Jesus and Insurrection

I’ve had the distinct privilege of getting to spend the past couple of days playing and praying with some of the most humble, creative and passionate kingdom leaders I know. It is a group consisting of varying colors and native languages united in our devotion to Jesus and to one another.

Yesterday we spent most of the day on our knees interceding for one another, prayerfully dreaming about how to best serve the next generation of kingdom leaders and asking Jesus to have his way in our cities and nation. It wasn’t until we emerged from the prayer closet that we began to learn about the events unfolding in our nation’s capital.

I have felt a lot of different things over the past twenty-four hours: anger, embarrassment, bewilderment, frustration and grief, to name a few. But surprise has not been one of them.

If the past few years have revealed anything, it’s that we are not well. We never were. In this season the human heart is simply being exposed in our country for what it is: dark and hopelessly broken apart from Jesus. Keeping or swapping out presidents, political parties or kingdoms of this world will not change this. It’ll just rearrange the details.

We need change on a far deeper level. If our lust for power is to be broken, if the violence is going to end, if the demonizing of those we disagree with is to stop, if the sins of nationalism and partisanship bathed in Christian language are to be escaped, if systemic racism is to finally be done away with once and for all, we are going to need a full and thorough heart transplant.

Jesus, have your way in me. Have your way in us. Take center stage in your church. Make us into a people who follow you wholeheartedly; who live as you lived, who love as you loved, a people who are shaped by your gospel and captivated by your kingdom, who repeatedly lay down personal comfort and preference practicing self-sacrificial love so that others might find life.

Only you can do this, Jesus. Only you. Have your way in us.