How to Turn to Jesus When You Feel Like Turning Away
How Jesus Responds to Pressure
In Matthew 13–14, we hear about some of the pressures Jesus was under. First, he was in Nazareth, his hometown, but although people were amazed at his teaching, they rejected it and took offense (Matt. 13:53–58). Second, he heard that his cousin, John the Baptist, had been beheaded by Herod, and that Herod was now terrified that Jesus was actually John brought back to life (Matt. 14:1–12). Rejection, grief, and perhaps concern about Herod’s next move must have created the temptation for Jesus to despair. We know that Jesus was tempted in the wilderness (see Matt. 4:1–11). But think about this: he faced the human realities of stress and trouble and sorrow throughout his life. Temptation for him must have been ever present. He was fully human in every way. And so, he reacted to these pressures in a fully human, fully sinless way by retreating into relationship.
In Matthew 14:13, Jesus “withdrew . . . to a desolate place by himself” and, as he was interrupted, later he went farther, escaping “up on the mountain by himself to pray . . . he was there alone” (Matt. 14:23). Matthew couldn’t be clearer about Jesus’s retreat to be away from people to be with his God, on whom, in his human nature, he depended. Exposed on the mountain in all his human vulnerability, Jesus could pour out his heart and be understood. He could be comforted through knowing his Father.
Of course, intimate dependence and comfort is what you want when you’re stressed, isn’t it? That is what we all yearn for. And it is obvious that seeking God’s help is what we should do, isn’t it? Taking time to rest consciously in God’s love is a must. There are no substitutes.
Resilient Faith
Lewis Allen, Sarah Allen
Lewis and Sarah Allen encourage and exhort believers to approach life’s adversities in a biblically grounded way by leaning on Christ and committing to his church.
Does this truth sting a bit? Perhaps (as I do) you feel regret or sadness or even guilt as you see Jesus’s perfect response to pressure, and as you reflect on your own kind of retreat. Rather than retreating into relationship with our heavenly Father, we so often hide in distraction and worse. Whether your go-to distraction is binge-watching, binge-eating, compulsive shopping, or something darker, or the (often, but not always) healthier options of fiction, gaming, crafting, social-media, or exercise—it still isn’t prayer, or at least, not in-depth prayer. The issue, very often, for us Christians isn’t that we don’t know what to do, but that we don’t do what we know is best.
Turning Back—to Him
What then are we to do?
Reflect for a moment on why Jesus would have journeyed to the mountaintop in the dark. God is love: the Son and Father and the Holy Spirit are always one in essence and united in joyful, delighting, superabounding love. Now incarnated in a limited body, Jesus went to spend time with his heavenly Father, to find rest in this love. He did it because it was the best thing for a tempted and pressured man to do.
This loving retreat, what one theologian has called “a perfect openness,”1 was an expression of obedience. As a perfect man, Jesus obeyed his Father by remaining in his love (John 15:10). To love God, for him (and for us as his followers) means seeking to obey; to obey means persevering in love. So often, the right thing to do seems to us like drudgery. Dull but necessary, like cleaning the bathroom or drinking plenty of water, writing thank-you notes or checking the oil in the car. But Jesus shows us here that to obey is to love. He obeyed because he loves his Father, and he loves us. Now that is a remarkable thought! Here I am at my desk, typing on a laptop in a Yorkshire town on a snowy February evening. Jesus walked up a mountain in the warmth of a Galilean spring two thousand years ago, and he did it out of love for me. This loving obedience of his, as he retreated to wrestle in prayer, was part of the righteous life he lived that I and so many millions more might know him now and into eternity.
To love God, for him (and for us as his followers) means seeking to obey; to obey means persevering in love.
In Romans 5:19, Paul tells us that “through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (NIV). This means that the minute-by-minute obedience of Jesus’s earthly life, and the ultimate obedience of dying on the cross, have changed the identity of all who have been joined to him by faith. If you’ve put your trust in him, you’re joined to him, and if you’re joined to him, you’re given his righteousness. It’s as if you now have an ID card stamped “righteous.” All the boxes you’ve ticked and those you’ve left blank are now superimposed by that stamp. Righteous.
So how does this help you when you yet again turn your eyes away from the Bible on the shelf or ignore the texts and calls of your Christian brothers and sisters? Well, for a start, it tells you that’s not who you are. Christians have been called righteous. And to be righteous is to be connected and dependent, not disconnected and self-reliant.
This means that turning to Jesus in trial or in worry or even in boredom is to walk through a door he has already opened for you by his own obedience. You might feel the battle to concentrate or struggle to be honest about the state you’ve slipped into but turning to Jesus means entering his loving embrace. Jesus did the right things you couldn’t and wouldn’t do, and this means that now you can take that step into conscious dependence on him. How do you start? Perhaps by confessing the independence that has kept you from coming to him and the desire you have to keep away from God and his holiness. You must ask him to give you a hunger to keep turning back to him and for the day-by-day strength to form new habits of reliance.
Notes:
- Peter Lewis, The Glory of Christ (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997), 207.
This article is adapted from Resilient Faith: Learning to Rely on Jesus in the Struggles of Life by Lewis and Sarah Allen.
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