Losing at Winning, Winning at Losing - Who is Jesus Wrap up

Final Post - Who is Jesus?

Hide and Seek ranks as one of the top games my three year old Son Caleb loves to play. What's funny about Caleb's slant on the game is the way he scores the game. For Caleb the joy of the game is not being successfully hidden but instead the joy is being successfully and immediately found. As soon as the counting stops he is squeaking and chirping so that I find him as soon as possible. Caleb's version of hide and seek is foolishness to how I've been trained to play the game of hide and seek or any other game.

Crazy Caleb would rather score points for the other team (me the seeker.) Who does that? Why does Caleb choose to lose the game?

Well, Caleb is so drunk with joy at being united with His father (me, the seeker) that all other score cards (successfully hiding and winning the game) are tossed out. Winning the contest is far, far secondary to communing in His Father’s love. In the game, he’d rather DIE a LOSER in order to LIVE a WINNER at intimacy with His dad.

In Christ, I see the same boldness, confidence, passion, & radiant surrender in the last chapter of Who is Jesus?

Like Caleb, when playing hide and seek with God the Father Jesus says in Hebrews 2:13, ““Here I am, and the children God has given me.”

Darrell Johnson writes, “Do you hear what Jesus is saying? Those steeped in the Bible, in the Old Testament, as the author of Hebrews would have heard it loud and clear. “Here I am.” The Father is finally getting an answer to the very first question He asked humanity. In the Garden, in the Garden which had become a Cemetery because of the sin of Adam and Eve, in the castle where the princes and princesses had rebelled, God calls out, “where are you?” And the humans hid from God, afraid to come out from behind the trees. “Where are you?” “Here I am.” “Here I am,” says the representative human. “Here I am,” says God the Son as one of us. “Here I am,” says the One who is us! “Here I am – and all the children You have given Me.”

Knowing that Christ hides with me and cries out with me is what sports analysts would call a “game changer.” This game changer gives me the assurance to honestly ask myself,

Hey Steve, are you hiding in the garden?
Hey Steve, do you need to play hide and seek with Jesus and have Him hide with you so that He can cry out with you – HERE I AM?
And Steve, how does it feel to know in those moments of confusion when perhaps you don’t even want Jesus, he wants you & pursues you & cries out for you when you’re too spent & ashamed to ask for help? (Romans 5:8)

When I think of my son Caleb and how he loses the competition to win at love, I can hear Christ’s gospel proclaimed over Caleb and me when Christ says, “the Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these (little children)." (Mathew 19:14)