Hi ppl,
I'd like to share a revelation that the Lord has been speaking to me.
I have been meditating upon the Book of Matthew recently and the Lord has been using this time to speak powerfully into my life.
I was reading Chapters 14 to 16 for 3 days and thought of them as individual incidents until the Lord began to show me how they are all linked.
Tips in reading the Bible:
1) when reading the Word of God, if you want to find out what the Lord really wants to say, it's good to look at paragraphs, even chapters before and after the one that you're trying to understand. The whole book is usually written as a whole with parts joined together. So once you understand the parts, you can actually piece them together and know why certain parts seem to be sticking out and how the book flows.
2) Pray before you read the Bible, and ask for the Spirit of the Lord for a revelation!
Chapter 14 (besides the beheading of John the Baptist) tells of how Jesus fed the 5,000 by multiplying th bread and the fish He was given.
This is followed by Jesus walking on water and asking Peter to walk on water to Him.
Right after these miracles, the Pharisees, who were teachers of the Law during the times of Jesus came and confronted Jesus by accusing His disciples of breaking the Law because they did not wash their hands ceremonially before eating their meals. Jesus rebuked them by saying that they too had broken the law themselves when they failed to honour their own father and mother by relinquishing responsibilities over the care of their own parents using the law.
He then explained to His disciples that it is not what you eat that defiles you but what comes out of the mouth that defiles a man due to the wickedness of his heart. In this way, Jesus restored His disciples and showed them the truth that the heart matters more than what you eat or drink or even do.
After which Jesus went to the Phoenician woman who is not a Jew and healed her. He then praised her for her great faith, departed from there and came back to Israel at the Sea of Galilee, where He healed a great multitude of people.
It was here, the Lord performed His second feeding of the multitudes which numbered 4,000 this time.
Right after this, the Pharisees came back with the Sadducees, another group of teachers of the Law to confront Jesus by challenging Him to show them a sign (a miracle) Jesus refused, knowing that they were only using this to mock Him. Jesus was secure, and He knows that the signs that He performs are not for men, but for the Father.
It was here that Jesus told the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. But the disciples were too afraid and thought He was angry with them for not bringing bread with them. It turned out that Jesus was telling them to guard their hearts against the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
So what is the doctrine of the Pharisees and the Sadducees that we must beware of?
In my Bible short commentary, it's written, "The Pharisees are legalists who reduced religion to form and ceremony. The Sadducees were rationalists and materialists, denying the supernatural elements in religion."
The Lord showed me that on the 2 occasions, He was confronted by the very things that comes against living a life of faith. On the 1st occasion, the Pharisees tried to clamp Him down using the law, or religion. On the 2nd occasion, the Sadducees tried to deny His miracles by challenging Him to give a sign, purporting to disclaim Him as a fraud and that there are no such things as miracles in this life!
The Lord then showed me how Jesus rebuked His disciples when He told them about being wary of the doctrines of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. "O you of little faith..." and began to recap about how He performed the miracles of feeding the 5,000 and 4,000 and having baskets of leftovers.
And He began to tell me that the 2 things that will come into your life, when you start to harden your heart, is that you will start to live your Christian life based on a set of dos and don'ts (like the Pharisees) You begin to lose sight of the heavenly vision, and start to live a natural life, that is devoid of the joy of knowing the Lord and how He provides for you (like the Sadducees) where you start to worry and revolve your life around the circumstances around you.
But that is never the way that the Lord wants us to live our lives, bound to a set of laws of do's and don'ts and to the circumstances that surrounds us. He calls us to live by faith, and He proved it to us with the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 and 4,000. And He tells us that we can do it, as long as we believe in Him and hear His voice and obey Him.
1) Peter walking on water - He asks the Lord and Jesus calls him to Him.
2) The Phoenician Woman
It is not surprising then that right after He spoke about the leaven, that He asked His disciples who do they think He is. Peter replied that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And He said this to Peter, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." and Jesus, at that moment, gave Peter a heavenly vision meant by God for him to be fulfilled.
Who revealed to Peter the faith that he too can walk on water? Who revealed to the Phoenician woman that Jesus can heal her daughter?
Is it not God the Father?
Then let me summarise it for you:
Jesus performed the miracle of feeding the multitudes and then performing that miracle on the individuals (Peter and the Woman) to show us that we too can walk as He walks, to live as He lives, by faith. But where does this faith come from? It comes from hearing the voice of the Father and in their relationship with Him, because then, will He reveal to us the vision to walk by faith in Him.
He tells us not to be sucked into living our Christian lives based on a set of rules, but upon hearing His word and having a living relationship with Him. He tells us to live a life expecting miracles in our lives and not to conform to the natural tendencies of this world, which is to be concerned with our livelihood.
He tells us to live for only one thing, and that is to live out the vision that He has called us individually to fulfill.
And for Himself, it was to die on the cross to redeem our souls. That is why, right after He spoke about the revelation that was given to Peter, He rebuked him, for trying to stop Him from dying on the cross. See how the devil tries to blind the heavenly vision that was given to Jesus by God the Father, that is to die on the cross to redeem our souls? Peter didn't get it then because He had not received the vision.
After which Jesus told the disciples this.
"If anyone comes after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me, for whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give iin exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to His works."
what Jesus is basically saying is this, "come and live My life. how I fulfilled the vision that God the Father has given to Me. You also must fulfill the vision that God the Father will show you." Realise that Jesus didn't say, "take up MY cross"? He said, "take up YOUR cross" which means that the price to pay is yours and yours alone, to fulfill the vision that God has given you.
Then Jesus assures us and gives us the heavenly vision for those who follow Him, saying that angels are real, He is real and He will come back and reward us. And He calls us to hang on to this vision till the very end of our lives.
Sons and Daughters, taking up the cross is not forcing yourself to cconform to a set of rules to be a good Christian. It means, receiving the vision that God has for your life and then living it out despite the difficulties faced. That's true passion, and that's true abundant living.
So I urge you that you can respond, by this day, giving your life to Jesus, by surrendering your heart to Him to be humble to hear Him say, "Lord, show me Your vision for my life, and lead me and guide me on how to fulfill it. Teach me and mold me this day, to be able to withstand all that is coming against me and stopping me from fulfilling Your vision for my life."
Then, all you can do... is listen, and you walk... listen, and you walk... listen, and you walk... and it'd be the most beautiful journey of your life, cos it'd never be boring anymore, life would never be predictable anymore, and you begin to know this God more and more each day.
Amen.
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