Pointing to Jesus
If you’re like me, you want to offer your best—whether it’s to your family, your friends, or to God. But so often, our best can feel buried under exhaustion, grief, or the fear we’re not enough or are too much.
Perhaps you feel it too—the tension between wanting to appear capable and the ache to be known as you are. So when friends and family members suggested I create a website and blog dedicated to sharing the comfort I’ve received from God with others living in the tension of joy and sorrow, I resisted. In fact, I created a previous version of this website two years ago and told no one about it so that I wouldn’t have to manage it or handle disappointing others.
But God has called me to steward the message he’s given me and to serve you. And more than anything, I want to be obedient to him. I also want you to know a hope—the Hope—that doesn’t disappoint. And I long for you to find fullness and joy in Jesus, right now, wherever you are.
Over the past few weeks, God has been drawing my attention to John 1:19-37.
John the Baptist was baptizing in the Jordan River and attracting such a crowd out in the desert that the religious leaders were envious and sent priests to question him.
“Who are you?” they demanded to know. After finding to their satisfaction that John was not the Messiah, Elijah, or the Prophet, they demanded, “Who are you, then? . . . We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What can you tell us about yourself?” (v. 22).
Who are you? Who are you and I to speak of what we have seen and heard?
What are you doing? You and I may not feel that we have the qualifications, skills, connections, education, resources, or strength to share our testimony, dare to speak up at work against injustice, cross the street to meet the new neighbor, serve in kids’ ministry, welcome back the wayward child, break free from addiction, or forgive the ongoing critiques of a misguided family member. And honestly, we may not possess all the elements that would make those acts easier or less uncomfortable.
But notice John’s response in v. 23: “I am a voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord—just as Isaiah the prophet said.” John knew who he was and whose he was which gave him the confidence to boldly obey God’s call on his life and joyfully join God in his kingdom work.
If John had measured success in terms of followers, he would have been a miserable failure. Because instead of amassing an audience focused on him, John had a different strategy: he pointed to Jesus.
“The next day, John was standing with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God!’” (v. 35-36). And what did John’s disciples do? They left John and followed Jesus (v. 37)!
Friend, that’s all any of us can hope to do: to join God in his work in the world by making much of Jesus. So no, I don’t fancy myself a prophet called by God to prepare the way for the Messiah. I am not John the Baptist.
But I am Tiffany. Add you’re you. And you and I are invited to experience and know Jesus more fully. We’re invited to testify to others, “Look, the Lamb of God!” “Look, there he is in your life. Look, here he is in my life!”
This blog is nothing more than my attempt to point to Jesus and an encouragement for you to point to Jesus in your own life and in the lives of those around you.
May we experience more of Jesus in the journey together because he’s already here, already working, already loving us in the messy middle.