I believe that what I am about to say has been true since the beginning of human history… and will be true as long as life as we know it endures on this earth. Here it is:

Young men will, without fail, try to impress young women.

Movies are made about this… books are written about this… songs are sung about this… fortunes are won and lost --mostly lost-- over this… and otherwise logical and mentally sound young men have dispensed with common sense altogether merely to impress young women.

Now, I think I can also say without fear of contradiction that young women will – without fail – try to impress young men. But, to me, there is a subtlety to the wiles of fair womanhood that is quite different from the "blank the torpedoes… full speed ahead" approach of many young men -- including me.

If I had it to do all over again, I never would have thrown caution to the winds and done something which I knew deep down inside I had no business doing. I never would have climbed onto the saddle of that girl’s horse.

You see, even though I have always really liked horses, horses have never really liked me. Anyway, when this particular horse and its stable mate showed up in the summer of 1973 at a friend’s house, two very attractive young ladies were riding them. The girls were friends of ours and they were sisters. I don’t know if the horses were related.

In those days, I always had designs on my manhood and any opportunity to prove it. So, when Judy asked me if I’d like to ride her horse, I had to do the manly thing. I had to mount up like I knew what I was doing and show that noble steed, and the watching women, just who was boss.

That thought didn’t last long. No sooner had I put my left foot in the stirrup and swung my right leg over than that noble steed did a very ignoble thing and took off on me. What happened next is just kind of a flurry of fear in my memory. I had planned to go south, but that horse had a plan of his own. It was his plan to go north -- at a high rate of speed. What’s important here is that his plan was in effect, not mine.

I never did get my right foot in the stirrup. And since the stirrups were adjusted for Judy and not for me, this became a very precarious perch. So I dropped the reins and held onto the saddle horn. Bad idea. My left foot was wedged into the stirrup, poking out like I had wings or something. What we had here was a runaway horse with a flyaway jockey and it soon became apparent that the finish line was the barn where this horse lived.

And although it’s hard to imagine that things could have gotten much worse, they quickly did, because this horse was of the "shortest distance between two points is a straight line" breed, and directly between us and that barn stood a pair of what I have now come to believe were what we call "multifloral rose" bushes. Well, I’ll tell you, it’s hard to steer a horse while gripping the saddle horn, so right through the sticker-filled flora we flew.

When we finally arrived at the finish line and I pried my left foot out of the stirrup and fell off that not so noble beast covered with red scars. Of course, I tried to recover for my bruised body and ego by tying the horse to something and patting it a little in case anyone was watching, so as to suggest that what had happened was not all that bad.

You may, or may not, have ever had such a silly and scary thing happen when you were trying to act like you were absolutely in control. But sometimes, somehow, our pride gets in the way, doesn’t it? Sometimes, somehow, we feel like the most important thing we can do to preserve ourselves or what we might call our sense of dignity relates to this whole issue of control. If we’re honest, things deep down inside us aren’t always as they seem on the outside, are they? And consider this, when it came to that horse and who was in control, even if that horse had remained calm and clip-clopped to the south instead of the north, the fact remains that he was always in control, because I had no idea how to change that reality.

We all have defining moments. They are those moments when we are faced with the truth, a truth we may not have previously understood or a reality we’d only wondered about. In the Bible there is a powerful defining moment in the life of Pontius Pilate.

Pilate did repeatedly try to have Jesus released because he knew that He was completely innocent of any crime. Pilate's wife also tried to get Jesus released. She sent him the message, "Don't have anything to do with that innocent man, for I have suffered a great deal today in a dream because of Him." (Matthew 27:19).

Pilate suffered from being the middleman between the Emperor in Rome and the Jewish authorities in Judea. If things got out of control, he would hear it from Rome. In fact, if things got too bad in the eyes of Rome, Pilate could lose his power, his position, his possessions. Conversely, if his control was deemed too heavy handed by the Jews, then they would revolt and he’d have the wrath of Rome to deal with. So, he found himself betwixt and between.

Pilate certainly didn’t ask for the position he found himself in when the Jewish leaders hauled Jesus before him. We can assume that he was aware of Jesus’ reputation. He may have even been warned that Jesus’s popularity posed a threat to the power base. Regardless, he seemed to try to measure Jesus carefully when he met him. Pilate doesn’t want the Jewish Council to think that they could pull his strings. And he knows that they are somewhat power hungry and paranoid, just as he is.

Pilate is impressed with Jesus, but sadly, Jesus remains only an object of fascination, not God the Son; not the one who spoke and the universe leapt into existence; not the self-existent one who gave himself to redeem a lost and dying world; not the one whose birth we are about to commemorate and whose death and resurrection set apart from every one else who has ever lived;and not the Lord and Savior and coming King of the Christ follower.

During his encounter with Jesus, Pilate initiates a conversation. John 18:33 says, "Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’" John 18:38 continues, "’What is truth?’ Pilate asked."

Finally, Pilate asks himself – just as much as he asked it of those who wanted to eliminate Jesus – the ultimate question in Matthew 27:22: "’What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?’ Pilate asked."

This really was his defining moment. This is the defining moment of everyone who ever clearly understands the Jesus story. It is good to ask God the "big" questions… but only if we embrace his answers.

To embrace something is much more than to just give it the nod of intellectual agreement. It is to hold on to it, trust it, and love it. That’s what God wants us to do to his answers to our questions. That leads us to Pilate’s final question of Jesus, in which a frustrated and somewhat desperate Roman governor asks, "Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?" In spite of apparent circumstances, and what appears to be overwhelming opposition, God is in control.

In John 19:11, Jesus answered Pilate, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above."

Pilate really believed that he had the power to determine Jesus’ future. He was, in effect, "playing God." It’s all he knew how to do, because he didn’t know God. But time and eternity would prove him completely mistaken. Here’s the point: whenever we think that we either live in a vacuum from God in which He is not the Sovereign over our lives, or we know that He is Sovereign over our lives, but we decide to go our own way anyway, we are playing God.

Playing God is the opposite of trusting God.

Proverbs 3:5-6 says, "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."

Pilate had no peace of mind about what he had done with Jesus. The resolution to crucify Christ at the demand of the crowd gave him such an uneasy feeling that he felt the need to separate himself from his unjust acquiescence to the unruly mob. Notice what he does and what he says and understand that washing our hands of Jesus actually keeps us from getting clean.

Matthew 27:24-25 says, "When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead an uproar was starting, he took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. ‘I am innocent of this man's blood,’ he said. ‘It is your responsibility!’ All the people answered, ‘Let his blood be on us and on our children!’"

You know, the Kingdom of God which Jesus established is an amazing thing because it is so upside down from our natural way of thinking. This often leads to great irony in the things we say. Consider this: those who rioted to see Jesus executed said, "Let his blood be on us and on our children!" They didn’t know what they were saying, but they were saying something that was more true than they could have ever imagined, for their only real hope was that his blood shed on the cross for the forgiveness of every shortcoming, including this very attitude of denouncing Christ, his blood on them and their children was in fact, their only hope… and is, in fact, our only hope for forgiveness, as well.

Jesus is the King of the Universe. His kingdom is unshakable, will last forever, and his followers share it with him. What is the defining moment for the follower of Christ? Thanksgiving. It leads to appropriate appreciation of who God is.

Hebrews 12:28 says, "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe."

It all boils down to this: Pilate knew that there was something special about Jesus, but he didn’t know how special. He didn’t know that Jesus was his king and Caesar’s king and the King of everybody else who has ever lived. You see, history is his story. He writes it. He produces it. He directs it. He even acts in it. He still acts in it. And as King of Kings, He declares that those who trust in Him will inherit an unshakeable kingdom. What a promise. Pilate didn’t know that. He was overwhelmed by the desire for self-preservation. But, self preservation ultimately produces hopelessness because the weak has become the new strong, the cloudy has become the new clear, and the dead to self become those who are really alive.

This is how things are, really are, because the King has come. He and He alone can really play God. And remember, the defining attribute for the partaker in Christ’s kingdom is Thanksgiving. Celebrate it everyday at the table of the King.