You got limitations.

Learning to live with the things you cannot change and cannot control is a key to experiencing the contented, joy-filled, big-life God and each one of us long to experience.

Change the things you can and learn to live with the things you cannot change.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Jesus had to live with his limitations and the things he could not change.

The truth is that HE GETS US.

Christianity proclaims that Jesus was fully God and fully human. But this teaching is challenging to understand. Consequently false ideas came into play.

The false ideas could be placed into three basic categories.

· Jesus is fully God but not fully human.
· Jesus is fully human but not fully God.
· Jesus is part God and part human but not completely either.

A gathering of church leaders in Chalcedon in 451 made this defining statement about the deity and humanity of Jesus.

". . . one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, made known in two natures without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the difference of the natures being by no means removed because of the union, but the property of each nature being preserved . . ."

From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it
with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us. We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!
1 John 1:1-4 The Message

This is what Jesus himself said.

Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
John 14:9

And Paul, the greatest missionary ever, penned . . .

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.
Colossians 2:9

Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.
Philippians 2:6-8 NLT

The Message puts it like this . . . . he set aside the privileges of deity.

Jesus gave up the right to independently control his attributes or his abilities.

But while he “gave up” he also “picked up”. Jesus took on the full nature of a human being... physically, intellectually, socially, emotionally, spiritually. “Remaining what he was he became what he was not.”

And with that new reality Jesus experiences limitations. He must learn to live with these limitations.

JESUS HAS . . . limitations and challenges that are like the limitations and challenges we face.

Physical Limitations and Challenges:
- He had no choice on his height, body frame, hand size, foot size.
- He has to learn how to control his body . . . he will discover his hands, learn to roll over, sit up, crawl, walk, be toilet trained, coordinate his hands to write things, draw, play with a ball and of course shoot a basketball.
- He experienced hunger, thirst, weariness, physical weakness and he died.
- He . . . increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and people. Luke 2:52 . . . Jesus grew intellectually, physically, spiritually and socially.

Knowledge Limitations and Challenges:
- He does not know everything.
- He had to learn just like you and me . . . learn to speak Aramaic and Greek and Hebrew, read, study Scripture and so on.
- As a carpenter whose role would have aligned more like the construction worker of today he had to learn how to wield a hammer and saw wood and so on.
- He asks who had touched him when power went out from him to heal the woman with an ongoing blood disorder. And he told his disciples that he did not know the day or the hour of his return. In his humanity, his knowledge was limited according to the will and purposes of God.

Spatial Limitations and Challenges:
- He cannot be in more than one place at a time. He cannot be in a space someone else or something else is occupying. This was a radical change from his having been a spirit being, a being without a physical makeup to now being a physical being with all the limitations you and I have in that state.

Emotional Responses Limitations and Challenges:
- Matthew 26:38 his “soul is very sorrowful, even to death.”
- In John 11:33-35 Jesus is “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled,” and he weeps at a funeral.
- John 12:27 “Now is my soul troubled,”
- John 13:21 “troubled in his spirit.”
- Hebrews 5:7 “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears”
- God is an emotional being. I am not suggesting that Jesus was emotionless in his pre-incarnate state but these are emotions of one whose circumstances are outside his control and they weigh on him.

Relational Limitations and Challenges:
- He had to learn how to make friends.
- Jesus could not be friends with everyone. He was close to some of the disciples but not to all of them and he was closest to John out of them all.
- He couldn’t correct false understandings about what he had said or what people thought of him.
- He was rejected by his family, falsely accused, betrayed by a friend, denied by a friend, hated by a crowd and ultimately executed.

Spiritual Limitations and Challenges:
- Jesus was tempted in every way that temptation can lure us and yet he did not sin. He had not know temptation in this way before. The records tell us that he “suffered” because of those temptations even though he never yielded.
- For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Hebrews 2:18

Will Limitations and Challenges:
- Jesus didn’t always get what he wanted but always submitted himself to what the Father wanted . . .
- “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” John 6:38
- Jesus prays to the Father, “Not as I will, but as you will.” Matthew 26:39 after asking that the crucifixion would not be his experience. (God does not agree with his request.)

Mission Limitations and Challenges:
- Jesus would fulfill His mission but he was limited and told his followers, including those who are believers today, that “You will do greater things than I have done.”

“Have we overlooked how human — how shockingly human — God himself became in Jesus of Nazareth?”

Jesus Gets Us.

Jesus had to trust God the Father with what he couldn’t control, with his limitations, just as you and I need to do the same.