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So they said to Him, "What then do You do for a sign, so that we may see, and believe You? What work do You perform?" (John 6:30)
This verse always raises a curious question immediately in my mind whenever I read it. But the answer is troubling and causes me to look deeper inside to see how much I too indulge in this sort of distorted thinking.
These people had just experienced one of the most exciting days of their life eating from Jesus' hand almost literally. Thousands of them had been miraculously fed from just one very small lunch provided by a little boy and blessed by Jesus. Sadly, these people had failed to appreciate the real message intended for their hearts in this wonderful event and had instead twisted it around to figure out how such ability might advance their own agenda. Instead of producing a warm love for Jesus and a fresh view of God in their hearts, this miracle had only inflamed their desires to exploit the power of God to attack their enemies and make mincemeat out of them.
Sin has such irrational ways of distorting reality for all of us. The more clearly it is exposed the more insane it appears. Yet we continue to repeat the same mistakes and follow the same line of reasoning generation after generation. We often want to make plans for God and then ask Him to reinforce them with His power instead of seeking to know His heart, submit to learning the way He deals with people and then allowing Him to weave us into His plans.
Resisting God's invitations to know His heart better always results in deeper deception and resentment against Him for spoiling our plans. When these people asked Jesus to show them some sign so as to induce belief in their hearts, they were betraying the fact that they were blatantly ignoring the sign He had just performed the day previous. They were begging Jesus to perform the same sign all over again as if He had not even done it previously. What's with this kind of thinking anyway?
But one of the dangerous underlying problems exposed here is the idea that our belief in God is to be contingent on some miracle in our behalf or else we have no good reason to trust. This is another part of our psyche that has been deceived by sin's illogic. We often think either that our faith has to be totally blind and without any evidence, or we think that faith has to be continuously propped up with miracle after miracle or we will be unwilling to trust God's heart. Both of these are dangerous assumptions that can prevent us from effectively entering into a vital, life-receiving relationship with God.
These people acted as if there had been no signs yet upon which to base their belief in Jesus. Jesus was not asking them to have blind faith with no evidence; the evidence was still in their stomach from the day before. In essence, they were indicting themselves in the logic they were using in this statement. Jesus could have easily pointed out that they already had the sign they were asking for but it had done little to change their willingness to believe in Him. So what good would it do to perform the same sign all over again – that would only strengthen their desires to exploit Him, not draw their hearts into a deeper trust relationship with Him.
What I see in these verses is a reflection of our penchant for having our own agenda for God's work and then viewing everything that God does do for us through the filter of our own agenda. This must make the angels cry at times and cause deep pain to the heart of the Father as He seeks to radically shift our attention away from our petty little narrow views of reality to the far greater and more fulfilling plans that He has for our lives and our world.
I am currently facing some circumstances that challenge me to listen carefully to the lesson I am sensing in these words. It is so easy for me to begin to slip into the mode of wanting God to do things for me to advance what might seem like the best thing to do from my perspective. But if God were always to just provide miraculous intervention to advance my ideas and my agenda, pride would quickly take over all of my life and God's reputation would be tanked very quickly, even more than it already suffers. That is not to say God will never listen to anything I desire or grant it – sometimes my ideas and desires are in accordance with His will. But it is very hazardous to think for very long that my view of situations are most likely the same as God's view of things just because it feels right. Those who operate that way quickly become a thorn in the side of both God and many others around them.
I learned a few years ago about the true nature of pride that really helps me to see the core issues involved. Pride is caused by very different elements in the heart than what most people assume. And treating pride with censure and punishment most often only creates defensiveness rather than repentance because most of the time it is being rebuked by another person with a competing agenda of pride masquerading as piety. Only the Holy Spirit can effectively deal with pride because only the Holy Spirit of God really perceives the emptiness deep in the heart that is the cause of all pride.
Pride is a desperate attempt to fill an aching void inside the heart resulting in the lack of a secure sense of worth and identity. Our fear of others seeing this emptiness and reinforcing that sense of worthlessness causes our fallen nature to quickly try to hide all of this through attempts to control what others think about us through our actions, professions and hypocrisy. We will do whatever it takes to convince others that we are really more important than we secretly feel deep inside in hopes that their opinions about us will fill that vacuum. We seek the praise, or even fear, of others to give us a sense of worth. But pride always steers us in the wrong direction in our attempts to fill this deep emptiness and the methods and sources from which we try to secure our identity and worth always result sooner or later in even deeper insecurity.
The only real antidote to the emptiness that drives our pride is to embrace the truth about how God feels about us, the worth that He places on us unconditionally and to begin to have a sense of secure identity and value in the presence of our heavenly Father. The more our heart grasps the real truth that God is not the cause of this emptiness but is actually the only solution for it, then we will begin to experience a more secure sense of worth and our fears will begin to melt away and the more safe we will feel to be honest and transparent and vulnerable. When truly knowing God begins to transform our thinking about our own worth and identity, the less we will feel compelled to manipulate others to fill the void internally through their opinions about who we really are inside.
Jesus came to present a clear message about how God feels about each one of us. He came to demonstrate openly how much God cares about every aspect of our lives so that we would begin to sense that we have infinite worth in His opinion. Jesus came to show us in person that we are important to Him, not because of what we can do for Him but simply because we are God's children – period. Those who begin to perceive this message as intended in the life and death of Jesus begin to feel such a secure sense of personal worth and identity that all of the petty games people play begin to loose their spell over our minds.
As I deepen my appreciation and awareness of how God really feels about me, my fears of what others think about me begin to diminish and my desires to manipulate God also begin to dissipate. As I come to know the heart of my Creator and come to reflect His passionate, consistent love for me, my demands for miracles to advance my agendas will fade away and I will become obsessed with seeking to be used by God in His far more compelling agenda.
God gives abundant evidence upon which to found my faith in Him if I am willing to perceive that evidence through heaven's perspective. But when pride (caused by that inner emptiness that I seek to fill through my own methods) remains in the way, the clearest signs from heaven only become excuses to beg for even more while failing to appreciate the intended purpose of the last miracle.
God is very keen on having a close heart relationship with me, a growing bond of intimate friendship where we come to know each other better than any other relationship on earth. When miracles might intensify that intimacy God will readily provide them when appropriate. But when my affections and attentions are fixated on my own agenda rather than on knowing Him intimately, then He will likely be very reluctant to send many miracles my way because they would only tend to reinforce my deception and confusion about reality.
In this chapter in John I see Jesus trying very hard to get these misguided people to begin to see that God has a totally different agenda for them than what they had always assumed. I doubt that anything has changed from that time to now. God has always been seeking to draw us away from our own selfish view of reality to enter into the rest and peace and joy of having Him as our best friend and to convey the only satisfying nourishment that our hearts were designed to have. This is the food Jesus was talking about all throughout this passage, the very gift of Himself to our hearts.
Then they said to Him, "Lord, always give us this bread." (John 6:34)
