Receiving Healing

As I sat in our Lord’s schoolroom, all I was asked to do was to look at Mark 8: 19 NKJV. When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up? They said to Him, Twelve.

The truth is that I never suspected, far more thought that this was our Teacher continuing to fit and fix me further in faith, by grounding me more in Him. I share this with you, knowing that He is doing the same for you also. This makes me deeply happy, a joy and happiness I really can’t explain nor adequately express on paper, but nonetheless, this is heavenly joy, which I know the Spirit Himself, will shed abroad in you and through you. I offer you as I have received.

The first thing my mind ran to, were the leftover fragments, but I was brought back to see these opening words: When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand. Suddenly, these words, five loaves for five thousand, literally flung me into a state of adoration and confession, respect and repentance, admiration and admonition, all at the same time. Our Lord and Master used five loaves of bread to feed five thousand people and do it most adequately. It therefore means that with one loaf of bread, He is able to feed one thousand people and do so most satisfyingly, not skimpily. Just seeing this fact, puts me on firm, solid ground that our Jesus can do whatever He wants to do, with whatever human resources are available to Him at the time. However, that was not the primary lesson. I was made to look at who Jesus was talking to, and why and what was His desired result.

Who was Jesus talking to? He was addressing His Twelve, His present students, His disciples, who were all together with Him in one boat. Where are we at the moment? As long as we are servants, followers, disciples of Jesus, in this present age, we are with Him in the Spiritual Boat, which is sailing, life’s precariously, unpredictable seas. We are with Him, for He has already given us His Indwelling Holy Spirit, the Counsellor, who will lead us and teach us as He did. Faith allows us to believe, know and live the reality that we are together with Jesus, right now, and He is with us. Our Jesus is talking to you, me and all who belong to Him and are with Him.

Why was Jesus speaking like that? What Jesus was doing was getting His disciples to recall an incident which had not too long transpired. It was a most unbelievable miracle, which they not only witnessed, but shared in, when they were the servers of bread to the five thousand congregation, to which Jesus alludes. But what was it that warranted this kind of speech, this specific tone of voice from Jesus?  Listen to it like this.

The disciples were in the boat already with their Master, when they realized that nobody remembered to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them. Jesus, whose mind was not on bread, turned to them and told them that they must be careful. They must watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod. The disciples, whose minds were on their guilty feelings, for not bringing bread, began to discuss what they had heard, thinking that Jesus was upset with them or something, because they had no bread. This is what they were saying. It is because we have no bread.  Mark 8: 16b NKJV. Jesus, aware of what they were thinking and how they were reasoning through what He had told them, according to their guilty feelings, spoke some seriously chastising and scolding words to them. Why do you reason because you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive nor understand? Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, do you not see? And having ears, do you not hear? And do you not remember? Mark 8: 17b – 18 NKJV

I don’t know about you but to hear Jesus speak these words to me, brings absolute repentance. My head is bent in utter shame and I really have no excuse, no reasons, nothing, but to accept our Master’s admonition and die to all the erroneous thoughts I was thinking about Him. This may or may not be you, but I know that I do not stand alone in my experience of becoming all at sixes and sevens, because I was reasoning and doubting the working Spirit in me, as to how I am to see Jesus the Healer.

There is more, much more to be covered.