This is the seventy-ninth lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.
See Mel Lawrenz’s book, How to Study the Bible: A Practical Guide.
We live in a world in which there are so many gods different people believe in. There is nothing new about that. Human beings have been searching for God since the creation. The religions of the world have come up with distinctly different answers to the same basic questions: What is the way or the path my life should follow? What is true? How can I live? How long will I live? How should I live? Christians believe that faith in Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, gives ultimate answers to these ultimate questions. That phrase, “way… truth… life,” comes from Jesus’ own mouth, at a defining moment in Jesus’ teaching.
In the upper room where Jesus and his disciples shared a Passover meal, and on the night when Jesus would later be betrayed, arrested, and put on trial, he told his inner circle of disciples that he would be going to leave them, offered them words of comfort at the same time.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you were going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am of the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:1-6).
The conclusion to Jesus’ earthly ministry seemed so tragic–a very strange way to start a new religion. Of course, what Jesus was doing, was not really starting a new religion, but paving the way for human beings to be reconnected with their creator, paying for the sins of the world. He had taught his disciples for three years and then told them: “I am leaving, and you know where I am going.”
Now Thomas was the disciple who was always the best at asking questions. They were honest, and blunt, and genuine. “Lord we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Sometimes everybody in the room is relieved when one person asks the question everybody is thinking. Especially when everybody is troubled, when they sense something shadowy and foreboding in the air. Where was Jesus going? And why?
Imagine you are out on a hike in a deep dark forest. Your leader tells you he is going to leave, and that you should stay on the way to get to the final destination. The only problem is, you don’t recall having heard what the destination is, and, not knowing that, you realize desperately that you have no idea which ravine you should follow, which stream you should cross, even whether you should be heading north, south, east, or west. Without your leader, you know you are hopelessly lost. And that, of course, is exactly the point. That is why Jesus looked at his disciples and said to them “I am the way.”
When you or I are trying to figure out the direction of our lives, the answer is not so much a “what,” but a “who.” Thomas’s troubled heart is really no different than any troubled heart of any person. Dear Lord: show me the path to follow.
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Mel Lawrenz (@MelLawrenz) trains an international network of Christian leaders, ministry pioneers, and thought-leaders. He served as senior pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, for ten years and now serves as Elmbrook’s minister at large. He has a PhD in the history of Christian thought and is on the adjunct faculty of Trinity International University. Mel is the author of 18 books, including How to Understand the Bible—A Simple Guide and Spiritual Influence: the Hidden Power Behind Leadership (Zondervan, 2012). See more of Mel’s writing at WordWay.
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