Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Unintended...

So I was wondering the other day… Did Jesus ever do anything unintentionally? We often do things without thinking. When we go to the shops we go to buy something, not to impact the people that we might meet there. When we go to a friend’s house we usually don’t think about the impact we could have on them or the encouragement we could be to them. Granted, sometimes we do things with intention. As a youth group leader I have conversations with the intention of building a relationship with my leaders or young people. I make phone calls with intention. But not all the time. Often we do things without any missional or ministerial intention. I wonder if Jesus ever did that?
In John 2 he went to the wedding in Cana but he ended up performing his first sign there of turning water into wine. Did he think about that on the way to the party? Did he intentionally go to the wedding with the purpose of fixing their relationship crisis and establishing his identity as the Son of God. Or did he go to have fun and celebrate the wedding but ended up doing all the other things as well because the opportunity arose. Similarly when he visited Mary and Martha, or when he took longer to go back there when Lazarus was sick. All of those things had an affect on the people around him. I don’t think Jesus, during his life of public ministry ever did anything unintentionally. If you read the first couple of chapters of the Gospel of John you see that John recorded Jesus actions day by day. Not a day went by without something significant happening in Jesus’ life. Jesus lived on purpose. He knew why he was here on earth and he knew what he had to do, so he did it. When we know why we’re here and what we have to do, shouldn’t we also live life on purpose?

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