Thoughts on Mark 9-10 and Limits

A long time ago I read something from CS Lewis that talked about finding true freedom within the limits you were created to live within.  The other day I was sharing with a friend the way I have found freedom and purpose in one area of my life and ministry through this concept: living within limits.  

It isn’t a message you’ll see often on Instagram or Social Media in general, is it?  You won’t hear it from Influencers or your favourite MLM.  It just can’t be true in earthly kingdoms.  And I get it.  It grinds against every fibre of our human flesh.  And it has since that pivotal moment in the garden where humanity chose to reject God’s good and beautiful limits and chase their own quest for limitlessness.

Wouldn’t you know it, since that conversation with my friend the Holy Spirit has been opening my blind eyes to many other areas of my life where I actually rail against His gift of limits; despising them and striving to push past them.

This week in Mark 9-10, I feel like Jesus is pressing this same point: that true life and joy and freedom in his Kingdom is to be found within its holy limits.  And the disciples are just as blind as I am.  They are pushing their own agendas of limitlessness and it has rendered them spiritually blind to the astonishing truths of Jesus’ mission: 

To bring about his kingdom He won’t exert power over he will submit himself to the powers that be.  

The ones who will enter his kingdom won’t be the powerful, influential and wealthy ones you might expect, but rather those seen as the lowest and least in society.  

He will not ascend into a palace in Jerusalem, rather he will climb the hill of Golgotha...and ultimately his throne looks remarkably like a Roman cross.  

Jesus is the ultimate example of one who joyfully embraced and lived within limits(see Philippians 2!).  And the thing is...he never declares that his purpose in embracing these very limits is so that we are no longer subject to them.  Rather, He points his disciples, and anyone else who wants to follow Him, in this same direction as the way to life, freedom, and human flourishing(see Mark 8:35!)

I guess the question for all of us then is this: will we be found among the hard hearted, unbelieving generation who continues to believe Jesus’ Kingdom agenda is all about our own comfort and control?  Or will we begin to look more like ones who freely and joyfully reject our culture’s obsession with power, position and possessions as the way to life that is truly life?

Perhaps today it begins with this simple prayer...“Lord, I do believe, help my unbelief!”