vl1157

Hi everyone! My name is Victoria and I love the in-depth nature of the bible studies. I am from the Eastern United States, currently living within a metro ride of D.C. I am hoping to grow in the Lord along with you all!

It looks to me like Jesus was testing their hearts. He almost had to use a shocking metaphor in order to repel those who had only come to Him for food.

Nibbling the Bread of life lends of course to a spiritually anemic life- drained of strength in Christ to follow after His ways. Without abiding in Him (prayer, receiving His word, etc) we can do nothing (John 15), because we can do nothing of ourselves. We then become flesh-driven rather than Spirit-driven, because that is our default pattern without Christ. Nibbling here and there can only lead to this terrible split inside of ourselves, this double-mindedness or hipocrisy, where we desire or know to do good but the ability to do that good is not in us (Romans 7 I think). We can know the commandments and a lot of things about Jesus and find a baffling inability to model any of it. Unfortunately, this is often what happens with me, one reason why Ihave to get back into these bible studies...

When Jesus speaks about the Father drawing people to Him, it is almost as if He is reassuring Himself at that time, because He knew the heart-motives of the people, and that a lot of them were about to leave Him. He was saying "Eat Me" and other seemingly preposterous things- perhaps so that the ones who came to Him for truly good reasons would be the only ones who stayed, because He is a Tester of hearts! He says that the people that the Father draws will come to Him. Perhaps He knew inwardly that even though it looked bleak that many were going to leave Him, He also had faith that His Father was drawing true disciples to Himself. (It would be interesting to compare this to a church mentality that might sometimes go on in some cultures, where the numbers that attend are seen as very important rather than the dscipleship quality of those that do. Ah...we are all broken in some way, and I hope that He might even restore vacillating/weak/fleshly followers to Himself, to a way that is what pleases Him, followers like myself a lot of times!)

People wear nice clothes, work hard, try to help others, maybe even try to "pay God off" by donating money in order to win His favors/blessings (in Acts chapter 8 a man tries to pay one of the apostles money for the gift of the Holy Spirit, and in our day and time in places, people are told that donating money to certain ministries will get them God's favor). I struggle very much with works-righteousness and the need to be good or to try pleasing Him, and find that as Isaiah says, my righteousness is like "filthy rags" before Him. It leads to a hopelessness...perhaps after striving and finding that your righteousness will never be enough, then at last you can surrender and be on your knees before Him and think only of the Cross.

The crowd was following Jesus for their physical hunger. I suppose that their daily needs and desire for freedom from oppression overwhelmed any deeper kind of response to Jesus's miraculous multiplication of bread from the other day. I, too, suffer from the mentality that the crowd had. Often, I hunger for Guidance (someone to constantly tell me what to do so I am not responsible for my own mistakes, thus freeing me from a kind of anxiety), and perhaps if I had been one of the crowd on that day I would have also tried to compel Him to be King and try to get Him to feed me every day and fill my ears with something to distract me from the pain or mundaneness of life. How sad it truly is, that this is present in the human heart often, especially when not strengthened enough spiritually to forget your own needs and go for Love to follow what He would do.

Miracles from Him help us know in the beginning of our walk with Him that He exists and that He is real. They also help when He heals others and brings them to faith in Him, and they restore our life here in His mercy. I realized at some point that knowing Him was more than just knowing what His presence is like. The Israelites who followed Moses had a pillar of cloud by day, fire by night, and plenty of other visible miracles, yet did not have much faith in Him and murmured and complained. I think human nature is still the same today and in any culture, and so we cannot subsist on a diet consisting of only His obvious miraculous work. We need suffering and blind faith and testing too, by merit of our need for His discipline and refining work.

Q1 Why do people somtimes flee from God? Why do people imagine that God doesn't know what they do? Have you ever felt that way? Psalm 139 is such a good psalm...He is a searching kind of God who tests the heart, the Great Physician. I do often feel that way, when I feel unworthy or sinful that day or week, or feel that I ought to hold silence before Him either because I feel His gaze on me or some Scrutiny that casts to light all I am....and all I'm not. At this kind of point, I try to flee from Him in a sense, by not praying so talkatively, or by trying not to pray at all. Either this means I am silently attentive to Him, or it means I cringe inwardly at the thought of Him knowing me at all and try to hide away. The fear of God makes you want to hide when His light reveals all your imperfections, unless or until it is also covered by His love.

Q1 Why do people somtimes flee from God? Why do people imagine that God doesn't know what they do? Have you ever felt that way? Psalm 139 is such a good psalm...He is a searching kind of God who tests the heart, the Great Physician. I do often feel that way, when I feel unworthy or sinful that day or week, or feel that I ought to hold silence before Him either because I feel His gaze on me or some Scrutiny that casts to light all I am....and all I'm not. At this kind of point, I try to flee from Him in a sense, by not praying so talkatively, or by trying not to pray at all. Either this means I am silently attentive to Him, or it means I cringe inwardly at the thought of Him knowing me at all and try to hide away. The fear of God makes you want to hide when His light reveals all your imperfections, unless or until it is also covered by His love.

To believe in Him as He does miracles is good...sometimes He draws us in that way so we know He is real. But then we can get trapped in the John 6 mentality of many of His followers, many of whom left after He said some shocking things (the equivalent of, "Eat Me!"). The only ones who stayed said, "Where else can we go?", for even they did not understand Him at the time. A faith in Him that is only there when He is 1. doing a miracle in our life, 2. giving us free bread (or some other thing that we really like getting), 3. healing us/giving us good health, 4. giving us very direct and obvious feelings of His presence, is Fair-weather thinking toward Him, not exactly faith yet. These things help us know He is Real and reliable, they do nothing for our character and sanctification. He has to test us and forge our character in Him, and so somehow we must learn to love Him for who He is, not for what He does for us ("His benefits"). Faith seems to be following Him whether blind to Him or not. (Isaiah 50: 10: "Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the Voice of His Servant? Even though he walks in the darkness without a ray of light, let him trust in the Name of the Lord and depend on his God.")

Ah...we do not realize just how dependent we are on Him every day and every hour for our needs. We do not know as we slumber through our job routine that at any moment that livelihood could be snatched away or something else could change. I think, as painful as it is to us, God prefers at times to keep us leaning fully on Him....even if that means we are broken to come to that point...blessed Mercy of God that He doesn;t abandon us to our own nature, which desires to appear strong without Him and have its way without His input.

Ah...we do not realize just how dependent we are on Him every day and every hour for our needs. We do not know as we slumber through our job routine that at any moment that livelihood could be snatched away or something else could change. I think, as painful as it is to us, God prefers at times to keep us leaning fully on Him....even if that means we are broken to come to that point...blessed Mercy of God that He doesn;t abandon us to our own nature, which desires to appear strong without Him and have its way without His input.

Q1. What about our lives and words "hallows" the name of our Father? What desecrates and besmirches it? How should we "hallow" the Father when we begin to pray? The things that honor His name might be when we keep silent at a moment that we are tempted to say something meaningless or flighty, in the presence of others who know you claim to be His, or when we include things He has done for us in a story about ourselves. I have noticed there are at least two ways to tell the same story about my life, one of which exaggerates and glorifies myself, the other of which includes feats that He has performed and faults of mine that He has intercepted or corrected. Besmirching His name in our actions or words is too easy. It can be done in any unresisted fleshly moment either inwardly or outwardly. It can especially be done if we tend too often to say, "God wants.." or "God says.." and then put an activity or word of our own after it, or if we say we are "serving Him" with something that perhaps is being done wih a different motive. I guess the main issue is that we can work/speak for our own glory, or for His, and that sometimes what looks like it is for Him is really not. In prayer aloud in a group, I think we honor Him if we pray very simply and openly. I have had some shyness trying to pray aloud, and when I do get the chance, which is not very often, I like to try to remember that I am praying to Him, not to the people listening in the room. If you remember as you pray to pray toward Him and not think about what others will think of your words, it will be good.