Category: Thoughts and Meditations

“After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.” – John 6:66

Following Jesus is hard for us. You might argue that Jesus made salvation easy – after all, we just need to believe in Him to receive God’s grace. That’s wonderfully, gloriously true. However, it’s also very difficult for people to accept because it means we can’t possibly justify ourselves. God’s grace requires us to stop trying to save ourselves, confront and admit our wretched sinfulness, and embrace God’s one and only path to life. We hate that!

Following Jesus is also hard because after we’ve embraced His grace, He calls us to deny ourselves, take up our personal cross of sacrifice daily, and obey His commands and example. Jesus invites and commands us to a blessed, Spirit-filled life of self-denial. Jesus invites and commands us to believe and do things that will seem strange and be unpopular with the majority of people around us. His invitation is amazing but, once again, we naturally hate that! We far prefer self-centeredness, indulgence, and social acceptance to self-denial, sacrifice, and social rejection. And so, many who initially are enthusiastic about the person and good news of Jesus Christ won’t really embrace Him as their Lord because of what He expects.

Jesus is used to that, as we see in the verse. Though He desires for everyone to follow Him, He absolutely prefers a handful of true followers to a large crowd of fans. He actively winnows out His true followers from His casual fans in this story and is glad to have done so. Jesus isn’t concerned about the number of people sitting in a church building or calling themselves Christian. He cares about the number of disciples who are truly following Him, carrying their cross along the narrow path of faith. Of course, He gives every disciple the strength to carry their cross, He walks with them, and He fills them with joy as we do. But each believer must still walk with Him rather than his or her own path.

What about you? Are you truly walking with Jesus? If not, will you turn and #FollowJesus?

“All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” – John 6:37

Are you a believer in Jesus Christ? Are you “in Christ”? Then rejoice at this word from Jesus that He will never cast you out! Those who are raised to new spiritual life by God’s grace through faith in His Son belong to Jesus forever. You belong to Jesus and He’ll never get sick or tired of you!!!

If you belong to Christ, He won’t give up on you when you struggle. He won’t toss you aside when you mess up and then return, asking His forgiveness yet again. He won’t stop loving you ever. You’ve been sealed by the Holy Spirit as God’s property, united with Jesus, and adopted by God as His child. NOTHING can ever undo that!

Satan may well attack you, but he doesn’t have the power to tear you out of Jesus’ hand. You may stumble and fall, but for those truly in Christ, you will eventually get up again, and when you do, God will forgive and Jesus will say, “I never let you go.” You may struggle with doubts but Jesus won’t give up on you. You may be unlovable but Jesus will love you anyway. In your pride, foolishness, or wickedness you may miss out on plenty of blessings and experience God’s discipline for long periods of time, but Jesus won’t say in the end, “I never knew you”.

So, rejoice if you’re in Christ. You are truly in Him for all eternity. Your salvation is secure. Now, live to please Him, enjoy your fellowship with Him, and become more and more like Him. #FollowJesus

“So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.” – John 6:13

This is an extraordinary little detail that’s emphasized in the accounts of a truly remarkable miracle. Jesus began with five small barley loaves – the modest provisions a poor boy had brought for himself. Using that, Jesus created bread in the wilderness to feed thousands and thousands of Jews in a vivid re-enactment of God’s miraculous provision for Israel in the wilderness. After everyone had eaten their fill – not a modest snack but a satisfying meal – then His disciples gathered enough leftovers to fill 12 baskets!

Five small loaves of the kind of bread eaten by the poor became a feast for thousands. This reminds us that our human thinking about what can and can’t be accomplished by God is completely wrong! God isn’t limited by the resources we think we can put together for Him. God owns everything and can create from nothing to accomplish His purpose. Don’t limit your faith to what you can reason out, plan out, or expect to collect. Whatever God is calling His people to do, He will provide the resources.

After the feast, there were more leftovers than there had originally been bread. This is a beautiful reminder that what Jesus does for us, He does in glorious abundance! His grace, His love, His mercy, and His sacrifice – He delights to give those to us in overflowing abundance!

The number of baskets of leftovers isn’t an accident. Twelve is the number of tribes of Israel, the number of Apostles, the number of completeness throughout the Bible. This reminds us that what Jesus does for us, He does for all. His sacrifice, His resurrection, and new life in Him is made available to all and there is grace enough for everyone who will embrace it.

This story isn’t about leftovers because Jesus isn’t a God of scraps and leftovers. Nonetheless, in the leftovers we learn a great deal about the greatness, power, and provision of Jesus Christ for us, our sins, our lives, and the world! #FollowJesus

“But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.” – John 5:36

Faith isn’t meant to be easy. It does require…faith. However, God, in His mercy, has provided so much evidence about who Jesus is that we can be extremely confident in our faith. You don’t have to be a great theologian, you just need to believe in Jesus. Take time to read or re-read the Bible, particularly the Gospel accounts in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These Spirit-inspired eyewitness accounts report critical details that make it clear to the careful reader that Jesus of Nazareth is the Anointed Christ of God and His eternal Son come in the flesh.

From the beginning, the Bible provides the testimony of the prophets who came before Jesus. They promised that God’s Messiah was coming and gave details about how He would be conceived, where He would be born, what He would do, and how He would die and rise from the dead. John the Baptist was explicit that Jesus is the Lamb of God Who would suffer and die to take away the sins of the world. Jesus fulfilled all these prophecies.

In this verse, Jesus points us to His works and says they’re even more convincing. If you harbor any doubts about the divine status of Jesus as God’s eternal Son and the second person of the Trinity, consider the miracles Jesus performed. Who, other than God, can turn water into wine, control storms, wind, and waves, cast out demons without a second thought, heal all manner of diseases, disabilities, and birth defects, raise the dead to life, and resurrect Himself after death? Clearly, Jesus is God, come in the flesh to redeem us from our sins.

Each brilliant teaching and every extraordinary miracle of Jesus is like another brick He used to build a solid, unshakable foundation of faith. Go back through the evidence and read it carefully for yourself. Believe in Jesus, the Lord, the Christ, the eternal sustainer of creation. Then #FollowJesus

“And Gideon said to him, “Please, my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian.”” – Judges 6:13

Have you ever reached the point where you despaired of God’s promises? You knew the words of Scripture but doubted their truth because you felt like God is nowhere to be found? Clearly Gideon had reached that point when the Angel of the Lord appeared to him. He knew that God was with them in theory but years of devastating oppression had led him to deep doubt. How could God be with them? Why would He let bad things happen to His people? How come none of the great miracles of the past were happening anymore?

WE can sound like Gideon at times! The irony of the story is that Gideon was despairing precisely when God had appeared to turn the tide… through him. God had disciplined His people for their unfaithfulness and let them suffer the consequences as He’d promised. Now, He was about to rescue them and the agent of His divine work was full of despair. God had approached Gideon to make him the catalyst for Israel’s rescue and Gideon was discouraged and cynical. Nonetheless, God was about to turn the tide.

God will permit His people to go through long and difficult seasons for many reasons. You may be in one right now. He can do this to guide us to repentance or to build our faith. He may do this as a result of sin or the result of living in fallen world plagued by the sin of others. Don’t despair! God’s promises are rock-solid and His timing is perfect. Often, the moment we’re most tempted to doubt God’s activity, goodness, or presence is precisely when He chooses to reverse the course of events. Don’t despair! As Christians, Jesus promised He is with us and will never forsake us. He won’t! Ever! Rather than give in to gloom and doom, devote yourself increasingly to fervent prayer, confident that when the time is right, God WILL turn things around, perhaps through you! #FollowJesus