where else would i go?
A few years ago, my friend challenged me to consider how Jesus and Holy Spirit are praying for me (Romans 8:26; 8:34) and whether my prayers for myself were lining up with their prayers for me. Her comment was so casual, as if I might’ve already been thinking that, but I had never thought about it before, and it kind of wrecked me. I thought about it for days. Even now, while I’m not always actively thinking about it, how I live continues to be an overflow from that moment. I started swapping my vague “whatever You want” prayers, without any idea of what that might be, for prayers that asked Him to tell me what it was that He wanted, and then prayers that agreed with what I heard Him say. And it changed everything.
For example, it was around that time when I heard God tell me I could ask for a free car – which I’ve written a bit about. It blew my mind because I had a mindset that having a car payment was just the way it would be for me. The thought that I could somehow get a car without the weight of debt – or that God might want that for me – didn’t even cross my mind. It turns out, it was less about the free car, which He absolutely did provide (!!), and more about who I believed He is as a Father and who I am as His child – not a slave to the lender, like I thought. It wasn’t until I started asking Him to tell me what He wanted that I started to see and actively agree with what His will for me is.
Later, God would put something else on my heart to pray and believe for and I simultaneously felt excited and terrified – excited to agree with Him and be on this adventure with Him and also terrified because I was way out of my league. It was (and honestly still is, even after receiving a free car) challenging to believe for something so big and seemingly impossible. Isn’t that the thing about miracles though? You have to need one in order to receive one.
Some days it was easy to feel full of faith and confident that God was doing something, and other days I would question if I was even on the right track. It always brought me to my knees – literally. I’ve noticed that when I feel the most tension, the most weight, the most frustrated, it typically means I’ve stopped agreeing with what He’s saying. It can feel crippling, but I’ve started to recognize it as an arrow that points back to my surrender.
Sometimes I wish someone would’ve told me that having faith and believing God – agreeing with the prayers He’s praying for me – can often look less like an exciting adventure and more like desperately laying at His feet. Not because I’m desperately in lack, but because I’m desperately in need of Him. I can’t keep going without Him. I can’t keep believing without Him – without the author and perfecter of my faith.
I often come back to John 6:68. It’s a line from Peter, after Jesus is telling His disciples they must eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to receive eternal life. His disciples comment on how it’s a hard teaching to understand, and Jesus goes on to talk about how eternal life comes through the Spirit and human efforts accomplish nothing. “But some of you do not believe me,” Jesus says (v. 64). Scripture goes on to say that many of His disciples turned away that day. Not just a few. A lot of people who had been following Him hit a breaking point, having to answer the most important question: Do you believe or not? I guess not, and they walked away. Jesus then turned to the Twelve and asked if they were going to leave too.
Peter replied, “Master, to whom would we go? You have the words of real life, eternal life. We’ve already committed ourselves, confident that you are the Holy One of God.” John 6:68-69 MSG
Jesus is talking about the belief in Him that brings eternal life, but belief in general is key. When Jairus receives word that his daughter has died, even though Jesus knew she would rise again, He says, “Just believe.” What I’m believing for aligns more with Jairus’s story. Eternal life isn’t riding on my belief, but my relationship with Jesus is. I think that’s what He is saying here. Don’t look at your circumstances; look at Me. When my circumstances feel overwhelming, I always come back to Peter, in John 6:68. If nothing else, I keep choosing to stay, to believe – because, where else would I go? I admit, it’s not a glamorous reason to stay, but it digs my stake into the ground a little deeper. It brings my focus back to Jesus. When things feel hard and I’m tempted to walk away, I remember – there is no one else like Him. No one else can offer me something greater. Jesus is it. I might have gotten it wrong or it might play out differently than I had imagined, but I know that as long as I stay with Jesus and fix my eyes on Him, I will see that He is working in all things for my good and His glory. What He is able to do is immeasurably more than what I can even imagine.
The longer it takes for me to see what I heard God say come to pass, the more convinced I am that Jesus didn’t tell Jairus what was going to happen next because knowing wouldn’t bring him true peace. Resolving to just believe and stick with Jesus until the end, in my experience, is what brings true peace. And I think that’s the real reason that verse lingers in the back of my mind. Because it reminds me that there is unmatched, unlimited, and unshakable peace for me that can only be found in the presence of Jesus. And maybe that’s just it – it’s never about the thing He talks to us about as much as it is about what He wants us to know about Him (and ourselves) in the process.