Tag: passivity

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We’ve reached an “in between” stage–Christmas behind us and Easter on the way.

Many of us have returned to our routines for work, school, the gym.

For those of you involved in church ministry, this season is something of a break. Christmas kept you hopping: services, dramas, caroling, festivities, the list goes on. And Easter’s next!

More work!

Thinking about the two holidays can make you want to lie down for a while.

Believe it or not, God’s Word speaks about the issue of lying down.

The Greek verb keimai shows up 24 times in the New Testament and 6 times in the Old Testament. Its general meaning is to occupy or take up space. In a metaphorical sense, the word conveys the idea of appointing or being within a range.

What I found interesting was that several of the verses bunch up in the beginning of Luke’s gospel and the end of John’s. This suggests that the Holy Spirit used the verb to bookmark the life of Jesus.

Here’s what I mean.

Christmas

“And this will be a sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” – Luke 2:12 (NIV)

“So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.” – Luke 2:16 (NIV)

“And Simeon blessed them and said to His mother Mary, ‘Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and as a sign to be opposed” – Luke 2:34 (NASB)

After Jesus was born, Mary wrapped Him in tight cloths. The practice of binding helped infants feel secure and it also shielded them from dirt and pests.

Because Mary and Joseph were guests in Bethlehem, they didn’t have access to what they might have had in their own home. With no other option, His mother set Jesus in a feeding trough as a crib.

The Lord began His life in the humblest of circumstances: bound, passive, and sleeping a manger. From our perspective, He wasn’t off to a great start.

Days later, the Holy Spirit led an aged man into the temple at Jerusalem. Simeon was longing for the redemption of Israel and when He saw Jesus, he found what he was looking for.

But he knew the redemption would prove costly, so he prophesied to Mary about the work of her Son. It would be difficult for her to transition from total dedication to complete surrender, but that’s what God asked of her.

Easter

I’d love to jump from Christmas to Easter, but the apostle John uses the verb keimai to describe an incident during Christ’s crucifixion.

“A jar full of sour wine was standing there; so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a branch of hyssop and brought it up to His mouth.” – John 19:29 (NASB)

The jar provided cheap refreshment for the soldiers and alleviated (or prolonged) the suffering of the victims. His work accomplished, Jesus was ready to depart this world. He took a small drink and then breathed His last (vs. 30).

But the end wasn’t the end!

Three days later…

“John bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen.” – John 20:5-7 (NIV)

“But Mary was standing outside the tomb, weeping; so as she wept, she stooped to look into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had been lying.” – John 20:11-12 (NASB)

Christ’s tomb was empty! Well, not vacant. The linen strips were still there, lying in their place, but His body was gone! And neither John, Peter, nor Mary could make sense of it.

Where was Jesus? What happened to Him?

Resurrection!

The body of Jesus was bound by cloths and laid in a manger at Christmas. Now, it was released from all limitations at Easter. Christ no longer lies in a grave; He lives to the uttermost with perfect freedom.

And there’s more!

The verb we’ve been studying occurs in the next chapter, with a slight modification.

“So when they got out on the land, they saw a charcoal fire already made and fish placed on it, and bread.” – John 21:9

Here the verb keimai has a prepositional prefix, so it means to lay on or place on.

After His resurrection, Jesus visited His disciples who’d fished all night with nothing to show for it. But by following the Lord’s simple instruction, they caught 153 fish (vss. 2-6, 11).

The blessing of abundance!

And when the apostles got to shore, they discovered breakfast was already prepared.

The resurrected Savior cared about mundane matters like breakfast. He didn’t neglect the needs of His own.

Application

What are the implications of the use of the verb keimai at the bookends of Christ’s life?

God set Christ’s life in order.
God sets our lives in order, too.

At the first Christmas, the Lord had only to receive the provisions of His Father. That was all He could do. He was a helpless infant; dependent on God and His parents for everything.

At His resurrection, Jesus transcended the constraints of this world. Even the grave cloths were laid aside. Set in their place, they showed His disciples that He had been dead, but no longer. Death couldn’t hold Him; Christ had triumphed!

As the Father arranged and organized the life of His Son, so He oversees ours. His plans are wise and they’re purposeful. God intends to work His will through us as we live with surrendered hearts.

Our seasons will mimic those of our Master. We will know times of passivity and rest, situations of waiting. We will also experience breakthroughs which release the transforming power of the Spirit to liberate us and bless those around us.

Within the bookends of Christmas and Easter, God can and will accomplish much through us. Look at what God can do through a single verb! Imagine what He wants to do in your life.

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“Just do it.”

“It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.”

“I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

“Why do we sit here until we die?” – 2 Kings 7:3 (NASB)

Our culture encourages initiative. Passivity guarantees failure; if we want something, we have to get up and take action.

Deepak Chopra declares that “Passivity is the same as defending injustice.” Observing mistreatment and abuse, whether of ourselves or others, doesn’t alleviate the problem. Change requires jumping in and challenging trouble.

In his post, “The Perils of Passivity,” blogger Josh Hatcher warns that “Passive men will let life happen to them. They will say, ‘Whatever!’ when faced with a decision.” His recommendation? “Be Aggressive – Take charge of YOUR life – and lead yourself. Hunt out the holes in your integrity, and patch them up. Set goals and crush them. Determine your path – and run it like a stinking Clydesdale.”

If we seek to make something of ourselves, we need to dream and do. Only by active planning and decision-making will we have any chance at making progress and achieving success.

This train of thought applies to discipleship, too. A few years after I accepted Jesus as my Savior, I discovered books by Watchman Nee, a Chinese minister who taught Christians about discipleship through much of the 20th century. He died a martyr in prison at the hands of the Communists, so his dedication to Christ is beyond question.

In his magnum opus, The Spiritual Man, Nee warned that the quiescent believer exposes himself or herself to the attacks of the devil.

A lazy person does not want to bear any responsibility for himself; he just wants to passively allow God to use him . . . But God wants man to actively seek His will and exercise his own will and himself to obey Him . . . When man does not use his own mind, God will not use his mind either, because doing so would contradict the principle of God’s work. The result is that evil spirits will seize the opportunity to take over the believer’s mind . . . Therefore, it is a very foolish thing to allow the mind to sink into passivity.

Admitting my own tendency toward slothfulness, I respect Nee’s alarm. I’ve tried for years to develop my sensitivity to passivity and to steel myself to combat it.

But according to Scottish pastor and missionary Alexander Ryrie, the Bible offers a positive approach to passivity. In Silent Waiting: The Biblical Roots of Contemplative Spirituality, Ryrie reviewed 14 psalms and several Old Testament prophets about the subject of waiting on the Lord. This principle reinterprets passivity as a necessary and beneficial aspect of the spiritual life.

Waiting for the Lord means acknowledging that it is God’s purpose and God’s action that matters, and that in opposition to this, human action is of no avail; it means giving place to the action of God, instead of following one’s own “counsel” and acting purely on one’s own initiative; and it means looking for, hoping for, and attempting to recognize the activity of God, and so being prepared to go along with what God is doing (34).

Waiting isn’t negative, a laziness worthy of rebuke. In light of Psalm 38, Ryrie notes that “The waiting here is a kind of positive passivity–a self-surrender which is not a resignation in hopelessness, but a determined concentration on God himself, for it is God’s presence that is his only source of hope” (62).

“LORD, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God.” – Psalm 38:15

Positive passivity is based on two factors. One is optimism; we trust in the goodness of the Lord’s character. He intends to bless us and we can count on His promises.

The other factor is acceptance; we recognize the limits of our control over circumstances or situations. If we’re to see genuine and lasting changes, God must engineer them.

Over time, the act of waiting on God affects us. Based on Psalm 40, Ryrie says that “To wait . . . is not only a matter of expecting some action by God; it involves also a development deep within oneself . . . an inner transformation” (70).

“I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry.” – Psalm 40:1

But we balk at this because the price of waiting feels too high. Here’s Ryrie’s insight based on Psalm 39: “This is a very passive waiting, a hoping against hope, a trusting when there seems little basis for trust. It is a waiting with bowed head, submitting in silence to whatever God may do, knowing that when there is little sign of the benevolent action of God, the only thing one can do is to wait for God himself” (65).

“But now, Lord, what do I look for? My hope is in you.” – Psalm 39:7

We know we’re supposed to trust God and wait on Him, but delays can frustrate us. Our response? We adopt a passive-aggressive attitude. According to Psychology Today, “the most common signs . . . include refusing to discuss concerns openly and directly, avoiding responsibility, and being deliberately inefficient.” It’s a muted form of rebellion.

But we don’t have to go down that road. As Jesus teaches us to wait on the Father and rely on Him, fear loosens its grip on our souls. Even before we see Him work in our lives and our circumstances, God fills us with peace and patience.

This is our calling–positive passivity!

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