As a follower of Jesus, reading the Bible is something I try to do regularly. Some people call this having a quiet time, others call it daily devotions. For me, it’s more like eating. It’s not always spectacular, but if I didn’t do it regularly, I’d die.
Maybe that’s too dramatic, but you get the point. There are plenty of days that I read and it doesn’t feel life-changing, and yet I can look back over a period of consistency in it and see how my life is changing.
All of that to say that I love it when the Holy Spirit highlights something I’ve never noticed before. Like this morning when I read about the plan that Jesus’ brothers had to make him famous.
Yes, it’s in there. I read it at the beginning of John 7. Jesus knew that it wasn’t time to be in the public spotlight, and yet his brothers disagreed. Their exact words in the New Living Translation were:
“You can’t become famous if you hide like this … show yourself to the world!” (John 7:4)
They pushed Jesus to be famous and he pushed back about faithfulness. Specifically, he told them that it wasn’t time yet, and that he would continue to be faithful in obscurity until it was time for more visibility.
This is staggering to me and a shot at my ambition! I want to adopt the brothers’ plan for my life more than the route Jesus chose. I want each one of you who read these words to share them and “show them to the world” so that my name can be great!
And yet, Jesus shows us a different way, and isn’t that what Jesus does best? He elevates faithfulness over fame and points to something that must be activated internally before it can be elevated externally.
[Tweet “Jesus elevates faithfulness over fame and points to something that must be activated internally before it can be elevated externally.”]We’ll never achieve depth through a busy schedule driven by the demands of the crowd. Depth comes through silence, solitude, and waiting. Keep digging. There’s a message in the deep that God wants us to have whenever he decides it’s time to go public.
