Here is the revelation that is showing my life today – we make so much of life about what we can achieve on our own, and God wants us to do nothing on our own. Love always wants to be involved and enable me to do what I can’t do on my own.
John 6:65 NIV
[65] He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”
Observation
Jesus makes this statement several times in this chapter. Coming to Jesus requires an enabling of the Father, and it has an “unless” attached to it making it imperative. It is not a work I can undertake on my own. This is more than a prayer of stated belief and a Confession of my sins seeking forgiveness. We make coming to Jesus all about us, but Jesus says clearly, that it’s an enabling that is beyond us, it’s only the Father who can enable us. Belief and confession are an intellectual response to stimulus, they may have a place but the enabling of the Father is beyond our own doing. Maybe this is why many fall away, maybe they came on their own, in their own capacity.
It could be said that belief and confession are the work of enabling of the Father, but I believe this could also be done without the Father. I can mount an argument and shame and condemnation can cause confession and the seeking of forgiveness, all this can happen outside the Father. So what is this critical enabling? Is it a response that is deeper than intellectual consciousness? Does the enabling of the Father involve a heart and spirit response of faith and confession that is only enabled by the presence and encounter of the Father? Is the shallowness of the intellect not what God had in mind when He offers salvation? Is it encountered the presence of God that enables a coming that the intellect cannot encounter, but only God herself can grant to us intimately? If it is to relationship that we are saved then it may well follow that our coming is relational and not intellectual at its core. Rather than a sinner’s prayer for salvation should we be leading people to an encounter prayer of intimate relationship. “Father enable me to be present to your presence that I may follow you from the intimate encounter of Jesus in my heart and spirit.” From this encounter, belief is now not shaped by dogma but by beauty and awe of encounter, confession is not a seeking of forgiveness but a brokenness of heart over fallenness and pain inflicted on the one who loves me. This coming to Jesus through encounter that can only be enabled by the Father is a conversation that shapes and fuels an all-of-life journey. I can change my mind but I cannot change an encounter.
Application
Father enable me to come to Jesus daily, often, without the restriction of intellect, but with a fuller encounter of you that illuminates intellects dim sight.
Response
Thank you I can’t do it my way, that is not up to me, or even available to me, it is only through you that I can come into a saving restoring relationship with you. You enable to all what we cannot do for ourselves, this is always the beauty of your design, it’s with you never without you, it’s through you never by self. I love this life of intimacy.
Meditation
Meditate – no one can come to Jesus unless the Father has enables them.
Consider:
How much of your spiritual walk is self-directed and done outside the Father’s enabling?
What if all walking with Jesus was done through the lens that asks first and foremost, “Father, enable me to walk with you.”
JOURNEY DEEPER