Walking on the Water?
Recently during our Wednesday evening Bible studies we have been observing the events that preceded Jesus walking on the water. Particularly, we have examined John 6 when Jesus fed the 5000. Incredibly, the people wanted to take our Lord and make Him the Bread King instead of the Savior. But Jesus didn't come to become an earthly king as the people expected. They were demanding that He do their will instead of them doing His will.
When you pray, do you first ask what you may do for Jesus or do you first ask Him what He can do for you?
I think most people want to make Jesus their personal Bread King. We want Him to serve up whatever we ask or need instead of first volunteering to complete the work of the Lord that He has designed us to do.
The reason we don't feel any guilt about this is that it is the way we have been taught. We have all of our lives observed others praying that God would fulfill their "wish list". We unconsciously want Jesus to be our servant, therefore we continue to follow the example we have been taught by asking Him what He can do for us instead of the other way around.
But we even trump that idea by expecting God to conform to our wishes. We want Him to excuse us while we commit sin we know is against His word- the Bible. When we studied the sixth chapter of John, we saw the demands the people made on Jesus, " Shortly after they had been fed, (certainly a very large miracle- the feeding of 5,000 people with only two small fish and five small barley loaves),s they continued to make demands upon Him to continue to do as they wished and perform another miracle that "they might believe on Him" Let's look at the verses from John 6: "29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
30 So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? 31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ " It seems incredible that they didn't recognize the sign that Jesus was the true Messiah when they saw the 5000 feds from such a small amount of food. But there they were; just waiting for Him to continue to serve them- that THEY MIGHT BELIEVE on Him. Or spoken another way, they wouldn't believe on Him unless He met their demands.
Is that what we are looking for? A Lord that we only believe when He serves what we think is our best interest? Let's think about how and what we ask for when praying, Jesus loves us but it is He who is Lord and it is we who serve Him- not the other way around. Think about it: it is well worth your while.
Bro. Don