RE Verse reading–Mark 6:1-6 (day four)
Verse 2 says, “When the Sabbath came, He began to teach in the synagogue;” Jesus would always be found in His Father’s house on the Sabbath day. There was no ‘day off’ from worshipping or teaching on this sacred day. When the people heard Him teach, they were astonished! They had never heard anything like this before. And He demonstrated power…power to heal…power to do miracles…such wisdom…who was this man? They clearly recognized the power that was Jesus’, but they didn’t necessarily accept the truth of who He was. They couldn’t get past what their eyes could see to the point of faith to trust Him. As believers, Jesus lives within us. Do the people around us recognize the power of Christ in our lives? Often, we pray and ask God to come in power among us. As Henry Blackaby says, that is the only way that He comes! In our faith, may God reveal His power through us to those who would believe!
I am currently reading the biography of a female evangelist who knew well the Power of God. I noticed that she would often go into an area, look at the local church and comment that they had lost their power. She would then work to help them restore what had been lost. Interesting that she expected them to have Power and saw it as a really big problem if they did not. How my heart longs that the Lord would help us restore the normality of Power within the local church.
We must get, however, the correlation between our walk with the Lord and His Power being manifested for others to see. The Lord was trying to explain to my limited brain this morning that you really cannot serve two masters. One cannot act like they are without God in this world in the areas of holiness/purity/obedience and then expect to just pray and be able to display God in this world (which is what demonstrations of HIS Power are…. demonstrating Him that others might “see”). The same faith that leads us to trust/believe Him so much that we access His Power to walk in forgiveness/Love/purity/honesty, etc. is the same faith that can lead to more notable (not necessarily more important…. not necessarily less important… God’s call) demonstrations of His Power. To me it seems it is neither right to stop at the first as an end point and not content for the precious faith as we are told by the Word to do or just try to skip over/mask over the first and just pray and sit around waiting for things to change.
Father, may you give us Wisdom. I don’t know about anyone else, but my heart is hungry to know Your Ways.