As with Jesus and the Father, so with you and Jesus...

After healing a man at the pool called Bethesda (John 5), Jesus is accosted by a crowd of people irritated by His Sabbath-breaking ways. One of His first rejoinders to them is MONUMENTAL in its significance for us: "I assure you that the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but what he sees the Father doing. What the Son does is always modeled on what the Father does, for the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he does himself. Yes, and he will show him even greater things than these to fill you with wonder..."

1. "the Son can do nothing of his own accord" - Do you hear the echo in this phrasing? "Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me." (John 15:4)

2. "What the Son does is always modeled on what the Father does" - Do you hear an echo in that phrasing? "As children copy their fathers you, as God's children, are to copy him." (Ephesians 5:1)

3. "he will show him even greater things than these" - Do you hear the echo to those words? "I assure you that the man who believes in me will do the same things that I have done, yes, and he will do even greater things than these, for I am going away to the Father." (John 14:12)

The way Jesus watched and imitated His Father is the exact way we're to watch and imitate Jesus in our everyday. As we daily "abide," "copy" and "believe" for the "greater things," we're in the lineage of Jesus for the work of the Kingdom. Are you able to accept that truth? Are you able to Believe for His purposes in this day?