Jesus, Our Provision

Here is a truth that can quietly change how you pray, work, and worry. Everything God ever wanted to give you, He placed inside one Person. Everything God does for people, He does through Jesus.

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.

1 Timothy 2:5 (NKJV)

There is one God, and one Mediator. That single fact means your access to all you need is tied directly to your access to Jesus. As you give Him more and more of your life, your life gains more and more access to everything He is holding for you.

God did a two-part work

To rescue you, God worked in two directions at once. First, to remove the negative things from you, He put you into Jesus, so that in Him you were crucified. Your old sinful nature was put to death on the cross.

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

Galatians 2:20 (NKJV)

If you still see the old things in your life, it is not because they were never crucified. It is because your mind and body still need to be trained to live differently. Think of Lincoln's emancipation proclamation. Freedom was declared, but it took a war to enforce it. You are now at war with enemies in your life that have already been legally defeated.

So you can say it and mean it: I am dead to sin, dead to lust, dead to addiction, dead to anger, dead to depression. These things are dead men in your life now. Take off the dead man's clothes.

And Jesus put in you

The second part is just as real. To bless you with everything you need for life and godliness, God put Jesus in you. He took all the riches of His glorious inheritance, love, joy, healing, health, peace, favor, provision, and He placed them all in Jesus.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

Ephesians 1:3 (NKJV)

Scripture says it was in Him that God was pleased to let all His fullness dwell, and that you have been justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Every good thing, gathered into one Person, and then that Person handed to you.

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell.

Colossians 1:19 (NKJV)

So the moment you received Jesus, instantly, you received all that God wanted to give you. The same love Jesus had, the same Spirit, the same patience, all of it is already inside you. Which leads to a startling thought. You cannot be more blessed than you are right now.

If you do not yet seem to enjoy it, that is not because you do not have it. It is only because you have not yet learned to access your inheritance. So how do you access it?

That the sharing of your faith may become effective by the acknowledgment of every good thing which is in you in Christ Jesus.

Philemon 1:6 (NKJV)

You access it by acknowledging it, and that acknowledgment means taking a risk. It means living your life as if what God said He has done in you is actually true. And every time you do, you give Jesus a little more access, and your life gains a little more access to all He holds.

Launch out into the deep

There is a morning by the lake that captures all of this. Jesus had been teaching from Simon's boat, and when He finished He turned to a tired, empty-handed fisherman.

Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.

Luke 5:5 (NKJV)

The nets came up so full they began to break. Here is the key. Every fish Simon needed had been locked up in Jesus. The moment Jesus stepped into that boat, the Maker of the fish was aboard, and everything Simon had failed to catch all night was suddenly available.

Notice how it happened, because it shows you how your own breakthrough comes. There were two boats on the shore, and only one made room for Jesus. That is more than being saved. That is surrendering your whole kingdom to King Jesus and saying, let Your kingdom come, and let it start with me.

Then comes that word, nevertheless. I have tried everything, and nothing worked, nevertheless at Your word I will let it down, because You say so. And finally, they forsook all and followed Him. They refused to let even the blessing they had just received keep them from the One who gave it.

Jesus needs a vessel

People everywhere are longing for Jesus. He is the desire of the nations. The world has tried our doctrines and they failed. It has tried money, and money failed. It has tried sex and pleasure, and they failed. But Jesus needs a platform. He needs a vessel through which a hungry world can come to know Him.

This is why God's goal was never simply to get you into heaven. His goal is to get heaven into you, and then out through you. So He pleads the way He pleaded with Peter: make your vessel available to Me. Make your time available, in the choir, among the ushers and greeters. Make your home available, for a small group, for a Bible study. Let Me reach your children, your colleagues, your city through you.

The extent to which you are surrendered to Jesus is the extent to which you can access all the Father placed in Him. When Jesus has His way, it means you are not having yours. You are the king or queen of your own domain. The real question is whether you will yield that domain, freely, to the King of kings.

Which King will have His way?

Consider the person who hurts or betrays you. Everything in you wants them punished. But what Jesus wants is for them to taste the goodness of God and be saved, and for that He needs your vessel, your heart, your love. So the question every day is simple. Will you die a little, so that Jesus can shine? Whose mind will people hear when they meet you, a piece of yours, or a piece of His?

Faith, in the end, is spelled r-i-s-k. When it finally settles in you that God has placed everything you need in Jesus, you will let nothing and no one separate you from Him, not even the blessings you receive along the way.

To have Jesus is for Jesus to have you

So what does it actually mean to have Jesus? It means for Jesus to have you. It means for Him to own you, for His will to become your will, until in the depths of your soul you can honestly say your own name is no longer the one living there; Jesus is. Put it plainly: if I become more like Jesus in every way, I will live more like Jesus every day.

And do not miss what comes with Him. All that the Father placed in Jesus includes the very operations of the Holy Spirit, so that the greater works He promised could be done through you. Right now, acknowledge the gifts of the Spirit already in you. You can prophesy. You can lay hands on the sick and they recover. You can speak a word of knowledge that lands like light in someone's darkness. You can command a demon to leave. These are not reserved for a special class of Christian; they are part of the inheritance already deposited in you the day you received Him.

So bring the boat you have been struggling with all night and let Him step in. Say it and mean it: Jesus, I am tired of struggling with this boat; come and take over my life. Let Your will be my will. As you give Him more access to your life, your life gains more access to all the Father put in Him to meet your need. Launch out into the deep, and let down your net.