Introduction

• This is a year of learning and teaching what we learn.
• I want to urge everyone to get their curriculum ready.
• What do you want to learn? Be very clear about this.
• Carry out your learning needs assessment and get set for the year.
• One thing you can add to your curriculum is “How to do ONLY what you see the Father do.”

John 5:16-20 (NIV)

16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute him. 17 In his defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I too am working.” 18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. 19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.

Recurrent Thought

Doing only what you see the Father do is what will give you confidence in whatever you want to do this year. However seeing what the Father is doing requires close proximity, attentiveness and willingness to remove distractions.

• Jesus was very confident in whatever He did because He had seen the Father do it. That is the confidence we need, even in discipleship.  
• John 5:19 presents a profound discipleship principle: Jesus’ actions flowed from His perceptive alignment with the Father.
• If we are going to do well as disciples or disciplers, we need to see and align our actions to what we see.

What is going to help us see and align our actions to what the Father is doing?

1. Close Proximity to the Father

• Those closer to the Father should be able to see much more than those farther away. Where are you?
• Jesus had an intimate relationship and continual communion with the Father.

• Jesus’ ability to see what the Father was doing was rooted in that unbroken, intimate relationship.
• Jesus could see because of His closeness, trust, and shared life with the Father. The Father was showing Him.
• Jesus knew the Father’s heart because He dwelt in the Father’s presence.

       John 1:18 (NIV)

      "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is Himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known"

• How Jesus demonstrated Closeness to the Father
  • a.)Night of prayer before choosing the Twelve (Luke 6:12–13): Jesus spent the whole night in prayer before making a strategic ministry decision, reflecting dependence on the Father’s will rather than human logic.
    • I am thinking God showed Him why He needed to include each one of the twelve.
    • As we choose our disciples this year we need this kind of wisdom.
  • b.)Gethsemane (Luke 22:41–42): Jesus’ submission—“Not my will, but yours be done”—demonstrates a relationship where obedience flows from trust.
    • Because Jesus saw the Father Do things over and over He could trust Him.
    • When you stay in close proximity with the Father it is very easy to trust His wisdom and direction.
• Challenge to Consider
  • Many believers want guidance without intimacy; guidance from afar. It doesn’t work. 
  • Jesus saw the Father’s work because He lived in the Father’s presence.
  • The challenge is to move from occasional prayer to cultivated communion. Let us graduate from occasional prayers. Let us give ourselves time to watch God do what He knows best.
  • This is a call to PRIORITIZE GOD’S PRESENCE.

2. Attentiveness

• We need attentive listening and spiritual discernment.
• Jesus did not act impulsively or reactively. He listened.

Isaiah 11:3

“And he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears;”

• Jesus’ ministry reveals disciplined attentiveness to the Father’s voice and timing.

John 8:26

“I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world.”

John 12:49

“For I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me to say all that I have spoken.”

• Spiritual sight is sharpened through listening obedience.

Isaiah 50:4

“The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.”

How Jesus demonstrated Attentiveness

1. Healing at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1–9): Jesus healed one man among many. This selective action suggests discernment of the Father’s specific work at that moment.
2. Delay before going to Lazarus (John 11:4–7): Jesus resisted urgency and public expectation, waiting until the Father’s redemptive purpose would be fully revealed.

Challenge to Consider

• Christians often act out of pressure, urgency, or imitation of others.
• Jesus models a slower, discerning obedience—listening first, then acting.
• Let us not rush; get all the details right.
• This is a call to ATTENTIVE LISTENNING TO THE LORD.

3.Willingness to Remove Distractions

• You want to see properly? What is distracting you?
• Your will can distract you from doing God’s will.
• Jesus’ sight of the Father’s work was inseparable from His surrender.
• His submission was radical, obediently aligning His will to the Father’s.  No negotiations.
• Obedience was not a burden but the expression of shared purpose.
• Jesus did not allow anything to distract Him from doing the will of the Father. Such distractions He removed.

John 4:34

“My food is to do the will of him who sent me.”

John 6:38

“I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me.”

Philippians 2:6–8

6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; 7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

How Jesus demonstrated Willingness to Remove Distractions

1. Engagement with the Samaritan woman (John 4:4–26): Jesus crossed cultural, social, and religious boundaries because He was aligned with the Father’s redemptive agenda, not societal norms.
2. The Cross (John 19:30): “It is finished” marks ultimate obedience—fully carrying out what the Father was doing for humanity’s redemption.

Challenge to Consider

• Seeing what the Father is doing requires more than spiritual insight; it requires surrender.
• Many of us ask God for direction while reserving the right to disagree.
• Jesus models obedience without reservation. Let your will not be a distraction to doing God’s will.
• This is a call to LAY DOWN YOUR WILL

In Summary

1. Close proximity or living close enough to God will help you know His heart. A CALL TO PRIORITIZE GOD’S PRESENCE
2. Attentiveness will help you to recognize what God is specifically up to. A CALL TO ATTENTIVE LISTENNING TO THE LORD
3. Willingness to remove distractions is one way of aligning your will fully with what God reveals. A CALL TO LAY DOWN YOUR WILL

Concluding Challenge

• If Jesus—the Son—chose not to act independently of the Father, how much more should we resist self-directed living?
• The invitation of John 5:19 is not admiration but imitation: to cultivate lives so aligned with God that our actions become a reflection of what the Father is already doing.

Prayer

Lord I want to do only what I see you do

1. Help me to prioritize your presence.
2. Help me to listen to you more attentively.
3. Lord I surrender my will to you.