What Do You Want Jesus To Do For You?

What Do You Want Jesus to Do For You? – December 31, 2015

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. (Revelation 21:4)

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about a phrase that Jesus asked from time to time, “What do you want me to do for you?”

Many of us long for healing and wholeness. We long for our wounds to be healed so our sinful patterns of idolatry and addiction can be broken and removed from us forever. We want that healing to be complete and we want it to happen now. And yet we all remain mired in brokenness of some kind. Maybe it is a physical brokenness in our appearance or our abilities. Maybe our struggle is with depression or some other mental illness. Perhaps we yearn to be free of some harmful bad habits, but even though we give our best effort, we remain stuck in the same toxic patterns.

Sometimes, in this life, that is as good as it gets.

But as we follow Jesus in our broken state, something is happening in and around us. A seed is being formed and all the good things that Jesus does in and through us are becoming embedded in that seed. The question for us in this life is “Who or what do we want to have at the core of our seed?”

If we make anything other than Jesus the core of our seed, our seed remains stuck in its present state and develops into a toxic weed seed. But with Jesus at the core of our seed, his goodness purifies that seed that is forming so that its nature is changed and it becomes a seed that produces fruit that is good, beautiful and true.

Unless we are alive when Jesus returns, all of us are going to die one day and our body will be placed in the ground like a seed. But a future day is coming when Jesus will germinate the life that he has placed in our seed. Then we will experience what we have always longed for: complete physical, mental and spiritual healing with no more bad habits or addictions to plague us. We will see Jesus face-to-face and he will wipe every tear from our eyes. All of creation will also be healed and the renewed earth will be reunited with the renewed heaven, just like things were in the very beginning.

The really good times are yet to come. But the present time is very important. God the Father, in his infinite wisdom, knows that being a messed-up, broken sinner is the perfect condition for a human being to be drawn towards, fall in love with and grow to become more like his Son our Saviour, Jesus. If we had no need, there would be no love. Independent and self-sufficient, we would be separated from God’s love forever.

All that you could ever want or need is found in the person of Jesus Christ and he is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).

So what do you want Jesus to do for you?

Prayer: Dear Jesus, I long for healing and wholeness. Please come and live at the core of my being. Make me into a seed that produces good fruit both now and in the life to come. Amen.