I was thinking this last sunday concerning the betrayals we sometimes suffer in this life. We sometimes see relationships and connections change when betrayals occur. I got to thinking of the betrayal that Jesus suffered, He was betrayed with a kiss. He was betrayed with denial, He was betrayed with those who fled and hid. He died with one disciple sticking it out to the very end.

I go back in my thinking to the Upper Room, when the last preparation of the disciples was laid out. When we consider Jesus breaking leadership concepts with the washing of feet! Jesus, at all costs and with great urgency set to prepare the disciples for the greatest challenge that the Upper Room set to prepare them for. When we consider scripture we see that this Upper Room was rented until Pentecost. It was a place of servanthood, of consternation, of betrayal, of truth, of love. When we consider Judas was exposed as a betrayer, and when we consider the heart of Jesus breaking as He faced a cruel death. Nothing explains and shows us the type of death as in the film, “the Passion” which the tormentors and torturers GAINED a demonic pleasure of whipping Jesus in all manner of ways.

When we conjure up those images in the mind of Jesus we understand the sighs of that Upper Room scene. When we consider the mindset of the disciples of their understanding of Power and Authority and the nature of the Kingdom in an oppressed age, we see an urgency and a brutality that Jesus had to use to break this in the lives of the disciples. The Upper Room was this preparation.

When we consider how all those who betrayed and fled, who locked themselves in that place, in fear. When we consider how Jesus showed Himself in that place, in a new and living way. How He charged them to “tarry” in that place. That Upper Room where mentalities were broken and where new ones were taught. Where opinions and politics were broken and where a new way was demonstrated in the Risen Lord. Here eternity met time. And ultimately how the Spirit was poured out here.

Our very lives must become a Upper Room, where Jesus breaks attitudes and opinions, so that we embrace a new Kingdom and receive the Power to demonstrate that Kingdom.

A place where the GREATEST defeat was feared, was the place where the GREATEST faith was faced!

Embrace your Upper Room today. It is a process to power that passes through breaking into humility, love for a loveless world, and a purpose and commission to fulfil. As you enter that intimacy with Jesus your view of power and authority is not what you exercise but what you exude by love!

Russell Durose

Think of sowing to our ministry through Paypal: russell.durose@yahoo.com