Daily Devotion
Greater Works
Created: Saturday, 30 May 2020 14:45
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John 14:12-14
Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.
Meditation
There could hardly be any greater promises than the two contained in this passage. But they are of such a nature that we must try to understand what they mean.
The appeal for faith in Jesus, which has run through this passage thus far, is continued through this scripture.
"He that believes on me", here "Me" is emphatic. This is believing in a continuing sense. The believing must be in accord with the manifestations of the Father as revealed by Jesus the Son. All Jesus did was at the initiative of the Father not from His feelings "I only do what I see the Father do". Jesus said that one day His disciples would do what He did, and even greater works.
What did He mean? "Whoever believes" is general, and not confined to the apostolic group. Which means this can and does include us. These will take place because of the coming of the Holy Spirit. Who would endue each believer with power for service? Could this "greater works" mean something like this: Jesus never reached outside Israel. Europe had never heard the gospel. He never met the moral degradation of Rome. It was not in His lifetime that Christianity went out to a world where the marriage bond was meaningless, where adultery was not even a conventional sin and where vice flourished. It was into that world the early Christians went; and was that world which they won for Jesus.
It is into that world that today the Gospel continues to go by missionaries, satellite radio, internet, the printed page, and by us to our next-door neighbors. Could it be that this is what Jesus meant as "the greater than I have done you shall do"?
Praise/Prayer:
Dear Father help me try and not figure what Jesus meant but accept You word and run with it. I want the dynamic of the Holy Spirit flowing through my being and into a world that is lost. I want to see the "greater works" in my life. Jesus, You said it would happen and I want it, whatever it is. Come Holy Spirit and be the river of living water flowing out of me. Use me now in my world and by intercession around the world. Amen
