11.04 | The Downward Road to Glory

2 Corinthians 13

‘For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.’

2 Corinthians 13:4

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On 8th February 2023, a group of students gathered in the chapel at Asbury university, in Wilmore, Kentucky. As usual, one of the chaplains preached a simple message, prayed, and ended the service.

Normally, the students would file out and go on to their studies. However, on this particular day, some of the students remained, in prayer and repentance and hunger for a deeper connection with the person and ways of God. Something happened in the room—the weighty presence of God came, drawing out the true pains and repentance of a generation who hungered for something holy. Students began to flock back to the chapel. And so began what became sixteen days of continuous worship, prayer, and repentance, with thousands travelling to globe to hunt down the God of this movement. 

The Asbury outpouring, as it has become known, has become a marker for understanding the will and ways of the Spirit of God in our moment in history. It was an interruptive into a Church whose attention had been too often drawn to the glamour of platform and personality. This was different. It wasn’t a movement of big budget production and a few multi-talented leaders on a stage. Rather, it was a move of humility and repentance, with ordinary human hearts coming back to the ways and will of the extraordinary Father of love. It was tears and reconciliation. It was humility and weakness. It was the deep inner healing that can only be found in meeting the God of love in the honest places of our pain. The mantra of the movement, ‘No celebrities but Jesus’ was partnered with the letters in gold across the massive organ at the front of the room: Holiness unto the Lord. It cut straight across a world obsessed with platform and influence to invite a humble people into the pathways of the Kingdom. Truly it is the downward road that leads to glory.

As we’ve journeyed through 2 Corinthians, it’s struck me so deeply how crucial the themes of 2 Corinthians are in our moment. The world around us, that has obsessively championed the superficialities of charisma and beauty and consumption and hedonism, groans under its own dysfunctional values. Something better is needed. The Church of Jesus is being invited afresh into a different path.

It is not a new path. It is the ancient one. It is the path of Jesus. It is the Way of Jesus.

Jesus, who had no external beauty or majesty to attract us to Him,¹ and yet will eternally be the most compelling figure in history.

Jesus, who was entitled to the greatest power and platform that the universe could offer,² and yet who lived with radical simplicity, humility, and material discomfort. 

Jesus, who shunned the hypocrisy of the wealthy and powerful, embracing and honouring the most forgotten and despised, the filthy and the weeping.

Jesus, whose road to glory led through the humiliation of the cross.

Here is our King. Here is His Way. 

And, my friends, because it is His Way, it is also our way.

To give up all that we may gain all. To love more lavishly than logic or good sense would measure. To run in the countercultural way of abandoned self-forgetfulness, that our lives may instead bring honour to the broken and glory to His name. To walk with the hurting that the hurting may find the holy. 

Because the downward road leads to glory.

So, with Jesus as our model and our guide, we begin afresh today.

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Reflect:

What has God been speaking to me about through 2 Corinthians?

Capture this. Is there one thing I could do today to move more purposefully in this direction?

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Pray:

Lord Jesus, 

Simply this:

Let my life be,

Not glory unto my name,

But all glory unto yours.

I will walk the downward road,

From humility to humility,

Into the measures of glory beyond

That can only be found

In your measureless grace.

In Your Name, dear Lord,

Amen

Old Testament: 

For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:

Joshua 20-22 | Psalm 47

1. Isaiah 53:2

2. John 1:1-3; Philippians 2:6; Colossians 1:15-16