Have you ever had that sense of waking up in a kind of spiritual fog...like you've lost sight of the vision Jesus once made so real to you? You know Jesus is risen and has made His home in you and yet you haven't the foggiest idea about what to do next. Days lie end-to-end and it seems like you've missed a direction somewhere and now you feel rather lost in the forest. You're in great company...with the like of Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James and John.

The truth is, we can live out of such deeply ingrained habits that we don't give a second thought to how we walk through a day. It's like being on automatic pilot. I'm not talking about sin here, but just the way we've always done things...you know, trusting in ourselves, what "we" know.

When we can't seem to see the One who has set out the race for us to run, we can slide back into, "Well, I know how to do this, so that's what I'll do." We go to out "default" setting. For Peter it was fishing. For Saul it was preserving what he saw and inviolable tradition. 

There had to have been gaps in time after the resurrection when Jesus appeared to His followers.

Peter wasn't the most patient sort of guy and during one of those "gaps" he made a decision. He apparently didn't know what to do next, so he decided to go back to what he knew: fishing. "I'm going back to fishing." Peter said to some of the disciples. This wasn't a, "Hey, let's have a guy's weekend and go catch some fish." This was, "I'm reclaiming the boats and going back to what I know." It wasn't a sinful act. He just didn't get that everything had changed. The truth of it all had not penetrated very deep.

For Saul of Tarsus, this new movement of believing Messiah had come, had been crucified and that He had risen from the dead was beyond his comprehension. Make no mistake, Saul believed in resurrection, but a general one at the end of time. For there to be a singular resurrection to new life while the rest of the world was still locked in the cycle of decay and death was inconceivable to him! He was going to do all he could to stamp this "heresy" out. He didn't realize that everything had changed and would never be the same...ever!

When we feel like a person without a vision  we need to remember that Jesus hasn't forgotten His call on our lives. He hasn't forgotten the destiny He created us for. That's when we need the grace of a "come to Jesus" moment to stop us in mid-rut and change our focus. 

We can even be active in ministry, so busy with God's work that we take our eyes off the One upon whom our faith depends from start to finish. We can be in religious high-gear, working so diligently and forget that what Jesus told us at point "A" was to lead us to point "B". Point"A" can become an idol and we get focused on it and miss voice of the One who called us. It's not like we completely forget. After all, we are working for the Kingdom of God, right?

The church can putter along, and has done so in history, carrying on with churchy stuff never realizing it's in a religious fog. I have been in that place where I felt clueless. I could preach, teach, counsel, do liturgy and all that was expected of me and be a man without a vision. God in His great mercy has then had to lovingly pull the rug out from under my feet. When that happens, I know I've been standing on the wrong rug. 

That unfolding of His vision for my life was a point from which I was to move forward as I followed Him...not a place to pour a slab and build an immovable structure. When God got my eyes off what I was doing and on the One who had called me, my perspective changed...and ever changes. He never changes, praise His name, but I am being changed by His Spirit daily: renewed in mind and heart, convicted and convinced, freed and forgiven.

Jesus' vision for us will always be bigger than we are, will cost more than we have, and will take strength, wisdom and power that are beyond human capacity. THAT is actually Good News, since it frees us from ever relying on US to do what Jesus is calling us to do. Remember, He said, "Apart from me, you can do nothing." Folks, He meant what He said.

The paradigm shift is one from achieving to believing, from death to Life, from self to Savior, from control to yielding all we are to the One we confess as Lord...from cluelessness to renewed & unfolding vision!

Read through and pray through the Scriptures for this Sunday [Acts 9:1-20; Revelation 5:1-14; Psalm 30 and John 21:1-19] . Let the Lord speak to your heart, clarify your vision and encourage you that, He, having begun a good work in you, will bring it to completion by the day Jesus returns or calls you home.

Much is made of the disciple we call "Doubting Thomas". People over the centuries have used his name as a spiritual "Post-It" to label anyone whose faith seems to be wavering in the face of unheard-of circumstances. The spiritually smug stand back and upbraid the struggler as somehow defective in their faith.

Truth is...ALL the disciples didn't believe Mary Magdalene or the other women who were eye witnesses to Jesus Resurrection. They all thought the women had gone bonkers. Peter and John, Bartholomew, Thaddeus, Matthew and the rest all doubted.
Of course they did. What the women told them was inconceivable! It is so hard not to make our own experience of the Lord as some sort of template or measuring rod by which we determine the hardiness of another disciple's faith. What we have been told is beyond human reason. God became a man, lived a sinless life, was shredded and crucified, died and was buried. Then, on the third day after His death, He is raised from the dead with a new kind of flesh and bone body: a Resurrection body, human, yes, but infinitely extraordinary!

Try this on...Jesus has told us that "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." Any moments of doubt over that one? Wait a minute! Jesus is telling His disciples, His followers throughout the remainder of time that we are going to live life and do ministry just as Jesus did? We are supposed to know the Father's will as He did? We are going to be guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit as He was? That's exactly what Jesus was saying.

He didn't say it was to be the call upon an elite few but all His disciples. There were 120 in the upper-room on Pentecost and not all of them were Apostles or men over 30 years of age! This is astounding! Those who follow Jesus are to begin to live a way that is massively radical. That radical is to become the normal for any Christian in any age.

To me, on the whole, the church has been more remiss that Thomas ever was. When he saw Jesus, he fell down and called Him who He is, "My Lord and my God!" They didn't seem to question Jesus' words about them being sent by Jesus as the Father had sent Him. They continued to believe that Jesus' life and ministry was to continue to be lived in and through them so that people might be rescued from sin and find their lives transformed.

There is a question for us...how shall we then live, given this is all true?