The God Who Understands Your Limitations
During a recent staff meeting overlooking the Pacific Ocean, I shared how God understands our frustrating limitations more than we could ever imagine.
I invited the team to consider how Jesus never got to witness the Pacific Ocean during His time on earth. He was its Creator. He “commanded, and it came into existence” (Psalm 33:9). He fashioned it with intent and beauty to be the largest ocean covering 30% of the earth’s surface. Yet Jesus never got to see it during His lifetime. Jesus’ life was remarkably constrained to a 200 mile radius around Nazareth.
The Who God Emptied Himself
Philippians 2:5 says that Jesus “emptied himself.” What does this passage mean?
It cannot mean that God emptied Himself of His divine nature. I’ve heard Christians (and even pastors!) say this inadvertently but it is not an accurate statement. God cannot empty Himself of His divine nature any more than you or I can empty ourselves of our human nature. So what does it mean?
It means Jesus never exploited or took advantage of His divine nature. To use modern cultural vernacular, Jesus held a royal flush but never played His hand. Jesus had “all the infinity stones” but never once snapped His finger. He could’ve exerted His omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and so forth, but held back from ever using it. This means Jesus knows what it’s like to wrestle with frustrating limitations.
We often wish we could be at multiple places at once. Jesus, the eternal Word of God, knows what it’s like to be bound by space and time. During busy seasons, we wish we didn’t have to sleep in order to reclaim productivity time. Jesus, the One who had neither slept nor slumbered, went to bed every night. During change, we wish we had all the information in the world. Jesus “grew in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52) and did not walk around spouting facts about the Pacific Ocean because He never saw it. We have a Jesus who understands and sympathizes with all of our limitations and weaknesses (Hebrew 4:15).
The Christian Filled By God
While Jesus understands our limitations, He also flips the script and invites us to understand the great advantage He had: The Person and power of the Holy Spirit.
It was the Holy Spirit working through Jesus that enabled Jesus to perform miracles and do things beyond the limitations of His humanity. We can think that Jesus simply did miracles because He was God. But we must not forget the fact that He emptied Himself! He never played His hand or snapped His fingers. Instead, He relied on and trusted the leading and empowering of God’s Spirit.
In this way, Jesus was modeling for us what a thriving human looks like: Fraught with limitations but able to do above and beyond through the transformative power of the Holy Spirit at work in those who trust and love Him.
This means you have the exact same advantage Jesus experienced. You too have access to the Person and power of the Holy Spirit. You too can be filled by Him. You too can be empowered by Him. The Spirit-driven life wasn’t limited to Jesus. It was simply modeled by Him.
But it can only be fully experienced when we come before Him with dependence and trust. It is actually by embracing our limitations and bringing their attendant frustrations with honesty and humility before Him that the Spirit’s power is magnetically pulled to work in power.
Take heart, God really understands your limitations. But hear God’s heart - understand you share in the unthinkable advantage Christ experienced on the earth.
