John 8:28 Jesus therefore said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me.
John 8:29 “And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.”
Let’s continue to look at these two key verses that give us real insight into Jesus’ walk in the Spirit. First, yesterday we said that Jesus lived His life on earth absolutely and utterly surrendered to His Father’s will. He didn’t just always do the Father’s will, He delighted in His constant yes to the Father. Each moment was about extravagant affection offered to His Father through His surrendered life.
Secondly, Jesus said He was SENT. He uses that phrase 38 times in the Gospel of John; 5 times in John 8. Jesus lived with a sense of destiny, and destination everyday. The word SENT carries with it the idea again of being surrendered to someone else’s will, but also a sense of intelligent purpose and destination. It has the idea of something that already exists. You don’t send someone into nothingness. It assumes an expectant place and circumstance. If I send someone, then there is a where and a what I must be sending them into, and that’s in light of my limited knowledge and insight.
Every moment of everyday the Father knew exactly where and what He was leading Jesus into. It was all intentional and predestined. It was already waiting for Him. Jesus knew all of this. He lived convinced that every moment of His day was full of destiny and divine purpose. There weren’t any real surprises. His life was ordered, and full of Heavenly value and purpose, whether it was being at a wedding party singing the songs of the day in celebration, or sitting around a campfire laughing with His friends, or spitting in the mud, or raising the dead, or dying on a Cross. He knew who was in control of His life, His every moment, and therefore every moment was pregnant with relevance and destiny. This was an important part of His practicing the presence of His Father. The significance of His daily life wasn’t determined by the nature of His activity, but instead by the origin of His activity, and He knew the origin of all He did was the Father who was always SENDING Him.
Do you and I live with the same sense of destiny and destination? Do you live a SENT life? Is your first response in every situation to remember that He who sends you is ordering your life, (that you are sent here into this; as a matter of fact this situation was always waiting for you to arrive) and that He knows exactly what He’s doing? Jesus said in John 20:21, “Peace be with you; as the Father has SENT Me, I also SEND you.”