When He was alone…the twelve asked Him about the parable.
—Mark 4:10
{CHAMBERS} “When
God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment,
sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship—
when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask
even one question, then He begins to teach us. Notice Jesus Christ’s training
of the Twelve. It was the disciples, not the crowd outside, who were confused.
His disciples constantly asked Him questions, and He constantly explained
things to them, but they didn’t understand until after they received the Holy
Spirit (see John 14:26).”
{ELGIN} We are
absolutely dependent upon the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The disciples walked, talked, and ate with Jesus,
but they did not understand until they had the spiritual capacity to understand. Our new life is spiritual. You might be thinking, “so tell me something
I don’t know.” Of course we all know it,
but the problem is that that we don’t all live like we know it. On the one hand, we acknowledge the Spirit,
but on the other, we ignore the Spirit and try to live our new lives in our own
strength and wisdom. Our spiritual nature is empowered by the Spirit of
God. If we do not live in submission to
the Spirit, we will fail spiritually.
What God calls us to will be out of reach because it requires the power
of the Spirit to live our new life. It’s
a life of faith not of determined effort.
(Zechariah 4:6) “It’s not by
strength and not by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord..” Simple words, but difficult to live by. (Galatians
2:20) “…the life that I now live, I live by faith..” Our trials and troubles are not necessarily
caused by our lack of faith and ignoring the Spirit, but we cannot hope to
experience victory in those trials and troubles on our own. (Galatians 5:25) “If we live by the
Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”
No comments:
Post a Comment