Living Stones – Monday, September 25, 2017
God’s perspective
John 6:6
He Himself knew what He would do.
John chapter 6, verses 1 to 14, records a story with which we are very familiar. Jesus fed 5,000 men with a little boy’s packed lunch. We are also familiar with the discussions about if they counted men only, and if there were women and children there who increased the number, and so on. I am not sure why we bother since the effect and impact would be the same if there were 7,000.
Now let’s quickly get some context on what’s going on here. Just before this Jesus had healed a man at the Pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath. As a result of the healing He had gotten into an argument with the Jews about his identity and he challenged whether they truly believe the scriptures – things were getting a little hot.
Meanwhile, His popularity was growing. It was the time of a Jewish feast so the population of Jerusalem swelled. We could imagine that people had heard that this year was not going to be dull and boring like previous years. There was a prophet and miracle worker who they might even be able to make king and break the yolk of the Roman Empire to which they were subservient.
With all of this going on Jesus heads off for some peace and quiet and to spend time with his disciples. But, the crowds found him and pressed in. Jesus knew of their spiritual plight but now recognized a very practical problem as well, hunger. Here begins the lesson on Godly perspective.
Jesus presents the disciples with this plight of the people. Philip, who was from that area and probably knew it well, was quick to speak of all of the practical problems that the location and circumstance presented (a) the number of people, (b) the cost of food, (c) the total cost of food for so many people. Clearly Philip was very good with numbers and should have been the accountant.
Our tendency is to act on the information we can observe and process. This is the practice of leaning on our own understanding and not acknowledging God in all our ways (Proverbs 3:5-6). A Godly perspective operates at the point of conflict between the here and now (what we can see and process) and what God will do.
God is constantly looking for us to genuinely trust Him, but we talk more about trust than we actually practice trusting Him because we are too familiar with the familiar. We have to get to the place where we recognize that our familiarities are not with the ways of God.
Often today people are familiar with their pastor not with the ways of God. People are familiar with their church or denomination but not with the ways of God. And, as Philip demonstrated, you could be hanging around Jesus and not get it either!
Every day we are operating out of self and our reasoning, our logic, our desires, our wants, our preferences, our orientation, and not out of the heart of God.
God looks on our circumstances, our challenges, our conditions and He will make a way where there seems to be no way, but we are often running way ahead of Him trying to figure the best way out, only to end up in the wrong direction.
As we meditated on recently (1 Cor 2:16), we have the mind of Christ but it appears as though we are often out of our minds!
Tomorrow we will continue to look at the Godly perspective.
Think of these things:
- Think of times in your life when you prayed about a situation and then got up and took your own action without waiting to hear from God
- Have you seen God work something out for you after all your efforts to do it for yourself had failed?
- Consider what situations in your life right now require that you get God’s perspective before you act
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that we would learn to move away from leaning on our own understanding and develop a Godly perspective.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
