In Jesus, there is abundance for every need. Two times the crowds were in need for physical food and Jesus provided. What was it that Jesus used to provide the need? It was ALL the disciples had. Jesus took what was given to Him, a few loaves and fish. He not only provided a meal for a crowd, but leftovers that displayed His generous provision.
Our Heavenly Father is very generous in His provision for us! He is the same today as He was yesterday, and He will be the same forever. We can come to Him with what we have, all of us. He will work the miraculous in what we offer up to Him with generous abundance!
“After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus…” verse 33
I love how Jesus took time for the individual. The man who was deaf and could not speak could have been healed in a manner of seconds with Jesus’s touch, but Jesus took him aside. He gave the man one on one attention.
Jesus is personal. He is all about connecting with “the one” i.e. you and me. He loves to take us aside, away from the crowd, to be with Him in a deep, personal, and intimate relationship.
Jesus displayed the desire of Our Heavenly Father. He created us for intimacy with Him. We have been designed for a relationship that is connected to Him in oneness with Him. He in us and us in Him.
“This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.” 1 John 4:13 NIV
“When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.” Mark 6:34 ESV
Today is Mark 6:30-56.
Jesus told His disciples to “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” They had been very busy ministering to people and sharing the Good News. So much so that they hadn’t even had time to take care of the basics, such as eating and rest.
When they went a way in the boat and arrived at the resting place, the crowds came. Jesus looked at the “great crowd, and he had compassion on them…” He was moved by their needs. His will for them was good and He saw the hurts, the brokenness, the spiritual hunger. They were like “sheep without a shepherd.” They needed Him to keep them, to care for them, to meet their needs.
Jesus “began to teach them many things.” He met their spiritual hunger with spiritual food. Then He worked a great miracle providing physical food to meet their physical need. Jesus displayed to us compassion!
Our Heavenly Father is compassionate! He sees our needs, including our greatest one, to be connected to Him in a relationship. He knows that apart from Him, we will experience nothing but death, darkness, and destruction. He cares very much about not only our physical needs, but our spiritual needs as well.
How good it is to know that Our Heavenly Father is moved by our needs of Him! He loves us with great compassion!
Jesus went to His hometown. As He was teaching, the people who heard Him had a hard time looking at Jesus as anything more than “the carpenter’s son.” Even though He spoke with wisdom, and did mighty works. They were in “unbelief.” Jesus “marveled” at it. But this did not deter Jesus from continuing His mission that God had sent Him to do. He continued to go about the villages teaching. Jesus was faithful! He displayed the faithfulness of His Heavenly Father.
I know I have acted like the people of Jesus’s hometown a time or two in my life. I heard the Word of Wisdom, and I knew that God did mighty works, Yet I stood in unbelief. I am thankful that God has been faithful to me. He continued to call to me. He continued to draw me to Himself.
The Apostle Paul described the faithfulness of God like this:
“if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” 2 Timothy 2:13 NIV
Jesus “could do no mighty works there…” because of their unbelief. His desire is to do mighty works in our lives. This is why He faithfully pursues us. May we repent of our unbelief and surrender to Him our faithful God!
““You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ ”” Mark 5:31 NIV
Jesus was surrounded by crowds of people, but He still saw the needs of the one. One man in a crowd needed Jesus to heal his dying daughter. Jesus’s response is to head towards that man’s, Jairus, home to pray for his little girl.
As they walk through the crowd where people were pressing up against Jesus on all sides, one woman was healed in a very personal way. Jesus stopped to address her individually.
You and I are only one in 8 billion on this planet. There are so many others pressing in around Jesus. Yet He stops for the one, you/ me.
So many around us but He comes to our home of our hearts and raises the dead within us.
Jesus shows us a Heavenly Father who is personal. He is for each of us one on one. He wants intimate relationship with each of us. Jesus went to the cross, died and rose again to extend the invitation that our Heavenly Father desires for us to receive. He desires for us to come. Will we respond to His personal invitation for our time to be one on one with Him?
Today’s reading is the account of a man possessed by demons, a whole legion of them. No matter what was tried he could not be subdued.
He ran around in a graveyard naked. He beat up anyone who tried to help him. “He was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.” But deep within him, he wanted to be free. “..when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him.”
Jesus did the impossible. He cast the demons out of the man. He set the man free! The people of the nearby city heard of what had happened.
“And they came to Jesus and saw the demon possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there , clothed and in his right mind…” (verse 15)
Our Heavenly Father still sets the captives free and He is able to restore a person to “his right mind…” Depression, anxiety, anger issues, compulsions, addictions,etc. are not too big for Him!
In our society, it is almost taboo to make such a statement. But I can confidently say that I have experienced going from torment of mind to sitting close to Jesus and “in my right mind.” He set me free! He is not a respecter of persons. What He did for the demoniac in the Bible, and for me in a small Missouri town. He will do for you!
Jesus showed us the Father who restores and heals the troubled mind when He stepped out of the boat at Gerasenes.
He is able to show us that same God as we allow Him to step into our lives! The demoniac ran up to Jesus. May we run to Him as well!
Circumstances can loom intimidating and large. In today’s passage the disciples found themselves in a circumstance they knew was bigger than them, “a great windstorm” and “waves… breaking the boat” they were in. When they woke Jesus who was asleep in the oat, they asked Him a question that I’m sure I have asked God before, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Or in my words it may have sounded like, “God, don’t you care…?”
Then Jesus speaks, “Peace! Be still!”
“Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” These are the questions that Jesus asks as they sat in the boat in the “great calm.”
Every day as they walked with Jesus, the disciples saw Him perform miracles, speak with wisdom like no one else, heal, cast out demons, etc. He displayed that He indeed is Lord, and sovereign over all. He is supreme in power and dominion.
In my life, God has come through, time after time after time. Why would I be afraid and have no faith? If Jesus displayed His sovereignty on the boat that day with His disciples, He has not changed.
Jesus shows me my Heavenly Father. My God is Sovereign over the storms that may blow in my life. The safest place to be in a time of storms and uncertainty is in the boat with Jesus! He alone has the power to say, “Peace! Be Still!” And bring calmness in uncertainty! He is in control. He is Sovereign and my sovereign God loves me.
I’ve planted a few gardens. The idea behind a garden is to plant a seed that will produce ALOT. When I put a seed in the ground, I am desiring to see the good vegetables to come after time of tending the seeds and the plants they will yield.
Our Heavenly Father has given us the seed of His Word. He sows this seed within our spiritual heart. His desire is to see the good fruit that it will bear in our lives.
The seed of the Word is “living and active.” It is good seed. It will produce what it was sent to produce. However, if fruit is not produced, the issue isn’t the seed. The issue is the condition of the soil the seed fell upon.
Simply put, what is the condition of your spiritual heart. Is it hard and unyielding. Is it filled with rocks (sin) that keep the Word from taking root. Is it lined with thorny plants “the cares of the world and deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things” that “chokes the Word, and proves unfruitful.” Or is your heart good soil that hears the Word and accepts it bearing fruit.
Our Heavenly Father is sending forth His Word. He desires for us to receive it and enjoy the good fruit it produces in our lives. Not just a little of the good fruit, but a lot! His desire is for us to receive it by hearing it and accepting it. He is the Sower of good seeds. Will we receive?
Jesus’s biological family thought He was “out of his mind.” They came to seize Him. They did not understand who Jesus really was.
When Jesus was told about their coming, they said, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” Jesus then defined our true heavenly family. He said, “…whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” (Verse 35)
If we want to dwell in a relationship of “family” with God, we need to do the will of God. What is the will of God?
Jesus defined the will of God:
“For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”” John 6:40 ESV
The will of God is that we believe on Jesus and receive His eternal life.
Jesus also defines eternal life:
“And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” John 17:3 ESV
Knowing God = Eternal Life= Connection to God in a Relatioship of Oneness
When we know God intimately, in a connected relationship, we will be in His will. The ones who know God in this relationship are His family.
Nothing else matters in life. God wants us to experience Him as our Father. In this passage, the ones who were seated around Jesus, listening to Him speak were the ones who wanted to know God and to experience Him in relationship. They were the ones who were doing the will of God. They were Jesus’s true spiritual family.
When we enter into a relationship with God, we enter His family too! We can know God in a relationship of family!
“And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him.” Mark 3:9-10 ESV
People are looking for what is real, what is true. This was true in Jesus’s time and it is true today.
Crowds were showing up wherever Jesus went. They wanted an opportunity to experience Jesus. They had heard of Him, but they wanted to be near to Him, touch Him, and feel His power. They knew He had healed many. They knew He wasn’t just another religious leader. They knew He was real!
I have heard that this generation has seen so much false. They are hungry for what is real. God desires for them to know Him and His Word. He is the one who is right and true! He is real!
May our lives reflect Him so others may know Our Heavenly Father who still touches the broken and needy! He is real!
Your Love 