Relax

If you had one word to describe Jesus, what would it be?

Love…Compassion…Holy…God…Teacher…Healer… There’s a lot of great words we could use to describe Jesus.

One of my spiritual mentors tells a story about a conversation he had with Dallas Willard, one of the great theologians and authors of the modern era. During the discussion, Dallas said that if he had one word to describe Jesus he’d use the word “Relaxed.”

Now, that’s probably not the word we’d initially think of – it certainly wasn’t one of the first ones to come to my mind. But when we really think about it and look at scripture, it starts to make sense…

• Jesus knows his time on earth is limited – but when he’s about to kick off his ministry, he doesn’t rush out and jump right in, instead he heads out to the desert and spends 40 days in prayer
• When he’s caught in a storm at sea and the disciples are scouring the boat for life jackets – Jesus takes a nap
• In Mark 1 Jesus is having some early morning prayer time. His disciples run up to him saying, “Jesus, everyone is searching for you.” In other words – “You’re not answering our texts. You’re not picking up our calls. What’s going on?! There’s people to heal, messages to teach, places to visit – you’re throwing off our schedule!” But Jesus isn’t phased by their hurry.
• Or I think of the time Jesus’ friend Lazarus gets sick. Lazarus’s sisters send Jesus a message telling him about his friend’s failing health. But Jesus doesn’t rush out – in fact he takes 2 days before he starts heading towards Lazarus.

See all throughout the gospels we see the relaxed, unhurried pace of Jesus.

How could he be so relaxed? So at ease? It certainly wasn’t that he didn’t have any stress…I mean think about all the stressors Jesus had in his life…

• Whenever he left one city he knew that he was leaving behind people who hadn’t been healed or discipled – he was leaving behind people he could easily help. That could weigh on you.
• Or think about the family pressure and guilt he could have felt – he, the oldest child, left his widowed mom at home while he wandered around on a mission his family didn’t understand. I bet Mary laid some guilt on him!
• Or in John 6 Jesus is teaching about his death and people don’t understand or like what he’s saying, so most of the crowd leaves. People who had been following Jesus and been taught by him just quit on him. How as a leader would it feel to have most of your followers leave and never come back? That could add some stress.
• Or what about the nasty rumors that the Pharisees were spreading or the threats on Jesus’ life.
• Or how about the fact that he had just 3 years of public ministry…3 years to convince people that he was the Son of God. 3 years on which the fate of all of humankind was depending!

These are some serious stressors! Yet Jesus remained relaxed.

Unrushed. Unhurried. Unworried.

Now maybe you’re thinking –  oh that’s easy for him. He was God!

But remember that Jesus was fully God AND fully man. In other words, he WAS a human. He was finite. He had limitations. He had to grow in his spiritual walk too.

Luke 2 tells us that the Lord GREW in the knowledge and wisdom of God – in other words it wasn’t all divinely downloaded to him from birth. And Hebrews 5:8 reminds us that through suffering and stress Jesus LEARNED to be obedient and to submit to God.

See Jesus had stress just like we do and even he had to learn how to surrender that stress into the loving hands of His Father.

Even right up until the Garden of Gethsemane – we see Jesus practicing this – saying God if there’s any way around this whole cross thing that’d be great…but ultimately, not my will, but yours be done. He’s practicing that spiritual rhythm of surrendering stress.

I know for me when stress comes my way, surrender is not my first reaction. Typically I jump into “fix it” mode. How do I solve this problem? How do I take care of this?

And from there things just snowball…I begin to feel the additional pressure of how should I respond? What should I do? Am I doing the right thing? What if this doesn’t get resolved? What if people’s feelings get hurt?

Suddenly there’s just this mushroom cloud of anxiety, stress and self-pressure. Maybe you know what I’m talking about…

So here’s what I’ve been praying for myself – that I would learn how to surrender my stress to Christ. That I’d get comfortable abandoning outcomes to God. That I’d be quick to remember God’s gentle promise – “I’m here to help shoulder your burdens. My yoke is easy, my burden is light.”

Rather than letting stress spiral into anxiety and self-pressure, I’m trying to learn to relax like Jesus; learning to surrender my stress to a God who cares deeply about me and invites me to live with the same relaxed nature that Jesus displayed.