The signboard in front of our church said:
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JESUS IS THE WAZE: GLORIOUS PERSONAL SAVIOR
Note: In June 2021 an abridged version of this message (“Feeling Lost? Jesus is the Waze!“) was re-posted on the signboard. |
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One of the most popular Apps for a phone is called Waze. Like the older standalone devices like the Megellan, Tom Tom, or Garmin, this app can show you where you are, put you on a map, and give you turn by turn directions to help you arrive at your destination. And, it also listens to reports from other drivers to guide you through traffic jams. Their motto is, “Outsmarting Traffic, Together.”
A road trip, in many ways, is similar to life’s journey. You have to know where you want to go. You have to have a plan. Curveballs and difficulties (just like potholes and traffic jams) will be thrown into your path. How do you plan your route? What’s your guiding map? How do you react when bad things happen???
God has provided His own Waze app for us. Throughout all of human history and into eternity, He has given us a GPS. On one occasion, one of His disciples complained that they can’t follow Jesus because they don’t know the way to where He was going. Jesus responded:
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
They didn’t have phones, or GPS satellites back then, but in effect, Jesus was calming to be that day’s version of the Waze: a Glorious Personal Savior…
Glorious
Glory. That’s a real churchy word. But “if” we we’re created by an all-powerful “force” (God) that’s outside of ourselves, doesn’t it make sense that this “force” would be much greater than us? And so, when we think of this God, we’ve got to think outside of our own box of human limitations. God’s not limited by time or space. He can be anywhere at any time. He can be on Mars, causing the winds to whip across that barren surface, and at the same time He can be in the skies over our church creating a rainbow.
When Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt, he asked to see God’s glory, but God said Moses would die if he were to see God face to face. So God told Moses to hide in the side of a hill as He passed by, and then he could see God’s back; but never His face. It was too glorious, too great, so much above a mere human that Moses couldn’t survive if he encountered it (you can read about this in Exodus 33:7-23).
And many years later, there’s this scene (Mark 9:1-8) where Jesus’ face glows and He meets with Moses and the prophet Elijah! And this same Jesus walked on water, calmed a storm, and even raised people from the dead. Glorious!
God is “Glorious.” He’s so much bigger than us that we cannot survive any comparison with Him. There’s such a huge gap between us and God that we can’t even be in His presence.
Personal
God can be really, really BIG. But at the same time, He can be really, really, small: small enough to step into our lives and to understand what we’re going through. Many years ago, King David wrote:
O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me.
You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
You see me when I travel and when I rest at home.
You know everything I do.
Psalm 139:1-4, NLT
Jesus sees us, even when He’s not physically with us. There’s an incident early in Jesus’ ministry where He sees one of his future disciples sitting under a fig tree (John 1:43-49). And later on, He sees his disciples out on the lake rowing against the waves caused by a vicious storm (Mark 6:45-51).
Savior
If God is so powerful (“Glorious”) AND at the same time knows everything about us… that can be a scary thought! God made me; is He happy with me? Or like the potter making a pot out of clay (Jeremiah 18:1-10), does He want to squeeze me into a fresh blob of clay and start all over?
King David wrote the line “You know everything I do“, but he was also the guy who had an affair with a woman and then had her husband killed (see 2 Samuel 11). Talk about getting scared when a Glorious God gets personal!
But- Jesus is the Waze. He is the bridge between anything that’s wrong with us and God’s glory. In some way that our human minds may never understand, Jesus’ death on the cross made up for all of our shortcomings. ALL of them. All of our wrong turns. All of the times we ran a red light. All of the times we cursed at another driver.
Jesus- our Waze- bridges our imperfections with God’s perfections. He’s our Savior.
One thing about Waze (and other GPS devices)- before taking your trip, you have to program in where you want to go. It’s up to us to make that decision, and then you have to trust the GPS’s directions.
Do you want to experience the joy and eternal security that God offers through a personal relationship with Jesus? Are you willing to listen to His directions, when He guides you through prayer, the Bible, and through other people?
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