Just Loan Me the Power

"Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal." Therefore they said to Him, "What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?" (John 6:27-28)

Jesus is trying to get us to realize the larger context in which we are living. We are so accustomed to only living in reference to our physical world, our own small emotional needs and only the relationships that we can see and feel and touch, that it is very difficult for us to believe that there is a far more significant reality surrounding us that has more impact on us than what we are used to seeing. The people in this story had the very same problem that we do today. They were so caught up in their own plans, their own view of what their needs were, their own desires for revenge against their enemies and to have greater political power that they could not see the far greater treasures Jesus wanted to give to them.

I believe that when Jesus said to not work for food which perishes, He was not so much talking about quiting any kind of work to support ourselves financially but was talking about the priorities that we have as to where we apply the most attention and effort. What am I focusing on the most? Where do I give my greatest attention and allegiance? What am I depending on to bring me the things I need for life? What is my perception of how my needs are going to be met in the next few days and weeks?

These are not hypothetical questions for me today. These are very real and pressing questions that I am facing everyday right now in my own life. With my normal channels of income almost totally lacking and my new business still limping along bringing in less than our bills demand, I am tempted each day to begin to stress out, to worry, to become frantic and cast about for some way to provide for myself. But at the same time I sense that having these feelings and emotions is in direct conflict with the explicit teachings of Jesus to not worry, to rest in my Father's care and love and provision for me while at the same time cooperating with the plans that He has to give me that provision.

As I look back at how I got here I cannot fail to see the hand of God and His leading in my past history. I am also reminded that the condition of my own spirit under these kinds of circumstances is of far more importance to God than my ability to pay my bills. It is so much easier to beg God to provide for me the way I think He should do, say to set me up with a very lucrative income source so that I wouldn't have to bother Him so much about where my money is going to come from, rather than to hear Him reminding me that He is in the business of challenging my perceptions of how reality operates.

But challenge me He does, and on a very regular basis. I do feel that I am finally starting to respond to Him a little better, a little more relevantly than I often have in the past. He has been teaching me that I need to pay attention immediately to the condition of my spirit whenever I am tempted to worry and stress out about anything. For to worry or feel afraid that my needs are not going to be met is a subtle but very effective way for the enemy to discredit God's goodness and care for me. It infects and discounts my witness to those around me that God can be trusted to care for us even when we don't know how He is going to do that.

As we were riding to town the other day I began discussing this passage with my wife. She commented that maybe these people wanted to have the power for themselves to work miracles like Jesus did when they asked Him this question. I had never thought of that before but it suddenly made perfect sense to me. They well likely may have begun to think that if Jesus Himself was not willing to employ His supernatural powers to provide for their needs and help them overthrow the Roman armies, then if He would just teach them the 'secret code' so to speak, then they could go ahead and do it themselves. If He couldn't appreciate the obvious crisis they were in politically and financially and want to help them more consistently, then maybe at least He could help them learn how to do things like He could do so they could then multiply His efforts and accomplish much more than just one man could do.

I am sure their imaginations had already been very creative as they discussed among themselves how their nation could benefit from such superpowers as this teacher displayed. Maybe they had begun compiling the various kinds of miracles that He had performed and had begun to think what these sorts of advantages could provide for them as they fulfilled their national dreams that had been cherished for years. The Jews had eagerly been waiting for the promised Messiah to show up and deliver them from oppression. Their religious leaders had painted glowing pictures of national greatness and power and had founded all of these aspirations on the prophecies from the Scriptures. The people had been trained from childhood to believe in these dreams, to be fiercely loyal to their religion, their race and their national identity and to despise any who did not fit their mold. Many had worked very hard to develop purity in their religion so that God would have a people He could use to assist the Messiah when He came in His plans to conquer the world for the Jews. They yearned for a superhero to rescue them.

As these people saw the powers of Jesus displayed in healing the sick, multiplying food and even walking across stormy waters as was recently rumored, their excitement of the day before began to return. Even though they were very frustrated with Jesus for spoiling their plans to make Him a conquering king immediately the day before, they still refused to give up their dreams since He seemed to be the only viable option around as a potential Messiah. It was clear that He was certainly different than the average person claiming to be the Messiah – and there was no shortage of them in those days. It was just that His quirky ways and unusual teachings seemed to undermine their national aspirations and got in the way of fulfilling the expectations that they had believed in so firmly all of their lives.

So instead of trying again to get Him to be their king and superhero, they decided on another tactic; they asked Jesus to show them how to work the works of God for themselves. But just what did they have in mind when they asked this question? Just what kind of works were they thinking about anyway? Did they think of performing miracles to bless the sick, heal the broken-hearted and bring freedom to those caught in the traps of sin like Jesus was doing? Or were they more intent on exploiting these supernatural abilities to restore their wounded from battles with the Romans and shorten up the supply lines to their troops as their armies advanced ever further to conquer the world and make the Jews the dominate force on earth?

If Jesus was saying to not work for the food that perishes, then they felt that maybe He was telling them that they no longer needed to work for their food since He was now introducing a simpler, easier way to provide for their needs. Just the previous day He had multiplied a little lunch to feed over five thousand very hungry people and if this arrangement could be put into place every day then their time could be freed up to organize and empower an army to fight off their enemies and take over the world as their teachers had promised they could do. Now they felt they were starting to see more clearly how all this could actually take place. Now if only Jesus would just train them how they could perform miracles and provide for themselves as He had demonstrated the day before everything could begin to fall into place. What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God? You know, do things like superheros do them.

How often do we dream of greatness, of gaining advantage over those who oppose us, of achieving all that we have been taught is to happen by our religious or political trainers? How much of the time have our plans come up against the ways of God and we feel frustrated that God just doesn't seem to be cooperating with us very well? We pray for more money so we can have our needs met but don't realize that our physical needs pale in comparison to the unseen crisis in our spiritual condition. If we want to get an idea of how much this pervades our thinking, just take note of how many movies and shows we are drawn to that demonstrate the superpowers of superheros to do the kinds of things we long to do.

We keep begging God to work miracles for us and even become jealous of people whom God seems to be blessing or healing. We sometimes view miracles as a confirmation of truth so that if someone has the ability to bring about miracles of healing or financial blessing we are ready to listen to whatever they teach us in order to benefit from the power that seems to accompany their ministry.

But have we forgotten that the enemy of our souls also is a superhero? He has plenty of supernatural power and is quite ready to provide all sorts of benefits to us if we are willing to go along with his distorted pictures of God and promote his ideas in conflict with God's Word. How often we may be ready to compromise teachings of the Word of God when it seems that all the miraculous evidence is endorsing a ministry that teaches something a little different. There is a serious hazard in miracles that was a real risk even in the minstry of Jesus. Many wanted to follow Him around simply because of His powers to heal, to raise the dead and do all sorts of unusual things. You never knew what was going to happen next so people wanted to press in and see if they could experience the excitement of personally watching Him perform some outstanding feat.

But Jesus did not want people following Him because of His supernatural exhibitions. That may come as a shock to many, but Jesus at times discouraged people for following Him for those reasons and even said things that so offended them that they turned away from Him in disgust. This very scenario takes place later in this same chapter. Jesus did not come to show off how much power He could display to impress people with His abilities, rather He came to reveal the humility, the compassion, the tenderness and forgiveness and love that had been lost sight of in people's tragically distorted pictures of God. He only worked miracles to demonstrate the compassion of God for humanity, not to show off superior abilities or draw attention to Himself as being superior to everyone else.

Jesus' methods were in stark contrast to the typical methods and teachings of religious people. Jesus did not display authority the way we usually think of authority – someone who is powerful and emphatic and overcomes argument with overwhelming logic and compulsion or rely on force. Jesus did not come to display superior power over the powers of earth the way we think of power. He did not plan to out-gun the enemies of Israel, much to the frustration and anger of the Jews around Him. Rather, Jesus came to reveal the heart of the Father. And the revelation that He brought was so much in contradiction to the picture of God that the religious leaders had presented that His teachings and demonstrations aroused the wrath of everyone who found their powers being undermined by these new ideas.

The main reason that Jesus was killed by mainstream religion was because His picture of God was so stridently different from the beliefs everyone else cherished. The normal views of God that most religions present involve power, control, fear, intimidation and force. The view of God that Jesus presented was so opposite to these that the religious leaders quickly realized that all their control over the masses and all their influence would soon be lost if they allowed Jesus' ideas to spread much farther. Their power base was being threatened, their teachings were being discounted and their credibility was being challenged. Their whole system of religion was being threatened and along with that their sense of national identity. This is exactly why Caiaphas at Jesus' trial made the statement that he did. ...take into account that it is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish. (John 11:50)

How am I resisting the revelations of God that the Spirit presents to me? How often do I allow my own plans, my own desires for gratification, my own agenda and views of how things should progress to shape the requests that I make to God for divine intervention? How easy it is to sit in front of the tube and vicariously experience what it might feel like to have a superhero rescue me and make me feel important. It can also be a tempting shortcut to ask God to just loan me the power to work miracles so that I can take care of my own needs more readily. But to do so would be to circumvent the much greater plans of God to align me with His ways of living and relating and loving.

Father, forgive me for being so narrow-minded, so stuck in my views of life and religion that I fail to see Your ways. Increase my capacity to see things the way heaven views them, to look outside of my own narrow needs to be a channel of blessing to others. Cleanse me of the false ideas about You that keep me stuck in my prejudices and fears. Continue to reveal Your heart to me and draw me into a more intimate, trusting relationship with You. Make my life a demonstration of Your power to transform a hard-hearted, selfish man into a humble, caring, loving child of the King. Reveal Your true greatness through Your work in my heart – for Your name's sake.

Who's In Charge?

Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on Him the Father, God, has set His seal. (John 6:27)

This verse is the pivot point in this chapter where the focus is being shifted by Jesus. He wants us, just as He wanted the people around Him that day, to get the main point for why He came to this earth and why He ever performs any signs and miracles on our behalf. Many of the people then missed the point Jesus was trying to get across, but that does not mean I have to miss it too. I want to really get it as deeply as possible for this is the primary reason I am immersing myself in the book of John.

Jesus is exposing our mistaken focus, our obsession with earning a living and seeking to meet our needs and provide for ourselves at the expense of receiving what will produce the life that we were designed to enjoy for eternity. It is very easy to allow priorities to orient into making our own physical needs at the top while our spiritual life sinks lower and lower on the scale. It takes deliberate decisions to reverse that natural tendency and Jesus is addressing that issue right here.

What Jesus is not suggesting is that we should simply quit our jobs and sit back and expect God to dump all of our provisions into our laps while we do nothing to cooperate with His appointed channels. God intends for each of us to participate both in His spiritual body and in caring for our families and ourselves. The real problem comes when we think it is our responsibility to provide for ourselves because we are afraid that God does not care for us enough to provide. We secretly or even openly doubt that God really is as good and generous and kind and resourceful enough and has our best interest at heart to have channels of provision available by which we can have our needs met.

As I said, this verse is a pivot point, not only in this chapter but in my own life as well. I am currently facing financial challenges that press me to become anxious and to begin to cast around for additional means of making more money to meet my needs. Many times I feel depression pressing in hard on my emotions and scenarios of failure and disaster try to emerge. Sometimes I feel that there is no hope of finding sufficient income to meet all the bills we have. I feel intense pressure to work even harder for the bread that perishes or else my family is very likely to go hungry if I don't.

I am starting to see a great deal of instruction and potential reality adjustment in these verses already. And it is coming at a time when I need exactly what God is showing me here. Everyday I again face the choices as to how I am going to perceive my circumstances, what I am going to believe about how God feels about me and how I am going to interpret the facts that surround me currently.

This is the key factor that is almost more important than anything else as far as belief is concerned. What I believe is totally contingent on how I interpret the facts and what is going on around me. And belief is the fundamental issue here in the book of John. What do I really believe about how God treats me, feels about me and His plans for me? What I believe about God is going to totally determine and control all the other decisions about reality and what I do in all the other areas of my life. This is not just a theological exercise or mental gymnastics, this is the crux of what it means to live as a genuine Christian verses living a pseudo-life pretending to be religious while in reality looking out for myself from motives of fear.

In this verse Jesus is exposing the very center of my being, asking me where my focus is as far as survival is concerned. My natural instincts are to look out for myself first, then care for those who are important to me (generally those who make me feel good), and finally see how I might keep God happy so someday He will take me home to live with Him for eternity. I know this sounds terribly blatant and irreverent possibly, but when I am brutally honest that is what comes into the open as to how my fallen nature perceives life. If I analyze how I feel like acting many times the evidence is there to support this.

But Jesus is here challenging me to step over into His view of life and reality. He is warning me that if my highest priorities are devoted to taking care of myself and spending most of my best energies working and grasping and calculating how to get things for myself that do not last very long, then all I am going to end up with is a life that doesn't last much longer than the things I seek to own or even the perishable food that I try to stock up for my own survival.

I have rather interesting evidence right around me to remind me of this truth. Just a few days ago I discovered cans of food stashed away in our pantry, placed there years ago by my parents and that is now so old they are leaking and molding all over the shelves. We continue to find cans of old food there that are now totally useless which means that the money invested in them originally was wasted. Many other conclusions might be drawn from this, but the point cannot be missed that the food we work so hard for really does not last all that long. If we don't seek a better kind of food that doesn't degenerate and has more value than the food we are familiar with, we are going to go the way of the kind of physical food that we eat each day with little hope of living more than just a few short years.

Yet the compulsion to keep working and grasping and storing and managing our finances and our food stashes still seems to be the most important thing in life. We reason that if we don't look out for where our food is going to come from we will starve to death soon. We are aware that there is not much chance that someone else is simply going to bring us all the food we need without us doing something about it, and that may be quite true in some respects. But in our increasingly desperate attempts to store up for our physical needs we find that our priorities almost always condense along those lines at the expense of our relationship with God and believing what He has promised in caring for us.

I have been holding up a question for several years now that I intently want to know the answer to, for I feel it is vital to both my future destiny and my current circumstances. In this book it keeps talking about believing and in this verse it is again the focal point. Repeatedly Jesus urged people to believe in Him, yet since I was very young I have asked questions of people as to what this belief thing really means. Almost no one has given me any satisfactory or sensible responses and so I have continued to ask the question and to gather clues as to what this involves in practical and applicable ways.

I still have a ways to go in my search for this answer but I feel that God is responding and is opening my understanding of what it really involves as my bigger picture of reality continues to expand and fill in. It goes right back to the issues I have just brought up, the moments in my life when I can't see where my provisions are going to come from and I feel urges to take things into my own hands as I become frantic and anxious. In fact, every time I start to feel anxious feelings welling up inside of me now I am reminded that it is a symptom of unbelief as Jesus labeled it.

So long as I fail to believe that God has both the capacity and the desire to take care of all of my needs, to the degree that I do not trust Him I am going to feel anxious and start to figure out ways of my own to get my needs met. This is the very spirit that Jesus is confronting in this verse and is the spirit that I want to become free from by His grace. It is not a one-time choice or victory but is something that I keep meeting on a regular basis. But each time I have to remind myself of what is supposed to be where in my priority system. Who is really in charge here and how much do I really believe that?

Why Do I Seek Him?

Jesus answered them and said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. (John 6:26)

For the past few weeks I have been going through a time of internal trouble and conviction. I was confronted by someone back then who seems to find it pleasurable to publicly try to control and manipulate me. Evidently it gives him a sense of power, authority and self-esteem that fills a great void inside his heart. However, it also tends to touch on some of my rawest triggers and so far I have not had the most exemplary responses each time he does this. Though I have managed to exercise a great deal of outward self-control to some extent my ability to love him the way God loves him has been significantly lacking.

But my struggle to honestly view this man from my heart through heaven's eyes has also brought up a lot of tangent questions about the depth of my own relationship with God. Many things are highlighting my sense that though I enjoy receiving many insights from God's Spirit and truly enjoy spending time in His Word, the practical living out of the principles that I am learning and sharing with others seems to lag far behind what I know with my mind.

I guess that this discrepancy between my heart and my head makes me very afraid of being shamed and deeply humiliated at some point when my lack of Christ-likeness becomes even more publicly exposed and I am sneered at by others as a hypocrite while those who trusted me realize that I am not as mature as my interactions with them have led them to believe. My own heart keeps questioning why it is that there can be such a wide disparity between what I know my life should look like and my ability or willingness to actually live out these principles I am learning at the heart level.

I have known for a very long time that my heart is severely damaged and so selfish that it is beyond my ability to overcome its self-protective defense reactions. I may be able to suppress my defensiveness much of the time but when it comes to an intense crisis and I feel abused, especially by those in authority, my reaction is to withdraw and feel deeply offended. My emotional withdrawal is primarily a mechanism to avoid acting out the rage that I feel internally and getting myself into a heap of trouble. But that still throws me right into the trap of Satan which always happens when holding onto an offense of any kind.

As I am going through this chapter in John I have been impressed by many things that apply directly to my own experience. That is the main reason that I am spending so much time immersing myself in this study. I am not soaking in the Word to become an expert in the details of the Bible but more to learn to listen to whatever the Spirit of God wants to use here to apply to my current situation and to transform my own heart more into His likeness. Its just that the more I learn and the more exciting I see truth to be, the more dread or embarrassment I feel when I realize how slow my own heart is to embrace these things at a level much deeper than I have control over intellectually.

When Jesus speaks to the people in this verse about their motives for seeking Him that day, I sense mournfully that I may well be included in His indictment of them as well. My natural heart is hopelessly selfish and I am incapable of escaping this fact without a miraculous intervention on the part of God. I suspect that much of my desire to draw closer to God is motivated by a secret desire to look good to others around me so they will think I am a superior spiritual person than the average Joe. That has certainly been the case at times, but it does not contribute to the kind of transformation deep inside that I know I so desperately need and want.

These people who had come over or around the lake to figure out how Jesus had gotten to the other side overnight without a boat were fresh from the experience of the previous day culminating in a mass movement of high emotion to declare Jesus as their triumphant king and conquerer for the Jews. Their national fervor had been inspired to a fever pitch and they had only been thwarted from their plans by the withdrawal of Jesus Himself to defeat their purposes. This had created a great deal of frustration and even resentment on the part of many but they still had strong desire to rid themselves of the hated Roman occupation and oppression and had not completely given up on their belief that Jesus might yet be the superhero who could rescue them from all their political problems.

In this mindset and with the memory from the day before of Jesus' ability to feed thousands of people from a small lunch bag, they were intent on trying to discover if Jesus had pulled off yet another amazing feat due to the fact that there was no logical explanation of how He had gotten to the other side of the lake so quickly without getting into the only boat that had left the night before containing His disciples. They suspected that something fishy had taken place and they may have even heard rumors from the disciples themselves about Jesus walking on the water the night before. If this was true then it would only add to their excitement about His potential to use supernatural powers to advance their patriotic dreams and satisfy their own personal plans for greatness.

This is not unlike many today who seem eager to exploit any and every opportunity to get a free lunch – quite literally. One thing that is ruining society all over the world today is the idea of 'entitlement' that has set things up for governments to strip away the freedoms of people in exchange for promises of so-called security. Despots and power-hungry politicians employ the manipulated desire of the masses through handouts and provisions without needing to work for it. They exploit this by making promises that will attract the allegiance and support of millions who have been conditioned to depend on government handouts, bailouts and welfare in place of a willingness to participate in honest work and contribute to what is necessary to produce supplies needed for everyday living.

I believe we are fast entering a time when we will see the events leading up to World War II replicated on a world-wide scale as far as the public mindset goes. Hitler made many social promises and was creating enormous economic growth in his country which gave him immense popularity just before the war. Nearly everyone was caught up in the excitement of the progress he was achieving and very few saw the sinister side of his plans. In fact, pretty much all the organized churches of that day were in full support of his regime because they believed that God was behind him and he was doing such a great job in restoring dignity and wealth back into the lives of humiliated and impoverished people. Even most other countries believed that he was accomplishing much good and had little idea what lay ahead.

Because of the later events that transpired and finally became public knowledge, Hitler's reputation has since become the very opposite of that which he had world-wide before the war. It is almost impossible for people today to grasp how intensely popular he was at that time and how much people trusted him to bring them national greatness and restore the fortunes of the poor and discouraged masses. But the very same situation exists today as did back then but because we are so ill-informed about what took place then we are ripe to follow down the same path as the people did back then without realizing the immense dangers we are facing right now.

Hitler, along with many other despots in history, started out by offering people welfare, health and wealth in exchange for loyalty and cooperation with his way of doing things. He kept his real character and plans hidden for many years, even long after the war started so that almost no one realized the horrendous atrocities taking place in secret until nearly the very end of the war. What he was known for at that time were the many wonderful achievements he had brought to Germany like building the Autobahn, starting up a very successful car company called Volkswagen (the common people's car) and restoring housing and food for many who were struggling just to survive. His government handouts came at a price however and the same is still true today.

Whenever we fall into the trap of longing for free handouts instead of cooperating with God's means of provision for us we are in danger of getting into a wrong way of viewing life and reality. And while it is true that there may be times when God steps in to give us things through such means just as Jesus did on that mountainside the day before, we must be very careful that our motives are not distorted by those miracles and we begin to see God like we often see our government, simply as a big sugar-daddy who is supposed to give us everything we want without any responsibility on our part to follow His appointed ways of living.

I find it compelling to note the shift in motive that the text points out here. Jesus that day plainly said that they were no longer seeking Him because they saw the signs He had performed. Yet just the day before John points out that the original reason these same people had come to see Jesus was because of the signs.

A large crowd followed Him, because they saw the signs which He was performing on those who were sick. (John 6:2)

The conclusion that seems rather evident from comparing these two verses is that God really does want us to seek Him because of signs that we see. That may not be the only reason we should seek Him, but it seems to be one of the legitimate reasons. However, it is also very easy to fall into the trap of demanding signs from God as a precondition for belief which can quickly place us into the trap of deliberate unbelief like the religious leaders did back then which is also extremely dangerous.

Jesus was trying to get these people to realize that their motives had radically shifted from their motives just 24 hours previously. They had first come to Jesus because of the blessing He was having on those who were sick. Jesus healed many types of sick people for a very specific reason, but that reason is very easy to miss even today if we are not careful. In healing their physical bodies Jesus really was only bringing temporary relief to them. Eventually they might get sick again and even if not they all were destined to die anyway before it was over.

The main reason that Jesus did so many acts of healing was to impress people with the truth that what He wanted to do so much more for them was to bring healing to the sicknesses of their hearts. According to His explicit mission statement He wanted to preach good news to the poor, release to captives, give sight to the blind, set free the oppressed and proclaim the truth about God's feelings toward sinners. (see Luke 4:17-19 and Isaiah 42:1-12 and 61:1-3)

But instead of turning their minds inwardly to see how the acts of Jesus and His power might apply to a much more significant healing that needed to take place in their hearts, they allowed their prejudices and social agendas to perceive the demonstrations of Jesus' power in such a way as to pervert them for potential political gain and personal advantages. Not much has changed today.

What presses me as I ponder these things is my own personal motives. What are my gut-level desires that keep me pressing to know God more intimately? Why do I want to be a better Christian? Is it so others will think better of me? Is it to escape the problems of this life and get my skin into heaven at last? There are all sorts of less than noble motives that can easily circulate around in the heart and mingle with the legitimate drawing from the true Spirit of God.

How easy it is to begin to try to manipulate the things of God in my life for my 'political' or social advantage. I may try to appear pious and sanctified so that I can leverage my status in a church. I may want to control what others think about me and desperately attempt to manage my reputation by manipulating the availability of information about me. The politically correct term for that now is Public Relations.

But am I really more interested in the temporal advantages that following Jesus might gain me than in allowing Him full access to the messy places deep in my own soul? Am I willing to candidly admit that I just might be much more spiritually blind that I ever dreamed? Can I see how imprisoned I am because of the grudges I still hold against people in my life? Am I willing to see the true broken condition of my own heart and cry out to God for healing where it counts for eternity, or am I more interested in appearances and religion and the social advantages Jesus might be able to afford me?

Why do I seek Him?