his work" (John 4:34). Jesus lived off the energy that came from fulfilling His life's calling. It was His food. It strengthened and satisfied Him. If it were important for Jesus, just think how necessary it is for us.
 
Probably the greatest understatement ever made was uttered by Pontius Pilate in John 18:37 when he said to the Lord Jesus, "So you are a king!" If his eyes had been opened to see, he would have ealized that the Maker of heaven and earth, the King of kings and Lord of lords, was standing humbly before him. Jesus then delivered to him the statement of destiny for the ages: "This is why I was born and came into the world: to tell people the truth" (John 18:37). 

The final anchor of Jesus' incredible life and ministry was the certainty of knowing His future. This was "the joy set before Him" that helped Him face His deepest valleys and most painful crises.

Jesus knew where he was going.
 
When he called Nathaniel to be His disciple, He gave him a glimpse of that future when He said, "You will all see heaven open and 'angels of God going up and coming down' on the Son of Man" (John 1:51). As He neared the end of His life, He began to prepare His followers for the fact that He was leaving and going back to the Father. (See John 16:10.) In John 16:28 He stated it plainly, "I came from the Father into the world. Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father."
 
When you know the certainty of the future, it's easier to live with the pressures of the present. The day Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in Nazi Germany, he led a service for his fellow prisoners. Then he walked toward his executioners with joy. He knew he was going to receive his heavenly reward
 
Christians have a great advantage over others regarding the certainty of future hope. The end of life's calling marks the beginning of eternity with Christ. Crowns and thrones await us.
 
John 17 is one of my favorite chapters in the New Testament. In contains the high priestly prayer that Jesus offered to the Father before His death and resurrection. In the third through fifth verses we find the most complete expression of an accomplished life purpose that has ever been recorded. Jesus, the Man of Destiny, near the end of His life, uttered these words:
 
"And this is eternal life: that people know you, the only true God, and that they know Jesus Christ, the One you sent. Having finished the work you gave me to do, I brought you glory on earth. And now, Father, give me glory with you; give me the glory I had with you before the world was made."
 
Notice the three key elements of destiny that are found in Jesus' greatest and longest prayer:

1. I finished the work you gave me to do--the present. 

2. And now, Father, give me glory with you--the future.

3. Give me the glory I had with you before the world was made--the past.
 
Jesus knew where He was from. We can know also. Jesus knew why He was born. God has a plan for us too. Jesus knew where He was going. Our future is equally certain in heaven--after our "job" is done.

We can be encouraged that Jesus doesn't leave us to work this all out on our own. Rather, the power for success comes from the fact that, as the Apostle Paul said: "I do not live anymore--it is Christ who lives in me. I still live in my body, but I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself to save me" (Galatians 2:20).  We can't do it on our own. But with Jesus in our lives, may we also be able to confidently say someday, "I finished the work You gave me to do. I brought You glory on earth."

Be like Jesus. Know where you're from, find out why you're here, and know where you're going. That the secret to living your dream in difficult times.