A Million Billion Trillion Quadrillion Questions

I want to know all about the relationship between Jesus and the Father. I mean, Jesus was fully man, so did He experience times (like, maybe, in the wilderness) where He felt the seeming abandonment of the Father that we sometimes feel? Or did He have the gift and blessing of perpetual nearness because He was special?

At the cross, He cried, "Why have You forsaken Me?" But was this the only time He felt this ache?

In Matthew 3:13–17, Jesus is baptized, and the Father says, "This is my Son." It is interesting to note that Jesus' sonship is exactly what Satan attacks when the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tried in chapter 4. Satan says three times: "If you are really the Son of God..." But that's besides the point.

How much did Jesus know while on earth? Was He omniscient as a man? When He was being tempted, how did He know what to say? Did He only know what the Father spoke to Him and what He learned in Scripture?

In Isaiah 50:4–5, we see that Jesus was given the tongue of the learned and that the Father opened His ear to hear. The Father woke Him up every morning in order to teach Him the things of the learned. In other words, Jesus had to learn stuff. In other other words, Jesus didn't always know everything.

Really?

How much did the Father tell Him? When did He learn it? Did He know, even as a child, that He'd be dying the way that He did and why?

Obviously, He knew a lot as a child, because the way He was able to teach from the Scripture.

I sometimes get so caught up in the divinity of Jesus that I forget how lowly He must have been in His human form. Even though He was God, He gave up His heavenly home (and, apparently, His omniscience...anything else?) to come here and be like us. He was even humble for a man... not just because He was God and became a man...He was also humble compared to other men in how He walked in His everyday life as a man. I mean, He really laid it down every day, saying, not My will but the Father's. So...I want to know about what life on earth must have really been like for Him.

I mean, Jesus was totally dependent on the Father's voice. In John 5:19, Jesus says that He can't even do anything by Himself, He only did what He saw the Father doing. He was given the gift of the Father's voice. He was given grace and strength on earth to hear, to do, and to speak whatever the Father was saying.

Jesus was so strong! He was strong because of His relationship with His Father! Even not knowing everything, even in the weakness of being fully a man, even with all doubts and temptations and insecurities assailing Him, He "did not turn away or rebel" from the voice of the Father when He could have (Isa. 50:4). That's amazing.

First Place

Last night I had a dream about my future children–they were serious and passionate people, and I remember knowing how outside of them I was. Even my children, who depended on me, were still, like all others, outside of me, separate in a place unreachable.

I don't know if I will have a family. It used to be something I took for granted: that I would grow up and go through all the normal stages one after another, end up married with kids in a little cozy house with a normal, average, American life.

But one night, the Lord showed me a picture of my ideal life, of where I assumed my life was going: a little white house with curtains blowing in and out of shuttered windows, a little path to the front door, a green, plant-filled yard yard and woods in the back. And in the house, I knew, warm and safe, was my husband and my kids.

And He asked me: "Are you willing to give this up for Me?"

First of all, it was an insight into my own heart: I had never really known how much I wanted this in the future, or how much I expected it. And second, it was God's mercy in showing me where I needed to align myself with Him. How many dreams do we have, even unwittingly, that we place above Him in the great hierarchy of our desires?

The other day I was listening to a teaching by Allen Hood from IHOP. He was talking about how he had bargained with God as a youth for the timing of the return of Jesus. Do we really want His return above all other things? Do we really want it now? I think it's pretty common for us to say: "Well, I hope I can experience marriage before You come back. And maybe parenthood, or maybe grand-parenthood. You know what? How about You return when I'm on my deathbed anyway. It would be really great then; it would really be better for my schedule."

Of course, when the Lord showed me the picture of my ideal and gave me that challenge, He wasn't saying necessarily that I would not ever have it. He was saying: "Are you willing to place Me at the top of the dreams of your heart? Will you to lift Me above the hopes for your life on earth? Will you desire Me above the rest? Are you able to say with a full heart, 'Even so, Lord come'?"

On the earth right now, there are millions of people who need Him to come right now, establish justice and His throne, and rescue them from wickedness, poverty, and slavery. With my comparatively comfortable, American life, it's easy to forget them in all the plans that I make.

So that is the challenge.

Thank you, Lord, for the grace to see where I don't place you first. Come make our hearts pleasing to You. Give us the longing for God, for Your will to be done, and for Your kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.