I was introduced to an insight from Mark 8, with a story of
Jesus and His disciples in the boat travelling:
But the disciples had
forgotten to bring any food. They had
only one loaf of bread with them in the boat. As they were crossing the
lake, Jesus warned them, “Watch out! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees
and of Herod.” At this they began to
argue with each other because they hadn’t brought any bread.
Jesus knew what they
were saying, so he said, “Why are you arguing about having no bread? Don’t you know or understand even yet? Are your hearts too hard to take it
in? ‘You have eyes—can’t you see?
You have ears—can’t you hear?’
Don’t you remember anything at all? When I fed the 5,000 with five loaves of bread, how many
baskets of leftovers did you pick up afterward?” “Twelve,” they said. “And when I fed the 4,000 with seven loaves,
how many large baskets of leftovers did you pick up?” “Seven,” they said. “Don’t you understand yet?” he asked them.
It could be easy to miss this, but Jesus is coming at them
with a very familiar charge that they recognized from a well-known passage from
Isaiah the prophet, chapter 6:
Go! Say to these
people: Keep listening, but do not understand; keep looking, but do not
perceive. Make the minds of these people dull; deafen their ears and blind
their eyes; otherwise they might see with their eyes and hear with their ears, understand
with their minds, turn back, and be healed.
This was a big rebuke…
But do we realize what just happened here? The disciples, in the boat following Jesus
had allowed themselves a moment of hard heartedness and spiritual deafness and
blindness. And Jesus called it exactly
that.
Hard-heartedness
threatens all of us!
We can be active, passionate followers of Jesus and still
give way to hard-heartedness.
But what exactly is it?
Hard-heartedness is
when I refuse to let God’s faithfulness in my life grow my faith and trust in
Him, and take me to a new level of trust and expectancy. The disciples had just seen Jesus feed
thousands with miraculous provision. And
He did it twice! They’ve seen miracles
over and over, and so now they think He’s rebuking them and that He’s concerned
about their supplies? They are
missing an important point because they won’t let God’s faithfulness in the
past grow and shape their vision for today.
Every day I can look back and see God’s faithfulness. And in this recent season of some stressors
and difficulties I can look back and completely say: Father, You got me through
it once again. I should never have
doubted you!
Let me ask you….
·
When God comes through in your place of worry
and stress, do you feel guilty that you didn’t trust Him more? That happens to me.
·
When you pray about things, do you leave your
prayer time with peace and assurance, or do you feel like you are still
carrying the stress and concern?
As we start the new year, let me challenge you:
Let’s fight the
good fight of FAITH, and BELIEVE GOD!
Let His past faithfulness grow our vision and our trust
so that what’s in front of us shrinks under the assurance of our Father’s love
and constant presence!
Faith releases us to live a life of peace and joy, that
glorifies God and attracts the lost.
That’s what He deserves from us this new year!
Happy New Year!
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