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Monday
Read John 14:28
John chapter 14 is correctly headed in the New International Version: “Jesus Comforts His Disciples.” Although these “headings” are not in the original manuscripts, they help us understand the following verses. Jesus reminds the disciples that He is the only way to the Father, and He promises the coming of the indwelling Holy Spirit after He leaves and promises them an inner peace that the world cannot give.
Jesus concludes this message of encouragement with five significant statements. The first encouragement (v. 28) is that His departure from them, which will be difficult after more than three years of intimate fellowship, is only temporary. His promise is that although He is “going away,” He will be “coming back.”
Jesus implies that the coming of the Holy Spirit would be Him coming back, too, since He told them that when the Spirit comes, “I will come to you” (v. 18). In fact, He goes even further to state that, for those who love and obey Him, “My Father will love him, and WE will come to him and make our home with him” (v. 23). So, for the true believer, the promise is that the One who came as “Emmanuel,” or “God with us,” continues to be with us at all times—a truth taught ONLY by Christianity and no other religion.
The second truth is the promise that our Lord will return in the body at some point in the future, which is the great hope of the Christian faith. He did not “stop off” on planet Earth for a while and then vanish forever. But because of His love, He remains involved and fully intends to return with those who have died in the faith to meet with those believers who remain so that then we will be “forever with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
Obviously, His disciples were struggling to comprehend this, which is why, after the resurrection as they stood on the Mount of Olives watching Jesus ascend to His Father, the angels reminded them that “This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). What a difference that makes to our view of our world when we remember that we know how this story is going to end!
Reflection
How can you be encouraged with the hope of eternity and share this good news with someone today?
Prayers
Neighborhood Homework House (NHH)
Career Exploration Workshop. NHH is excited to partner with Pasadena-based College Access Plan to offer a workshop for its middle schools on career exploration on Tuesday March 18, 2025. Pray that this is engaging content for the students and a good chance for the NHH team to cultivate a new partner.
Tuesday
Read John 14:28b
Having reminded His disciples that, because of His love, they could rely on the fact that He was going to return one day for His own, Jesus then turned the issue around and said, “If you loved ME (emphasis added), you would be glad that I am going to the Father.” There are several possible reasons why Jesus would have put the issue to His disciples in this way.
The first was because of Jesus’ humanness. While we know that our Lord was both fully divine and fully human during His time on Earth, we can’t help thinking about Paul’s profound statement to the Philippians that, although Jesus was God, He “made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7). His incarnation as Jesus of Nazareth was always meant to be temporary, since He was still God, and He came to bridge the otherwise unbridgeable gap between a holy God and a sinful world. But when the task was accomplished, it was inevitable that He must return to where He belonged—at the right hand of the Father.
The second reason was because of Jesus’ divinity. That was who He really was, so the disciples should have understood that it was inevitable that He would leave them. Peter had already very clearly identified Him as “the Christ” (Matthew 16:16a), a term used in the New Testament for the long-awaited Messiah who had been promised in the Garden of Eden and eagerly anticipated throughout the centuries by those who followed the true God.
But Peter had also gone on to make one further comment: that Jesus was the Christ, “the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16b). Our Lord commended him for recognizing this, not only because it established in their minds the theological truth of a triune God, but because it emphasized Jesus’ Sonship. Christ stresses that “the Father is greater than I” (John 14:28b), but only because He had voluntarily laid aside certain aspects of His divinity to come to Earth. Exactly how every aspect of the Trinity operates is far beyond the scope of our human minds to comprehend, but the disciples’ love for their Lord should have caused them to “send Him home to the Father” with great joy. Likewise, we should revel in the knowledge that He sits at the Father’s right hand, our everlasting Intercessor.
Reflection
As you think of Easter, how do you personally understand the humanity of Jesus, the Son of God?
Prayers
Neighborhood Homework House (NHH)
Spring Break 2025. During Azusa Unified School District’s upcoming spring break, NHH will coordinate many student activities including trips to college campuses, Sky Zone, Laser Tag, to name a few. Pray that these are safe and meaningful times for students. As well, NHH expects to spend just shy of $9,000; pray for financial donors to make these activities possible.
Wednesday
Read John 14:29
There were many things that Jesus told His disciples before they happened because of His love for them. He warned them time and again that He would be handed over to the authorities and be put to death, but they simply couldn’t grasp the thought that the divine Son of God could die. He also told them that He would rise again, but somehow that part of the message didn’t penetrate, so they could not believe it when the women rushed in on that Sunday morning to declare that the tomb was empty and Jesus was alive.
Now Jesus is adding to that the truth that He was going to return to His Father, and He wanted the result of that not to be a sense of abandonment, but so that “when it does happen you will believe” (John 14:29b). Before we become too critical of the disciples for not just believing everything that Jesus was telling them, we need to remind ourselves that for us the betrayal of Jesus, His trials, His crucifixion, His resurrection, and His ascension are now so much a part of our faith framework that it is not new anymore. But for them, even now as Jesus sat with them at the Passover Feast, it was simply unbelievable.
We must also bear in mind that when someone comes to us today and claims to tell us of some event “before it happens,” we are naturally skeptical. The difference with Jesus, of course, was that He, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, had put together a plan for all of history before the world began. So Jesus was able to state what would happen with 100% accuracy, not just the next few hours, but the entire future until He returns.
Living as we do in a world filled with uncertainty, we as Christians, of all people, should be holding tightly to the promises of the Word of God as we see history speeding towards a climax that is going to end with a glorious reappearance of our Lord, fulfilling what He told those disciples so long ago. “In keeping with His promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).
Reflection
What biblical promises of “a new heaven and a new earth” give you comfort today?
Prayers
Neighborhood Homework House (NHH)
NHH is hiring. NHH is looking for a Development and Communications Coordinator. Pray for a candidate with experience in donor stewardship who can effectively tell the NHH story with dignity. Ideal candidates will also be able to manage print and electronic design pieces.
Thursday
Read John 14:30
As Jesus spoke with His disciples, He was well aware that time was running out before He had to face the moment for which He had come into the world. Judas left from that Passover feast to betray his Master. The detachment of soldiers and representatives from the religious leaders were already gathering to arrest Jesus that night in the Garden of Gethsemane, all inspired by Satan.
So here we have our Lord warning His disciples about what was to come, even though, since He was able to say of Satan that “He has no hold on Me” (John 14:30b), He knew that He was going to submit to this arrest. The disciples might have recalled that Jesus had spoken previously about “the prince of this world,” shortly after Father God had spoken out loud in a supernatural voice. The Lord was telling them then that He would be “lifted up from the earth” (a clear reference to His coming crucifixion) but that, as a result of that, “the prince of this world will be driven out” (John12:31-32).
We now know that Jesus was going to do more than simply submit to arrest, but was going willingly to the most terrible death conceivable because of His love for us. What the disciples had not fully grasped but which we can now understand with the greatest gratitude possible is that, as promised in Genesis 3:15, the “head of the serpent” would be crushed. When Christ died on the cross, His enemies thought they had won this battle and removed what they saw as a threat. What Jesus was telling His disciples was that actually this was going to be the event that changed the course of history and brought about the defeat of Satan.
To be sure, when the devil realized that he had not won the battle of Calvary because our Lord rose victoriously on the third day, the same John who wrote the Gospel tells us in the book of Revelation that Satan then “went off to make war against … those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Revelation 12:17). That, of course, is us! He has spent the two thousand years since Jesus died persecuting the church, but as he had no hold on Christ, so, if we draw our power from the Spirit, he has no hold on us either!
Reflection
As Satan teases you in your walk with Christ, what Scripture do you hold on to tightly to show he has no power in your life?
Prayers
Neighborhood Homework House (NHH)
NHH needs to find a new home. NHH is on the hunt for a new location in Azusa. Pray that a viable, affordable location becomes apparent in the coming months. Nothing is impossible for God—someone donating a building or writing a six-figure check.
Friday
Read John 14:31
Everything that was going to unfold in the next hours after Jesus spoke the words of John 14 to His disciples was because of His love, which our Lord had spelled out to Nicodemus near the beginning of His ministry. He told that member of the Jewish ruling council who visited Him secretly at night that “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son” (John 3:16).
Now He makes it clear to the disciples that His willingness to undergo what lay before Him was because “I love the Father” (John 14:31). There is something very beautiful about this statement because it reminds us of the intimate communion which is enjoyed within the Holy Trinity. Easter is a reminder that Jesus willingly submitted Himself to the limitations of humanness.
The true story is that, before the foundation of the world, the redemption plan was put in place and agreed to by all three members of the Trinity, so Jesus was a willing participant in achieving our salvation and defeating the intentions of Satan. When He wept in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was at His most human moment of wondering whether there could possibly be another way, but He followed that request with a statement of complete submission to the will of the Father. He went on to do exactly what the Father had commanded Him to do.
Here Jesus is telling us that His willingness to do that was because He loves the Father. Surely, then, the very least that we as His disciples can do is to reflect that love and obedience in our own lives. Eleven of the disciples who sat before Jesus that day would go on, after the resurrection, to demonstrate their love for the risen Lord by scattering far and wide to tell the world about Him. If we are to believe very reliable traditions, all of them except John himself ended their lives in martyrdom of one form or another, while the beloved disciple spent an unknown number of years in exile on the island of Patmos.
Following Jesus is never going to be easy, but our challenge today is to replicate the love that Jesus had for the Father and for us in our relationships with each other and in our compassion for a lost world.
Reflection
Find ways to be reminded that God is sovereign and never surprised.
Prayers
Neighborhood Homework House (NHH)
Advocacy in changing times. NHH continues to work with long-time partners to advocate for immigrant families despite changing federal policy. We are grateful for those partners but ask for prayer as many are stretched thin in the face of increased demand. We are committed to being allies and welcoming agents to new members of the Azusa community.
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