Seeking Jesus as our Daily Bread
Most people reading this post will I imagine be familiar with the words “Give us today our daily bread”, as it is a line from ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ (found in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4), arguably one of the most well known passages in the bible. Recently I have taken to praying the Lord’s prayer every day, not out of dutiful religiosity but as a way of connecting with and aligning myself with Father God in the mornings.
Often when hearing teaching about the Lord’s prayer, this line is often taught to be about asking God for our daily needs. (And it is still appropriate for that!) But over time I began to see that this line builds on a previous revelation I had from God, that Only One Thing is Needed. I began to see even more through this verse, that really, I do only have one need and it is for daily bread, but not necessarily for physical bread. It is for living bread, the bread that came down from heaven, Jesus Christ.
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty”. John 6:35 NIV.
Jesus wants to fill us with himself and fill us with life, but how many of us go to him to satisfy our hunger?
Continue reading “Seeking Jesus as our Daily Bread”Wake up!
Sleep is a time of rest when our bodies shut down, our senses tune out and we disconnect from the world until we wake again. In reality, when we are asleep we are actually quite vulnerable as we are no longer aware of what is going on around us. Nevertheless, sleep was created by God for a specific purpose and it is a blessing from God that restores and refreshes our bodies in a way that nothing else can.
But what does it mean to be spiritually asleep? Is being spiritually asleep good for us in the same way physical sleep is? The short answer is no! But I do believe that there are certain similarities to physical sleep, in that when we are spiritually asleep, we also make ourselves vulnerable because we lack awareness of what is happening around us.
In Revelation 3:2-3, Jesus urges the church in Sardis to ‘Wake up!’, He asks them to repent and finish the work they have begun, otherwise his return will be a shock to them. I believe Jesus is still speaking those words to his bride, the church, today.
Continue reading “Wake up!”Why do your expectations matter so much?
At the beginning of this year, I was reading one of my favourite accounts in the bible – where Jesus heals the woman with the issue of blood in Luke 8. However, as I read it on this occasion, one word in verse 40 really stood out to me. I could feel the Holy Spirit all over that word and the word was ‘expecting’. The whole verse reads “Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him”.
The crowd were waiting for Jesus to arrive, but they weren’t just hoping to get a glimpse of him. There was a good reason why he was attracting such crowds! The crowd were eagerly expecting Jesus because they knew that when Jesus showed up, miracles, signs and wonders were sure to follow.
Continue reading “Why do your expectations matter so much?”Finding Rest in the Storm
One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and set out. As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger.
The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!”
He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples.
In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”
Luke 8:22-25 NIV
Jesus kindly spoke to me through these verses one day this week when I was struggling in my own storm. Feeling hard pressed on many sides, the wind and waves surrounding me felt overwhelming, and I was struggling to look beyond them.
Many of the things going on weren’t new, I had prayed about them and thought I had entrusted them to God! Yet on this day, I had no peace and just yearned for some breakthrough and relief from all that was happening.
In his abounding kindness, Jesus invited me to rest in the storm with him instead of struggling in it. In these verses from Luke we see that the disciples were consumed with the wind and the waves, and let fear rule in their hearts in the storm. This is in stark contrast to Jesus, who was asleep and at rest in the bottom of the boat, totally at ease, not for one moment worried by the storm.
Where do you want to be in the storms in your life?
Jesus graciously invites us today, ‘Come and rest with me in the midst of your storm!’
But how do we truly find rest in the storm? I believe Jesus tells us this through the question he asks the disciples in verse 25 – ‘Where is your faith?’ Clearly he is indicating that this is what they are lacking in this situation. If the disciples had faith in God, they would not be panicking. Faith is our key to being able to rest in the storm.
Continue reading “Finding Rest in the Storm”My Journey of Faith
In my last post I looked at Mary and Zechariah in Luke 1 and their differing responses to the word of God. You know I have to be honest and say I could relate much more to Zechariah than to Mary. Long years of waiting and disappointment had left me feeling a bit ‘bruised’ within myself and much more likely to question the promises of God than to receive them with rejoicing. But recently God has been stirring my soul with his promises and inviting me to believe… That’s why I’ve been writing about faith in my last few posts because it’s been my current personal journey with God!
God used Luke 1 to show me what my unbelief, fear and doubts looked like, and invited me instead to become like Mary, humbly believing God at his word, fully trusting that nothing is too difficult for him. But its rarely just a simply ‘switch’, I actually had to walk this out with God in real life situations and it was and still is, a journey! I often found I could really believe and trust God for a few days but then I would become worn down and my fears and doubts would mount up again, as not much in the situation seemed to change.
One thing that really helped was meditating on the promise of God or the truth God was speaking to me for that situation, throughout the day (as well as regularly declaring it). Also I found that often, what God had said to me included an ‘instruction’, as in it wasn’t about just passively waiting. If I wanted to see the promise of God come to pass and see the change happen, I had to play my part and do what God was telling me to do.
I’m going to share one of the words/promises God has spoken to me, my meditations upon it and how I am walking it out in my life by faith.
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” Ephesians 3:20 NIV
Continue reading “My Journey of Faith”Are you responding with fear or faith?
As written about in my previous blog post, living by faith has a great deal to do with hearing the voice of God for our situation. However it is not just about ‘hearing’ from God, it matters how we respond to what he has said – how do we receive his words? It really is our choice how we react when he speaks to us.
The Lord desires us to respond with faith, believing him completely at his word. However many of us will struggle with fear and doubt, the “What ifs?” filling our minds… In Luke chapter 1, Mary and Zechariah both hear from God and respond in completely different ways. They show us just how different our reactions and attitude can be.
Firstly, Zechariah is visited by an angel of the Lord (Luke 1:11), who declares that his barren wife, Elizabeth, will have a son named John. Zechariah, however, is not overjoyed and thankful at this news, instead he says, but how can I be sure of this? He goes on to point out the problems in the natural realm that are obstacles to this word being fulfilled.
Continue reading “Are you responding with fear or faith?”Living by faith
Living by faith is an essential part of our walk as believers. When we were born again, we put our faith in what we could not see, Jesus Christ and received the fullness of salvation in him. In 2 Corinthians 5:7, Paul commands us to “to live by faith and not by sight”, implying that our faith doesn’t begin and end with receiving salvation, but faith continues to be an essential part of our every day lives.
Hebrews 11:1 declares that “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”. Both 2 Cor 5:7 and Heb 11:1 contrast faith to sight, suggesting that if we are living only by what we can see in the natural realm, we are not living by faith. To have faith is to look beyond what we can see and to be confident in what we do not see. But for most of our time on earth, our primary way of looking at our lives is through our natural eyes! So how can we train ourselves to not be led by what we can see, but instead to look beyond and have faith in what we cannot see?
Continue reading “Living by faith”The Veil Is Torn
At church on Easter Sunday last year, God surprised me in a really beautiful way. All Easter weekend I had been focusing and meditating on a couple of scriptures from Mark’s gospel:
“With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” Mark 15:37-38 NIV
The final moment of Jesus’ death had captured my attention in a way it hadn’t before. I spent a lot of time picturing that scene, the moment where his final breath tore the temple veil in two, as well as contemplating what exactly that meant for us as believers…
Then at church, during worship, I saw that a member of the art team was finishing a large canvas at the front, directly in line with where I was sitting. As I looked more closely at it, I realised that, amazingly, it was the exact scene I had been imagining, of the veil being torn in two! I found it moving to see what I had been intently reflecting on suddenly so vivid before my eyes.
Continue reading “The Veil Is Torn”Only One Thing Is Needed (3)
In this final part of my blog series on ‘Only One Thing Is Needed’, I want to look at the question, what does my life look like when I am fully living from this revelation? How is my behaviour different when I live with a ‘One thing’ mentality? To begin with, lets go back to the gospels and read another account of Mary of Bethany, a story which is told in Matthew, Mark and John, but Mary is only actually named in John’s gospel.
Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honour. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
John 12:1-3 NIV
Mary again displays her extravagant devotion to Jesus and further reveals the reality of living a ‘only one thing is needed’ lifestyle. Pure nard is a costly perfume, a pint of which would have set you back a years wages. Mary doesn’t pour a small drop over Jesus’ feet or use just enough to get a bit of scent. Nard was stored in an alabaster jar (Matthew 26:7) which had a tall neck that would have to be broken open so the contents could be accessed. It is impossible to use only a little bit, you have to go ‘all in’, therefore every single drop would have been poured out over Jesus’ feet (John 12) and head (Matthew 26/Mark 14).
Continue reading “Only One Thing Is Needed (3)”
Rebecca Clare Carter 