LifeLink Devotional

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

In the next section of John 6, Jesus teaches us a powerful yet discomforting spiritual truth – the human experience is of no value in producing spiritual understanding.

Read what Jesus says, taking notice of my underlined portion.

John 6:60-66 ⁶⁰  When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” ⁶¹  But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? ⁶²  Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? ⁶³  It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

Here’s the context. Jesus has told His followers that He is the Bread of Life. He is the true bread that has come down from heaven, and whoever feeds on Him will have eternal life. He set the stage for this teaching by providing physical food for thousands of people. Afterward, He told them all that they would get hungry again, but He would be the food for them that would nourish them forever. Jesus was using a physical miracle to illustrate the spiritual miracle of new birth. Jesus wants us to understand that all the things we pursue in this life to provide meaning, value, and purpose to our lives will be completely fulfilled if we feed on Him rather than the pursuits of the world.

The disciples complain that this teaching is too hard, even after seeing the miracles that proved He was the One who was sent from Heaven by the Father.

Now Jesus says to them, “You have seen the proof that I came down from heaven, and yet you do not believe. Even if you see me ascend back into heaven, you will still not believe, because you are depending on your human understanding and experience to be proof. That is not faith. Only the Spirit of God can give you the faith necessary to believe and have life.”

The point to ponder for today is this –

In what ways have we allowed our human understanding and experience to become the proof we seek that Jesus is Lord before we believe in Him?

Are there areas of your life where you choose not to believe what Jesus has said until you see proof? OR, are you listening to the Holy Spirit and by faith alone receiving the life Jesus promised?

I am convinced that we do not fully experience the fullness of Jesus Christ because we are still seeking to confine His life to the box of our human experience. Let go of your human understanding, and by faith alone receive the life of Jesus Christ.

Pastor John