{"id":22260,"date":"2023-04-03T08:43:40","date_gmt":"2023-04-03T12:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22260"},"modified":"2023-04-03T10:39:20","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T14:39:20","slug":"22260","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=22260","title":{"rendered":"The Only Sign Jesus Offers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Tauren Wells - God&#039;s Not Done With You (Lyrics)\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4viNvg7mQ_Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Only Sign Jesus Offers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus said, \u201cNo sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.\u201d \u2014Matthew 12:39&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Father Richard considers what Jesus meant when he promised \u201cthe sign of Jonah\u201d:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This strong one-liner of Jesus feels rather amazing and largely unheard. He even says it is an \u201cevil age\u201d that wants anything other than the simple sign of the prophet Jonah. He says it is the \u201conly sign\u201d that he will give.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is indeed unsatisfying. For it is not a sign at all, but more an anti-sign.<strong> It demands that we release ourselves into the belly of darkness before we can know what is essential. It insists that the spiritual journey is more like giving up control than taking control.<\/strong> It might even be saying that others will often throw us overboard, and that we get to the right shore by God\u2019s grace more than right action on our part. It is clearly a very disturbing and unsatisfying sign.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Faith is precisely no-thing. It is nothing we can prove in order to be right, or use to get anywhere else. If we want something to believe in (which is where we all must start), <strong>we had best begin as Christians with clear ground, identity, and boundaries. But that is not yet faith! That is merely securing the foundations for our own personal diving board.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Faith is the leap into the water, now with the lived experience that there is&nbsp;<em>One who can and will catch us<\/em>\u2014and lead us where we need to go. Religion, in some sense, is a necessary first half of life phenomenon.<\/strong> Faith is much more possible in the second half of life, not necessarily chronologically but always spiritually. To paraphrase Danish philosopher S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard (1813\u20131855), <strong>\u201cLife must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backward.\u201d<\/strong> [1] Jonah knew what God was doing, and how God does it, and how right God is\u2014only<em>&nbsp;after<\/em>emerging from the belly of the whale. Until he has first endured the journey, the darkness, the spitting up on the right shore\u2014all in spite of his best efforts to avoid these very things\u2014Jonah has no message whatsoever to give. Jonah is indeed a symbol of transformation. Jesus had found the Jonah story inspiring, no doubt, because it described almost perfectly what was happening to him. [2]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Much of my earlier work with men and spirituality was teaching them how to trust their time in the belly of the whale, how to stay there without needing to fix, to control, or even to fully understand it, and to wait until God spit them up on a new shore. It is called \u201climinal space,\u201d and I believe <strong>all in-depth transformation takes place inside of liminal space. To hope too quickly is to hope for the wrong thing. The belly of the whale is the great teaching space, and thus it is no surprise that Jesus said this was the only sign he was going to give <\/strong>(Luke 11:30). [3]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Fleeing the Call<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>At the CAC\u2019s CONSPIRE conference in 2018, faculty member Barbara Holmes shared her own personal \u201cJonah story\u201d:&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a crisis of disobedience when we choose to disobey God\u2019s will for our lives. In this instance, I think of Jonah\u2026. He thinks he\u2019s right. He hates the Assyrians, and understandably so. After all, they were a marauding, land-grabbing nation, a real\u202fthreat to Israel. He had national pride. He wanted to see them destroyed. And so, when he gets the call from God, he travels 2,500\u202fmiles to the southern area of Spain. He couldn\u2019t get much further away. Why does he flee? He flees, he says at the end of chapter four, because he knows God is merciful. There is no worse situation than a merciful God when you want to see your enemies get what\u2019s coming to them. Jonah wants to do things his way and ends up in the belly of a sea monster.\u202f\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you have a Jonah story? I do.\u202fFrom the age of ten through my twenties, I knew I had a call of God on my life. Through dreams, waking visions, and moments of surprising attunement with the Divine, I knew God was calling me. But here I am, a ten-year-old girl, with a call to something I don\u2019t understand. I\u2019d never seen a woman in ministry. For that matter, I\u2019d never seen a woman leading in any spiritual capacity. So, what to do?\u202f&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, what I did was I went on with my life. I got married, had two children, and after a decade heard the call again even more strongly. This time I turned my head to where I thought God lived (up there) and I said, \u201cExcuse me, sir, or ma\u2019am\u201d\u2014I wanted to cover my bases\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t know if you know about the divorce, but I have two children and I\u2019ve got to feed them and ministers make no money. So, if you don\u2019t mind, I\u2019m going to law school.\u201d [1]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>It took time, but Holmes eventually said \u201cyes\u201d to God\u2019s call. She encourages listeners to remain open and faithful to God\u2019s invitations to serve:&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As I was standing at graduation from law school, I heard a voice say to me, \u201cThis isn&#8217;t it.\u201d And I kind of startled, and I said to my girlfriend who was standing in line with me to get our degrees, \u201cI just heard a voice say, \u2018This is not it.\u2019\u201d And she started laughing. She said, \u201cWell, you sure have wasted a lot of time.\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was nothing to do but hear the whispering, continue my practices. And I now allow life to lead me to the precipice of the newness that was already seeded in my life&#8230;.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Trust God, trust Holy Spirit to lead you into all truth. Make your intention clear, that yes, you will follow as called, without exception. Just make your intention known to God and wait for the Holy Spirit to lead you into the fulfillment of your vocation<\/strong>. [2]&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today&#8217;s Secondary Devo by Joni Eareckson Tada)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>We Always Carry<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> . . . We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus\u2019 sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. \u2014 2 CORINTHIANS 4:10 \u2013 12 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today\u2019s verse could sound a little morbid. We always carry around in our body Christ\u2019s death? We are always being given over to death for Jesus\u2019 sake?! A hearty and happy yes! Why happy? Because then \u2014 and only then \u2014 can the vibrant, joyful life of our Savior be revealed through us. And his life is revealed in us for God\u2019s glory, our eternal advantage, and others\u2019 benefit. W<strong>e carry around Jesus\u2019 death when we daily die to sin in the same way he died for sin. <\/strong>It means not taking a casual greeting like \u201cHow are you doing?\u201d as an excuse to list every minor and major casualty of your day. Not using your prayer group time as an excuse to gossip. Not painting a picture of your marriage that colors your spouse as the culprit and you the hero. Not living like a martyr and making sure everybody else knows it. These are ordinary, yet important ways of putting your flesh to death with its itchiness to rebel. Oh, to die to sin in the same selfless, patient manner as Jesus on his cross! Oh, if we could only see that refusing sin benefits others around us (just as Jesus was thinking of us on his cross). Then his life would be revealed in us \u2014 his profound peace, effervescent joy, and enduring hope. <strong>Jesus, I need the power of your resurrection to help me \u201cdie to sin\u201d today. Help me to see how \u201ccarrying your death\u201d will result in a livelier life for me . . . and deep encouragement for others around me.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tada, Joni Eareckson. Pearls of Great Price (pp. 150-151). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Only Sign Jesus Offers Jesus said, \u201cNo sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.\u201d \u2014Matthew 12:39&nbsp; Father Richard considers what Jesus meant when he promised \u201cthe sign of Jonah\u201d:&nbsp; This strong one-liner of Jesus feels rather amazing and largely unheard. He even says it is an \u201cevil age\u201d that wants anything other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22260"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22260"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22267,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22260\/revisions\/22267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}