Sermon

231 ~ THE KINGDOM LIFE ~ Part 1

We Are Zion - Sermon Podcast

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  1. Hi and welcome to the Via Zion Sermon podcast.

  2. We are a local church based here in Chennai, India.

  3. We are so glad you are with us and hope that this will

  4. encourage, inspire and instill fresh faith in you.

  5. We have started a series called The Kingdom Life based on the

  6. life and teachings of Jesus from the Gospel according to Mark.

  7. We look at how we must live our lives on this earth as followers

  8. of Jesus in a way that is countercultural yet powerfully

  9. impactful. As you listen in our hope is

  10. that you will be motivated to live, love, lead and serve just

  11. like Jesus High church. It's my joy to bring God's word

  12. to you today. As you saw a sermon bumper.

  13. We have a brand new series that we're kick starting today.

  14. It's called Kingdom life, the Kingdom life.

  15. And this has been on our hearts for a while because, you know,

  16. while we've been talking about Jesus, we've been talking about

  17. different aspects of who God is. And, you know, we felt it was.

  18. Rather abstract, but when you come to the Gospels, it's, you

  19. know, it's just a life that is transformed.

  20. And we really believe God is calling us as his church, as his

  21. people, as individuals to live out this Kingdom life very

  22. intentionally because that is when we really can reach out to

  23. others. That's when we can be on mission

  24. constantly when we understand what this Kingdom life is about.

  25. And so that's what stirred us up to start this new series.

  26. The the interesting thing, a few interesting things about the

  27. Kingdom when you're reading the gospels.

  28. We've been focusing on Mark a lot as we've been preparing this

  29. series in the book of Mark, for example, it's so action-packed,

  30. it's so dynamic. The Kingdom of God is one that

  31. is advancing. It is one that is growing.

  32. And and so there's something or the other is abuzz with activity

  33. and we want us to look at our the way we live.

  34. We live. So, you know, all over the

  35. place. KR take we thrive on being busy,

  36. but the Kingdom life is at this pace where you can still

  37. accomplish so much for Jesus on the earth, in spite of all the

  38. things we do. The Kingdom is actually

  39. something that is invisible, but it's very real.

  40. He talks at different points about how it's as real as a

  41. mustard seed. It starts out small, it grows

  42. big. It's it's like east that is

  43. worked into a dough and it you know, it's so small, but it just

  44. probably it, you know, permeates everything around them.

  45. And that's what the Kingdom of God is like into.

  46. And when you look at the real life world that we are all

  47. living in. I love seeing how God's Kingdom

  48. is advancing. You could talk to a school

  49. teacher, you could talk to a business owner and how what they

  50. do, it could be a niche category of work or impact that they

  51. have. But to see how they introduce

  52. Christ in their settings, how they minister to others, it's

  53. very evident that the Kingdom of God is real.

  54. I was recently talking to one of my maids and she was telling me

  55. about a list of rituals that she has to do for her child who's

  56. getting married. And she was mentioning these

  57. different rituals. And I was starting to zone out

  58. after a point. And so she caught that

  59. expression and she said, what, Ma, don't you don't you guys do

  60. this? And I said, interestingly, we

  61. don't, this is not something that our God requires of us.

  62. And as I was sharing that with her, she asked me, what do you

  63. do then? So I was just telling her about,

  64. you know, our wedding ceremonies and I loved the expression on

  65. her face because she said it's so easy to know your God is so

  66. easy to to do things for this God is so easy.

  67. And well, of course it's not always easy.

  68. It was interesting to see how the Kingdom of God is so real

  69. and the entry into it is just by that Word of Faith.

  70. It's it's a prayer of confession and repentance.

  71. And then it's just by faith we enter in.

  72. So non ritualistic traditions are not involved.

  73. It's just the simple truth of the gospel.

  74. And when you have those conversations, when you realize

  75. how real this is, it's not a a figment of our imagination.

  76. And the interesting thing thing is that like I said, we enter

  77. this Kingdom by faith in Jesus, but this faith doesn't actually

  78. stay stagnant as we do the Kingdom life as believers and

  79. followers of Jesus. We're doing this Kingdom life on

  80. a daily basis. And it's interesting that that

  81. faith is never really stagnant, but it's growing.

  82. He said that you need faith as small as a mustard seed.

  83. But the interesting thing is that mustard seed is in a stage

  84. of growth. Everything that you start out

  85. with keeps moving in a direction of.

  86. Progress and that's the power of the Kingdom of God and I want to

  87. remind us that as much as we're going to talk about the Kingdom

  88. life, the king is all important. He's our focal point.

  89. Jesus is the. Focal point and the the the

  90. periphery of. That is people, the Kingdom life

  91. is really about Jesus and reaching people.

  92. We cannot separate the two. A lot of times we're so caught

  93. up in our own personal walk with Jesus.

  94. But if the element of the world around of people is missing,

  95. it's a gospel that is not complete.

  96. It's a very half baked gospel. And and the best example that

  97. we're going to keep looking at again and again is Jesus

  98. himself. Jesus modeled the Kingdom life

  99. and he also taught about it constantly.

  100. So we're going to be looking at the way Jesus lived.

  101. We're going to be looking at his teachings and then, you know,

  102. trying to understand better how we can live the Kingdom life.

  103. So as we begin today, we're going to be looking at Jesus

  104. feeding the 5000 and then Jesus feeding the 7000.

  105. A lot of similarities between both these accounts.

  106. It's almost like a repeat. But interestingly, feeding the

  107. 5005 happens 1st and then feeding the 7000 happens later.

  108. And it seems like the disciples have forgotten what Jesus was

  109. capable of. So I'm just going to quickly

  110. read Mark chapter 6 verses 30 to 44 is just 14 verses, but it's

    Mark 6:30–44

  111. incredibly narrative. Mark especially is one of my

  112. favorite writers because he just cuts to the chase.

  113. He doesn't wait, He doesn't give us too many extra details.

  114. It's just, you know, facts, facts, facts all around.

  115. So as we read this want you to open your Bible to Mark chapter

    Mark 6:30

  116. 6 verse 30 onwards. The apostles returned to Jesus

  117. and told him all that they had done and taught.

  118. And he said to them, Come away by yourselves to a desolate

  119. place, and rest away. For many were coming and going,

  120. and they had no leisure even to eat.

  121. And they went away on the boat to a desolate place by

  122. themselves. And many saw them going and

  123. recognize them, and they ran there on foot from all the

  124. towns, and got there ahead of them.

  125. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had

  126. compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a

  127. shepherd. And he began to teach them many

  128. things. And when it grew late, his

  129. disciples came to him and said, This is a desolate place, and

  130. the hour is now late, Send them away to go into the surrounding

  131. countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.

  132. But he answered them, You give them something to eat.

  133. And they said to him, Shall we go and buy 200 dinari worth of

  134. bread and give it to them to eat?

  135. And he said to them, How many loaves do you have?

  136. Go and see. And when they found out, they

  137. said five and two fish. Then he commanded the mall to

  138. sit down in groups on the green grass.

  139. So they sat down in groups by hundreds and 50s, and taking the

  140. five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, said a

  141. blessing, and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples

  142. to set before the people. And he divided the two fish

  143. among the mall, and they all ate and were satisfied.

  144. And they took up 12 baskets full of full of broken pieces and of

  145. the fish. And those who ate the loaves

  146. were 5000 men. So on an average that day,

  147. around 7000 to 8000 people were probably the ones who were

  148. gathered there. 5000 was just the men alone.

  149. They were women and children. Picture this.

  150. They come there just to hear from Jesus, but they're sitting

  151. there in awe of what he's teaching for days on end or

  152. hours on end. They must have been hungry.

  153. Babies must have been crying, Children must have been a little

  154. cranky, adults must have been hungry.

  155. It's a, it's a very interesting situation.

  156. And Jesus has been teaching and teaching and teaching until the

  157. disciples realize they need to get some kind of nourishment.

  158. I'm guessing the disciples themselves were like me.

  159. They must have been hungry and tired.

  160. But as we look at this, there are certain things that I want

  161. to draw out of it because I was very personally very intrigued

  162. by some of the stuff the disciples were saying because

  163. it's exact kind of stuff I would say, had I been there.

  164. When, when, you know, when I try to come up with a, you know, a

  165. solution to a potential problem brewing, These are the exact

  166. kind of things I would say. And yet Jesus's response to the

  167. disciples, Jesus's attitude to really think and to do for those

  168. people really demonstrates to us if you want to live the Kingdom

  169. life, there are some things. That matter, that must matter to

  170. us. So there are four things I want

  171. to leave with you that should matter to you if you are someone

  172. who wants to live the Kingdom life.

  173. The first thing is I believe that our motives matter.

  174. If you and I want to do good, if we want to make an impact on

  175. this world, our motives matter, especially if we are Kingdom

  176. people, our motives matter. I remember in Mark 8 verses one

  177. to five, it talks about Jesus feeding the 4000.

  178. I'm sorry, I said 7000 that was wrong. 4007 thousand.

  179. And this 4000 is a few maybe days later or weeks later.

  180. We don't know the timeline exactly, but Jesus first fed the

  181. 5000, then he fed the 4000, not the 7000.

  182. And in that Mark 8 verses one to five is interesting because here

  183. Jesus preempts before even the disciples could bring it to him.

  184. Jesus says, hey, can you give them something to eat?

  185. They've been here for a long time, for three days, and

  186. they've had nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to

  187. their homes, they will faint on the way.

  188. And some of them have come from far away.

  189. I love that his motive in wanting to help them was pure

  190. love for them, pure compassion. When you look at Jesus's heart

  191. for the people in the other narrative in Mark 6, it talks

  192. about how he got off the boat. And mind you, Jesus has just

  193. lost his cousin John the Baptist has just been assassinated.

  194. He's got news of that. The 12 that he sent out to

  195. evangelize and and bring deliverance to the cities around

  196. them have returned. And so there's a lot of

  197. activity. There's probably grief on his

  198. mind and heart. And so he says, let's get away.

  199. When they get away, they are confronted by a huge crowd that

  200. is waiting for Jesus. And it says Jesus looks at them

  201. with the greatest compassion because they looked like sheep

  202. without a shepherd. If you and I have to live like

  203. Jesus, model this Kingdom life, then we need to model that kind

  204. of compassion. How many times I'm speaking

  205. about myself right now when I've had a particularly long drawn

  206. day, I really don't have the energy to counsel someone or to

  207. sit with somebody to listen to them for a long time.

  208. When you have kids who are waiting in the room for you to

  209. sit with them for maybe homework or this, it is sometimes

  210. physically, because we're so human, it's physically possible

  211. to stretch ourselves in 10 different directions.

  212. It's hard to respond in empathy and compassion to people.

  213. But here Jesus goes beyond his ability.

  214. He's tired. He is probably needing to just

  215. talk to his disciples, encourage them if any of them had a bad

  216. experience or two on the road, and yet his plans are moved

  217. upside down. How many of us actually respond

  218. to people in a loving and compassionate way when our plans

  219. are turned upside down? How many of us are constantly

  220. having our Kingdom radar on that even at our lowest moments, that

  221. we're ready to minister to someone else out of love?

  222. How many of us are ready to open our home at the at the drop of a

  223. hat? To just welcome someone and I

  224. was recently put to the test on this I was going to be speaking

  225. at a conference and just before that one of the guys from the

  226. conference called and asked AKA a bunch of us have landed here

  227. from Hyderabad. Can we just come come home It's

  228. 7:00 in the morning mind you me and my husband were just out for

  229. a walk when they call and say can we just come and be at your

  230. home for a couple of hours. Our hotel room that we booked

  231. online is terrible. We're looking for an alternate

  232. but we have a bunch of girls in the group.

  233. They knew how to get to me. When you say there are a bunch

  234. of the girls they need to freshen up, can we come home?

  235. How could I say no? But as they were coming home, I

  236. had two sermons to prepare, one for the conference, one for

  237. church. My husband had another sermon to

  238. prepare. We had that was our sermon prep

  239. day and we had some work to do with the kids in the evening.

  240. We had our day planned out and here was God interrupting us.

  241. And these are some things we ask him.

  242. We say, Lord, interrupt us to do your way, but when it happens,

  243. it feels really inconvenient. And I remember battling it out

  244. with myself and I was a bit vocal with my husband.

  245. I was saying why we have so many other things.

  246. This is and it was like the Holy Spirit had to slow me down.

  247. He had to slow me down. He had to speak into my spirit

  248. and say I need you to do this so that I know that your heart is

  249. in a good place. I know you have to speak two

  250. days later in the conference. I know you have to speak in

  251. church. I know you have to take one of

  252. your kids out. I know.

  253. But will you still do this for me, for those nine children who

  254. come home, Will you be the parent in the city for them?

  255. And so eventually the kids came home.

  256. Nine of them came over, we got them breakfast, settled them in

  257. for a few hours. They all just rested.

  258. And then they fixed their hotel and they left.

  259. But I really believe God was doing a heart check of mine for

  260. someone who's so scheduled, based and driven by, you know,

  261. my, what I need to do next. God disrupted that.

  262. I couldn't prepare my sermon until that afternoon.

  263. And that was OK. God said I cared more about how

  264. you would open your home. How would you love these nine

  265. kids who walked in rather than 10 sermons that you prepare and

  266. I really believe God is calling the Kingdom people to a

  267. different kind of motive. You know, it's so easy to do

  268. things because they look good or the optics of it are good, but

  269. he really comes and drills down to what is your motive?

  270. What is your heart condition? What is your motivation.

  271. Jesus is sole motivation in sitting with with the

  272. prostitutes or the tax collectors was not so that he

  273. gets a blue tick of so he gets more followers.

  274. It was purely motivated out of love for them.

  275. He was their Creator. He knew what had taken them off

  276. track and He didn't look down on it.

  277. He just wanted to love them. He wanted them to feel sane.

  278. What is our motivation for what we do?

  279. I love Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12 to 13.

    Hebrews 4:12–13

  280. It talks about the power of the Word of God.

  281. It says the Word of God is living and active, sharper than

  282. any double edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and

  283. spirit, of joints and marrow, discerning the thoughts and

  284. intentions of the heart. If you are thinking you are

  285. doing well, if you're doing everything with the right and

  286. best of intentions, I would urge you to sit with the Word of God.

  287. Many times I have done something because I needed to do it, but

  288. when I sat. Down to do my, you know,

  289. biblical meditation or I just sat down to do my quiet time

  290. something the scripture will open it up to me and say what

  291. you just did was OK, but your heart was not in the right

  292. place. Your heart was not in it.

  293. And it's so. Important that we know why we do

  294. what we do as Kingdom people. Almost.

  295. You know every. Human on the world always does

  296. something which is stinged with some bit of self.

  297. You look at a little child, you know, as young as a 2 or a

  298. three-year old child when they're sitting opposite you.

  299. And I've seen, I remember this with my kids.

  300. They'll be eating something that I've given them and then on and

  301. off, out of a moment of generosity, they'll try to feed

  302. it back to you. But it's always tinted with this

  303. need for something else, for mummy.

  304. My kids still do that to me. They come and ask me, mom, what

  305. can I do? How can I help you?

  306. And the minute they say that, my mom, Radha, goes up.

  307. I said, OK, I want you to do something.

  308. But why are you asking me? And it's invariably to play

  309. PlayStation or to go out and play with friends or something.

  310. All of us, the best of us. There is nothing that we really

  311. do which is 100% selfless. There's always a string attached

  312. to our self, our need for our ego to maybe be massaged, maybe

  313. that we feel better about ourselves.

  314. Maybe we need to be receive a little validation because we

  315. don't receive much of it. However well-intentioned it is.

  316. God is calling us now as Kingdom people to do what we do for the

  317. right reasons. Are you having that hard

  318. conversation because you need to assuage your own, you know,

  319. abilities or will you have it solely to empower that person?

  320. Will you give to that organization that needs help so

  321. that your name goes on the plaque?

  322. Or will you give so that it stays anonymous and that those

  323. people are blessed? Our motivation matters.

  324. If love is our motivation, everything we do will have the

  325. approval of God on it. Can He work with our

  326. selfishness? Yes, you give.

  327. I like that scripture where some people tell Jesus, you know

  328. those people are preaching in your name.

  329. They're driving out demons. What do we do?

  330. If they're not against us? It's fine.

  331. He's for us. And I really believe that He can

  332. work even with our selfishness. We do something for our sake.

  333. He will use that to bring a blessing and in the process, He

  334. works on us. So I want to ask you, how many

  335. times have you tried to step out to do good, but you've always

  336. had this question at the back of your head.

  337. What does this have for me? What is in it for me?

  338. How will I afford this God? You're asking me to give for

  339. that charity. You're asking me to do for these

  340. people, but I can barely make ends meet.

  341. I so many times sound like those disciples.

  342. How will I feed those people? I don't have enough.

  343. You're asking me to give these these nice things from my house

  344. to them. I invested in them.

  345. It's so important that we change this to God.

  346. What do you? Want me to do for you today?

  347. How can I be a blessing to someone so that you are

  348. glorified Lord, not me? How can I show your love to

  349. someone today? That has to be how we shift

  350. this, that we need to know that our motives matter if you want

  351. to do good. The second thing, the thing that

  352. matters the most, is our surrender.

  353. A surrender matters if we want the blessing.

  354. You know many times I've shared this at church, that God's love

  355. for us is unconditional, but His blessings have a condition

  356. attached to it. You look at the Old Testament,

  357. you look at the book of Deuteronomy.

  358. He reiterates how God says you obey me, you listen to my voice,

  359. you don't swerve to the right or the left, then I will bless you.

  360. But if you go off track, you start following other gods.

  361. He says I will come at you. There is a condition to that

  362. blessing. And I believe today, many of us

  363. are not experiencing the fullest of the blessings allocated to us

  364. because we are refusing to surrender certain things that

  365. God has been saying, will you surrender?

  366. It's so important that like that little boy in the crowd who gave

  367. Jesus the five loaves and the two fish, that we are ready to

  368. surrender what's in hand. This boy's story is told

  369. thousands of years later. We always, if we're doing it in

  370. Sunday school, we have a little boy who is the, you know, the

  371. role model for the others. And we use him to enact what it

  372. looked like to have something small in your lunch box.

  373. Bring it to the disciples, say this is all I have.

  374. He had to relinquish control of what he had in his hands.

  375. Lot of times the we are like the disciples, you know, the

  376. disciples tell him it's going to cost 200 dinari.

  377. There must have been Matthew the tax collector and Judas the

  378. Money Box keeper who had this big discussion on how much it

  379. would have paid, need they would have needed to feed these guys.

  380. And yet they had to lay their logic, their calculations at the

  381. feet of Jesus. What rationalisation have you

  382. made before you served God, before you actually did

  383. something? Maybe your service had, you

  384. know, a condition attached to it.

  385. Maybe there's some things that God is saying.

  386. I want you to lay it down before I can use it to bless someone

  387. else. I know for a fact that yielding

  388. and giving of myself is hard because we are wired to protect

  389. ourselves, especially the more we get battered at the hands of

  390. people and situations, we tend to take a step back and we're

  391. saying, Lord, this is mine. I need to keep this safe.

  392. Lord, I need to keep my marriage safe.

  393. Lord, I need to keep my children safe.

  394. Lord, I need to protect my career because there are others

  395. who are like wolves out there. With good reason, but God is

  396. saying when something is given into my hands it is the safest

  397. it'll ever be. Think about it, those five loaf

  398. and loafs and two fish. We're not safe in the disciples

  399. hand because left up to their device.

  400. So they would have just flung it in some trash can and come up

  401. with some other plan. But when it made its way to the

  402. hands of Jesus, nothing was wasted.

  403. I love that it says they collected 12 baskets full of

  404. pieces. Nothing was wasted.

  405. I'd like to think that little boy would have said, can I take

  406. some home to my mum and dad? They packed my lunch so I'd like

  407. to give something back to them. I'd like to think that no one

  408. went home hungry that day because that boy so rightly

  409. surrendered it into the right hands.

  410. Too many times we think if I surrender this to God, he'll

  411. take away this thing from my life.

  412. If I surrender my dreams to Him, what happens?

  413. Will my dreams be dashed? If I surrender my hopes to Him?

  414. What if he completely transforms it or he what makes me walk

  415. through a furnace where it gets transformed?

  416. The fears are many for the believer, but I want to ask you,

  417. what if the one thing that is stopping your blessing is the

  418. fact that you are refusing to surrender something very pivotal

  419. in your life? I have asked myself this so much

  420. as I prepared this because there are the tendencies we have to

  421. hold on to things. We hold on to our spouse, we

  422. hold on to our children. We hold on to our wealth.

  423. We hold on to our careers, our passions, our projects, our

  424. influence, our relationships. But God is saying, will you take

  425. that all and lay it at the altar?

  426. Will you give it to me? Because when it's with me, I can

  427. do so much with it. And it's interesting because

  428. something changes when what I hold the closest leaves my hands

  429. and goes into the hands of God. Something happens, something

  430. changes. I love Ephesians 3 verse 20.

    Ephesians 3:20

  431. We had this as a theme for one year and in the Passion it talks

  432. about how God can do exceedingly more or abundantly.

  433. Then we can ask or think and it's said in that He will outdo

  434. them all. But today I'm reading from the

  435. Amplified and I want you to read along with me.

  436. It says now to him who is able to carry out His purpose and do

  437. super abundantly. More than all that we dare ask

  438. or think infinitely beyond our greatest prayers, hopes, or

  439. dreams according to His power that is at work within us.

  440. To Him be the glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus

  441. throughout all generations, forever and ever.

  442. I love that it says super abundantly when I give my hopes

  443. to Him. Do all of us have hopes and

  444. dreams? We do.

  445. Do we have desires for our lives?

  446. Yes. Do you desire a spouse?

  447. Do you want a child? It's completely OK to desire

  448. these things. It's not against God's will.

  449. But will you surrender that to Him so that he can do what only

  450. he can do and what he does with it?

  451. Remind you is super abundance. You prayed for X, He's liable to

  452. give you 10X. It's amazing what God does when

  453. you surrender your life to him completely.

  454. No holds. But I'm not going to hold this

  455. part and say, Lord, you, you can do whatever you want with that.

  456. But this part, Lord, I, I like to keep it close to me.

  457. Too many of us are holding onto the very thing that He wants

  458. released in His hand. I'm reminded of a friend who

  459. even before she got married, used to say I want to 1st adopt

  460. A child and then have my own. And you know, it's so beautiful

  461. that she kept to her word because as soon as she got

  462. married, she and her husband applied for adoption.

  463. Little did she know that she would take three years to

  464. actually conceive on her natural means by her own self.

  465. She had a long, hard struggle with, you know, not getting

  466. pregnant. There was the weight that was

  467. hard, but so beautifully, so beautifully.

  468. God and his beautiful timing gave her her own child 1st.

  469. And within a few months she gets notified from the adoption

  470. authorities that the next baby is waiting.

  471. And would you believe it, her baby and the adopted baby, which

  472. is one month apart. So she brought them up as Irish

  473. twins. When I think about their story,

  474. when I see pictures of them, my heart just warms because they

  475. make such a beautiful family. But more than that, I really

  476. believe the fact that my friend and her husband sacrificed,

  477. submitted their life to God was so evident.

  478. Was the wait hard? Yes.

  479. Did it seem interminable sometimes, yes.

  480. Was Was the loneliness real? Yes, all of that was, but the

  481. fact was the, the very, you know, the, the primary thing

  482. they did was to surrender themselves right at the

  483. beginning. I, I would have never dreamt of

  484. doing that, to be very honest. And I, I so admire that they

  485. surrendered their heart, their bodies to God and said, this is

  486. what we want, Lord, what do you want?

  487. And God and his beautiful timing unveiled this lovely story for

  488. them. And what is it that today you

  489. and I need to surrender completely in order to receive a

  490. blessing? Because it could be just right

  491. around the corner of our surrender.

  492. So that's the second thing that matters.

  493. Submitting, surrendering matters if you want to receive a

  494. blessing. The third thing is breaking

  495. matters if you want the breakthrough.

  496. What do I mean by that? It says Jesus took the bread,

  497. looked up to heaven, broke it, and then they gave it to

  498. everyone and it filled everyone's stomach, right?

  499. There was a problem. No food, too expensive because

  500. the crowd was huge, distant place from other towns.

  501. These were the problems. What was the breakthrough?

  502. Feeding everyone without spending a dinari, without

  503. having to travel. So you they saved time, they

  504. saved energy, they saved money. And yet the problem had a

  505. solution, but the problem required that something had

  506. broken. The bread had to be broken in

  507. order for it to fill everyone up, right?

  508. It's very similar to what Jesus did at the Last Supper.

  509. Jesus took the bread, He took the wine, He took the bread and

  510. he broke it in his hand saying here, take, this is my broken

  511. body that was given for you. It preceded what he was going to

  512. do at Calgary. And in order for Calgary to

  513. happen, Jesus's body had to be broken.

  514. When his body was broken, the breakthrough came at the cross.

  515. The breakthrough came at the tomb.

  516. You see what I'm saying? Breaking is necessary for the

  517. breakthrough. And it's so important for me.

  518. I personally, when I was preparing this, I was like,

  519. Lord, this is so hard to preach because I personally know how

  520. painful breaking is. Breaking is no fun.

  521. Breaking is hard. It costs us something, but it's

  522. in that breaking. I really think that breaking is

  523. essential before the breakthrough because that's how

  524. much we realize we are broken, and that's when we value the

  525. breakthrough that much more. Picture this, if I had not If we

  526. don't walk through the season of brokenness, if we don't go

  527. through this time when our life just unravels around us and

  528. we're standing there with just, you know, shards of glass.

  529. When we are put back together, when God restores, when God

  530. recompenses, when God works on us and revives us again, we

  531. would not know just how messed up we were to begin with.

  532. We would not know how much of a miracle this break.

  533. We would just take it, you know, in our stride.

  534. Oh, yeah. You know, God blessed me.

  535. Yeah. I got back what I wanted.

  536. No. Until we go to that place of

  537. absolute, abject brokenness, we're not going to realize just

  538. how big a breakthrough we receive.

  539. It's very hard, as I said, for me to preach this, but I realize

  540. that it's in the breaking. If you've been going through a

  541. hard season relationally, you know someone let you down, broke

  542. up with you, or ended a marriage.

  543. I don't know what your season of brokenness could involve, but it

  544. is in that season of breaking that what is within us comes

  545. out. When we are broken, when we are

  546. slandered, when we are treated bad.

  547. If all that spews out of us is unforgiveness and hate, it's

  548. pretty obvious why we need to go through the breaking.

  549. If if you are finding that you're going through the season

  550. without a breakthrough and it's just feels like one thing after

  551. the other is getting broken, we need to realize that God is

  552. doing something intrinsically in order to prepare us for the

  553. breakthrough. If I'm still broken, I won't be

  554. able to experience the joys of the breakthrough.

  555. So God break allows the breaking and then starts to put me back,

  556. and that's when I see my breakthrough.

  557. I love that in the Bible there's so many.

  558. In especially the Gospels, Jesus talks a lot about the farmers.

  559. He talks a lot about architects and buildings.

  560. Why does he do that? Because in all of these, there's

  561. an element of breaking that is required.

  562. Let me explain that. When he talks about a seed, a

  563. seed just looks so harmless, small and, you know, fragile.

  564. You put it in mud in, you know, fertile soil.

  565. You know that nothing seems to be happening for weeks on it,

  566. but if you study what is happening underground,

  567. miraculous things are happening in the hiddenness of that soil.

  568. The seed is absorbing by night and by days, absorbing waters,

  569. absorbing nutrients, and eventually from within the seed,

  570. 2 little growths outgrowth start happening.

  571. One leads to the root system, one leads to the shoot system.

  572. But when they come out of the seed, it's painful for the seed

  573. because they have to push through layers of the seed coat,

  574. which is quite hard. It's not an easy task.

  575. When they breakthrough, they rupture the seed and then they

  576. form something called the radical and the pumule, which

  577. eventually form the root and the shoots, right?

  578. All of this is happening in hiddenness.

  579. Nobody sees what's happening. What you eventually see in a

  580. couple of weeks is that, you know, beautiful little sapling

  581. coming out of the ground. But what is happening prior to

  582. that is a whole lot of breaking. Before you see the breakthrough

  583. from the soil. There's a lot of breaking

  584. happening beneath the soil. When we look at at how farmers

  585. harvest their crops, it talks about threshing.

  586. You know what threshing is? Sometimes they beat the the crop

  587. for threshing. Sometimes they lay the crops on

  588. the floor and they run these machines over it.

  589. Sometimes they're handheld machines or sometimes they're

  590. huge machines that they run the plants through.

  591. And what it does is literally iron, sharpening iron.

  592. It rubs over it by friction and releases the grain.

  593. What am I getting at? God uses the.

  594. Storms of life. God uses the pruning seasons

  595. when he is seeing we are fruitful, but he wants more

  596. fruitfulness. You feel like he's clipping your

  597. buds, pruning. God talks about that in the book

  598. of John. Jesus talks about it pruning,

  599. abiding in the vine, being pruned by the gardener himself.

  600. He talks about harvesting, threshing.

  601. All of these are metaphors for the breaking that is necessary

  602. before the breakthrough comes. This week I was reading we just

  603. celebrated our harvest festival on Sunday and I was so excited.

  604. I was expecting forgot to do so many things because the harvest

  605. is a season when you are reaping the rewards of previous sowing

  606. seasons, right? But I was reading and this whole

  607. week two of our three kids were sick.

  608. And so I was, it was like nursing them back-to-back over 2

  609. weeks. During the harvest festival, our

  610. oldest son was super sick and I one part of my mind was with him

  611. the whole time. I couldn't enjoy myself as much

  612. because I knew one was very sick, the other was just

  613. starting to fall sick. So I was in this.

  614. Place of looking after these two over these two weeks and this

  615. whole week my daughter didn't go to school because she was so

  616. unwell. And so I was, you know, just

  617. mulling over why is it so hard. I thought to be on the harvest.

  618. I thought it was easier. And then I read this passage in

  619. Isaiah, which said just before the harvest, he prunes the

  620. plants, the farmer prunes the plants.

  621. I'm giving you a very abridged version of the verse.

  622. But when I read that, it made so much sense.

  623. If the harvest is to come, there's a pruning before it.

  624. There is a breaking before it so that we can better handle the

  625. breakthrough when it arrives, so that we value the breakthrough

  626. that much more. Jesus talks about the wise and

  627. the foolish man, how they build their buildings.

  628. If not for the storm, The storm is dead is what makes you aware

  629. of the quality of the building. The foundations are below the

  630. soil. Nobody sees the foundation of

  631. your life. When the storm hits you, how you

  632. emerge from it will determine what you were built of to begin

  633. with, and it doesn't matter if it reveals that you were broken

  634. to begin with. Our Jesus is more than

  635. sufficient, more than capable of turning the most broken things

  636. into the most whole things that He's in the business of making

  637. things whole. So will I trust myself to Him to

  638. break me as He chooses so that He can make me into what He has

  639. envisioned me to be? If you know that song, I don't

  640. know if you know it, but it was a chorus that we used to sing

  641. back in the day. It says break me, melt me, mold

  642. me, fill me. And I remember even as a child

  643. refusing to sing those first 2 words because I was so afraid of

  644. what it would entail. And I can tell you as an adult,

  645. I'm still scared to say those words.

  646. Break me, melt me, mold me. I used to sing mold me.

  647. And then I found molding was also very hard because that's

  648. when you're in the master's hands.

  649. He's shaping you through situations.

  650. He's shaping you through your health battles.

  651. He's shaping you through people. Will you say today confidently,

  652. God, I know that if you're breaking me, a breakthrough is

  653. coming and I will endure it for the time that you have, you

  654. know, kept set for me because I know that the breakthrough is

  655. coming. You want the breakthrough.

  656. The breaking matters. It's so important that we wait

  657. until that transformation happens because you know, I'm

  658. finding that breakthrough happens at that.

  659. It's like this juxtaposition of the time when you know, I'm

  660. being shaped and then I'm starting to look like Jesus and

  661. then the breakthrough comes. Sometimes.

  662. Sometimes breakthrough happens when I actually pull down all my

  663. defenses before God and say you can do whatever you like.

  664. God, I'm good with it. I'll follow.

  665. Breakthrough sometimes come when you comes when you tell him,

  666. I'll say yes to everything you're saying.

  667. You tell me to go here, I'll go. You tell me to stay back at stay

  668. obedience. Each of us will have a different

  669. moment when our breakthrough happens, but will we endure the

  670. breaking? That's the question.

  671. The fourth thing that I believe matters if we're going to live

  672. the Kingdom life is a spiritual sensitivity.

  673. If you want to know God more, you need to be more spiritually

  674. sensitive. What does that mean?

  675. I want us to look at Mark 645 to 52, which is what happens just

  676. after that afternoon of feeding the 5000.

  677. OK, 5000 of them have been fed, and then they all go back home.

  678. Jesus goes into the mountain to pray.

  679. He sends his disciples back out. He says you take a boat, cross

  680. the lake, I'll meet you on the other side, right.

  681. And so when he had taken leave of them was 46, he went up on

  682. the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat

  683. was out on the sea and he was alone on the land.

  684. And he saw them, saw that they were making headway painfully,

  685. for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of

  686. the night he came to them walking on the sea.

  687. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the

  688. sea, they thought he was a ghost, and cried out, for they

  689. all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them

  690. and said, Take heart it is I do not be afraid.

  691. And he got into the boat with them, and the wind seized.

  692. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand

  693. about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

  694. And I just to always read this and go, What does this mean?

  695. Why is that part added? They did not understand about

  696. the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

  697. I want to read one more passage, which is the passage after Jesus

  698. feeding the 4000. Now again, remember, he fed

  699. them. He sends them off, right?

  700. And now the 12 of them plus Jesus are getting on a boat and

  701. heading across the lake. Now this is the conversation

  702. that's happening now. They had forgotten to bring

  703. bread and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.

  704. And he cautioned them, saying, watch out, beware of the leaven

  705. of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.

  706. And they began discussing with one another the fact that they

  707. had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said

  708. to them, why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread?

  709. Do you not yet perceive or understand?

  710. Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and

  711. having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember when I

  712. broke the five lows for the 5000, how many baskets full of

  713. broken pieces did you take up? They said to him, 12.

  714. And the seven for the 4000, how many baskets full of broken

  715. pieces did you take up? And they said to him, 7 And he

  716. said to them, do you not yet understand?

  717. Now, if you're going, I myself don't understand, that's

  718. completely OK because when you read it the first time, you're

  719. thinking, why is Jesus schooling them at this level?

  720. I feel like my, when my son is being, you know, difficult to

  721. study maths, finding it hard to study math and I'm just, you

  722. know, driving him to, you know, I'm, I'm probably also shaming

  723. him a bit for not being bright and all of that.

  724. He sounds like that, like, do you not yet understand?

  725. Do you not perceive? Do you not have ears that here,

  726. you know, it's like very, he's a big crude, but what is Jesus

  727. driving at? When you look at the previous

  728. passage, he says they were astounded that he walked on

  729. water. They were looking at him like he

  730. was a ghost. Of course he looked weird

  731. walking on the ocean beside them, but he got in.

  732. The winds calmed. They were astounded, for they

  733. did not understand about the loaves.

  734. What should they have understood about the loaves?

  735. I think primarily because bread and fish was such an ordinary

  736. thing in Galilee and Judea. It was just they always had

  737. fresh catch. Bread was always baked.

  738. It was a very ordinary, mundane thing.

  739. On some level. Did it not resonate with them?

  740. Did it not impact them? As to the magnitude of what

  741. Jesus had done, think about it. They had five loaves and two

  742. fishes. Like literally 5 triangles of

  743. parotas and two fish. 2 long fish.

  744. The fish. Couldn't have been so huge that

  745. they would have eaten it with ease.

  746. There was something so basic to them, and Jesus had done

  747. something so uncommon, so supernatural.

  748. And the thing about a supernatural, it starts without

  749. having something natural in hand.

  750. And when God touches it, the God of the universe touches it.

  751. The God who breathed life into mankind, the God who created the

  752. universe, the world's. When he touched that bread,

  753. something shifted. Something changed.

  754. He made something supernatural out of the natural and they

  755. missed it. So when he walked on water, they

  756. were astounded when they shouldn't have been too shocked

  757. because this was a man who just fed 5000 people without missing

  758. a beat. This was the guy who said, what

  759. is in your hand? Give it to me, I'll work with

  760. it. This is who they were with.

  761. I love the second part where he's talking after the, you

  762. know, the feeding of the 4000. They have one loaf of bread.

  763. And I think about this in our family, we call bread insurance

  764. because, you know, it's always there.

  765. So if you don't have something else, we'll manage with bread.

  766. So they had one loaf of bread and they're sitting with the

  767. bread multiplier, the miraculous bread multiplier in the boat.

  768. What were they worried about? Why were they haggling over who

  769. you should have got bread when they had the guy who could have

  770. prayed over that one loaf and made it how much ever they

  771. needed? And so Jesus in the midst of

  772. this is trying to interject something deeper.

  773. He's trying to bring them to a deeper understanding.

  774. He's saying beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.

  775. Pharisees and Herod. What was Jesus doing?

  776. Jesus was trying to draw a deeper truth, but these guys

  777. were still on the surface level. They were like, we don't have

  778. bread. He's shouting at us, He's

  779. berating us. And then Jesus says, remember

  780. what happened with the bread? We fed these many guys.

  781. We had these much basket full. The basket fulls are also a

  782. reminder of what you just broke and distributed.

  783. If they didn't have the evidence, the basket fulls,

  784. there was no evidence that the miracle had happened.

  785. It's when you see these tons of, you know, pieces left behind,

  786. you realize what you just experienced.

  787. And he's reminding them. He said, do you see what

  788. happened? Why are you so dumb in our

  789. today's language? Do you have ears?

  790. Did you miss seeing what you should have seen?

  791. You should have been in awe that this gave rise to so much.

  792. You should have been in awe that after this miraculous thing

  793. came, they were leftovers, the proof of what had just happened.

  794. Did you not see? Did you not hear?

  795. Are your hearts hardened? Too many of us are reading the

  796. Word of God just as it is. We read it and we go.

  797. We forget. What we read is what the apostle

  798. James wrote about. You just read it and you walk

  799. off. It's like seeing yourself in a

  800. mirror, not remembering. But God is calling us in this

  801. season we are in. We are the Church of the end

  802. times. The time for Jesus to return is

  803. here. We don't know when it's going to

  804. be, but we live in the end times.

  805. We need to be reading the word for all that it's worth.

  806. We need to be going deep into it.

  807. We need to be sitting and meditating on saying, Lord, what

  808. are you speaking to me? What must I do to bring your

  809. Kingdom down to earth? How can I, Lord, step into the

  810. calling that you have called me for?

  811. How can I, Lord, do more for you from this passage?

  812. Call me, speak to me. They had missed the point.

  813. They had missed the point of what Jesus did.

  814. They missed the point of who he was.

  815. Had they seen this for what it really was, they would have been

  816. like this guy is the Son of God. He is sovereign.

  817. They knew all of that by lip service, but did they really

  818. know it? That's the question I love.

  819. And Isaiah talks about how God through the prophet is saying,

  820. you know, go and say to these people, keep on hearing but do

  821. not understand, keep on seeing but do not perceive.

  822. Make the heart of these people dull and by their ears, and

  823. their ears heavy and blind their eyes, lest they see with their

  824. eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts,

  825. and turn and be healed. How many of us are not receiving

  826. our healing because our ears are tuned to the wrong sources?

  827. How many of us are not receiving our breakthrough because we are

  828. looking at the wrong things God is saying today?

  829. I will give you the discernment. When we have Jesus in us, we

  830. have the Holy Spirit presiding within us.

  831. He gives us the mind of Christ. He will teach us how to be wise.

  832. He will teach us how to be discerning.

  833. He will give us insight into the things of God.

  834. You don't have to read the the newspapers and be dejected.

  835. You need to be reading the newspaper superimposed with the

  836. Bible so that you know what is happening is not unnatural.

  837. Should I be alarmed? Yes, but the alarm should move

  838. me to prayer. Should I be praying more prayers

  839. that are pivotal, that change things?

  840. Yes, I should, but it requires that I will be discerning of God

  841. and His Kingdom. If I'm not discerning of the

  842. Kingdom of God, if I'm not discerning about the King and

  843. what He is accomplishing, I will completely miss what I need to

  844. be seeing. If you were to look back on your

  845. life, maybe you've been telling the story of how, you know what,

  846. I haven't had a miracle in a long time.

  847. I've been just in this valley. I've been, I mean, I'm just

  848. doing my mundane. I don't have much happening.

  849. What if you were to look at it through the eyes of Jesus?

  850. What if you were to see how God has been working in you and be

  851. discerning of what he has been doing in you?

  852. My husband and I did this this morning.

  853. We both looked back on years that we consider a wilderness

  854. and we looked back at what God had done in US.

  855. And it's beautiful because it's like looking at a tapestry from

  856. behind and just looking at all the knots and saying, yuck, what

  857. is this? This is not a piece of art.

  858. But when you turn it, you see the picture on the front and

  859. that's when you realise, Oh my goodness, this is what God was

  860. doing. This is what he was

  861. accomplishing in these years that I thought was a wilderness.

  862. He was doing this. I want to ask you if you've been

  863. looking at the story of your sickness and saying, I've been

  864. sick for so long. I don't know when my

  865. breakthrough is coming. I don't know if I'm going to

  866. receive my blessing. God is saying through this

  867. journey, what did you learn? You learnt to push back, you

  868. learnt to pray, you learnt to show empathy to others.

  869. Nothing is wasted. But for that I need to have

  870. discernment. It's so important because when

  871. Jesus was talking to them about the, he says beware of the

  872. leaven of the Pharisees and Herod.

  873. Why was that such a pivotal thing?

  874. Because it was going to be these guys who got Jesus arrested soon

  875. and it was going to be these guys who will persecute the

  876. disciples sooner or later. It was going to be the ruling

  877. council. It was going to be that, you

  878. know, all those guys in the synagogue.

  879. It was going to be people who were amongst the Pharisees and

  880. the Herodians and he, they were going to cause trouble.

  881. So Jesus was giving them a heads up, saying beware of them.

  882. What was he actually meaning? The 11 of the Pharisees and

  883. Herodians was their teaching. It was the the teachings that

  884. they were doing. It was their nature.

  885. It was a character. He calls them hypocrites.

  886. He calls them whitewashed tombs. You see, He called them the

  887. blind leading the blind. So he was basically saying,

  888. guys, I'm the truth, the way and the life.

  889. I'm the one you follow. Those guys are teaching a

  890. counterfeit gospel. It's not the truth.

  891. It's the, you know, taking the easy way to things.

  892. It's cutting corners for your benefits.

  893. That's what they were teaching. And he's saying beware of them

  894. for they're going to cause trouble for you soon.

  895. And if the 12 disciples, let's say 11 because Judas doesn't

  896. make it, if the 11 had not understood, because it says

  897. eventually, then they understood what he was talking about, that

  898. he was talking about their hypocrisy, that he was talking

  899. about their teaching. But it's so important to

  900. understand that because they would have had that

  901. understanding. We need to be discerning of what

  902. we are receiving from the from the Pharisees and from the

  903. Herodians. They would have been able to

  904. handle them at pivotal times in the early churches growth.

  905. You remember the time when they were all dispersed because of

  906. persecution. And all these men didn't lose

  907. vision. They went to different cities,

  908. towns, went to other countries, The Saint Thomas came to India,

  909. they came to different places and carried out the Great

  910. Commission. Now, why did that happen?

  911. Because they had been discerning at that moment when Jesus pushed

  912. it into the head and said be careful.

  913. They knew who to be careful of. They knew that they had to stick

  914. with what they had been taught by Jesus himself.

  915. And today, if you and I want to make it through the next two 3-4

  916. decades, I don't know how old you are.

  917. Our kids are going to last for 7080 years.

  918. It's so important that we operate with discernment.

  919. We have to be willing to have a spiritual sensitivity which

  920. reveals more about God to us. People will tell you in these

  921. times, God is not a God. He's just like anything else.

  922. God will tell you. People will tell you God is in

  923. the environment, He's in the atmosphere.

  924. God will. They'll tell you, you know,

  925. every little thing is a God. They will convince you of how

  926. idolatry is better because it's something you can see.

  927. They'll forget that is by we walk by faith, not by sight.

  928. There will be many who tell you believe anything you want.

  929. All roads lead to God. That's not true.

  930. If Jesus said I'm the way, the truth and the life to the Father

  931. you believe that. So it's so important for

  932. spiritual sensitivity to be discerning to be insightful in

  933. order to know God more because they will present a counterfeit

  934. God to you. They will present a counterfeit

  935. Saviour to you. If you and your family, you and

  936. your household, you and your churches are not aware, we're

  937. not sensitive to the spiritual realities around you, you will

  938. not just know, you will know a false God.

  939. You will not know the true God. And when someone else talks to

  940. you about that, you will get confused.

  941. You could go off track. You could be actually in a place

  942. of denouncing your faith, denounce leaving your God and

  943. going behind something false. So it's so.

  944. Important. We live in a time of false

  945. teachers. We live in a time when the

  946. gospel has been twisted. To serve private purposes.

  947. But this is the absolute truth. The word of God is absolute.

  948. Jesus is the truth. And if your senses are dull and

  949. if you've closed yourself up to reading the word with the with

  950. the thirst for more, if you have closed yourself up to off to the

  951. audible voice of God and said, you know what that's for?

  952. You know, these people who probably get high now and then.

  953. I don't. I'm content with just reading

  954. and knowing the verses by heart and just living my life.

  955. God wants to speak to you for your situation.

  956. That's how he increases your discernment.

  957. That's how he increases your insight.

  958. If you want to know more about the king, you will need to

  959. increase your spiritual insight. And it's so important that we

  960. like the like the disciples received that Intel from Jesus

  961. where he said beware of these guys.

  962. Beware of their teaching. It must have been what got them

  963. through persecution, got them through severe opposition.

  964. Today. What is God saying to you?

  965. Is he teaching you about certain situations you're going to get

  966. into? As I was preparing for this, I

  967. was telling my husband that invariably after a harvest,

  968. there's more work to be done. It doesn't end there.

  969. We don't just, you know, become lethargic and just chill.

  970. There's more work to be done. There's new ground to be sown

  971. in. There are new giants to be

  972. fought. It doesn't end.

  973. This is what God has been repeatedly teaching me, that as

  974. much as you walk out for wilderness and you walk into a

  975. promised land, there are new giants to face.

  976. There are new obstacles. The fight never ends.

  977. But with discernment, you will be able to navigate it.

  978. We need discernment. We need to be spiritually

  979. active, aware. I would urge you watch less of

  980. YouTube. Watch less of less of the

  981. Instagram dreams. Start reading the word of God

  982. more. Every question you would ever

  983. have is answered in that. Spend time with the audio Bible.

  984. Just play it in when you're washing your dishes, when you're

  985. jogging, whatever. Worship more.

  986. Spend time in his presence. It will heighten your spiritual

  987. awareness. It's so important because for

  988. some of us, we're walking through seasons of the

  989. repercussions of a lack of discernment.

  990. Maybe you're walking through heartbreak, heartache, heartburn

  991. because of stress induced by certain situations of people.

  992. God is saying for the next season you can avoid that if you

  993. walk within sight, if you have a greater spiritual awareness.

  994. We're just going to watch a 3 minute clip.

  995. And as you watch it, I want to put yourself in the disciples

  996. shoes and exceed what Jesus does.

  997. And I want you to come out of that.

  998. As we finish watching that, I'm just going to, you know, pray

  999. for you. But as you watch it, could you

  1000. keep this in mind that the God who provided for them, who broke

  1001. bread, who distributed thousands, is still the God who

  1002. provides for you and me? You're going through a crunch.

  1003. He's saying I still provide what's in your hand.

  1004. I'll teach you what to do with that.

  1005. I can break that bread. I can increase your oil supply

  1006. at home till you don't run dry. I'm still doing miracles.

  1007. But will you see it and not pass it off as oh, it's too mundane

  1008. for me? I know I can buy bread on Swiggy

  1009. if need be. This is not a big deal.

  1010. I need bigger things. What if you start looking for

  1011. him the natural first? Because it's in the natural.

  1012. He takes that when his hands come on it, He makes it

  1013. supernatural. So can we just watch this and

  1014. then I'm going to close with prayer?

  1015. This is wonderful bread de la macOS.

  1016. I know it's not enough. Oh, it's enough for me.

  1017. I can do a lot with this. Thank you, I said.

  1018. Are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth

  1019. bread from the earth? But defines some bread.

  1020. Feed them. What has changed?

  1021. Are we organized the people into groups of 50 and 100?

  1022. Gather up 12 baskets to distribute the loaves and fish?

  1023. Was I unclear? No.

  1024. This feels familiar. Maybe.

  1025. Let's go. Does anyone have a basket?

  1026. Please? Borrow a basket.

  1027. Come on. Feed them.

  1028. Yes. Anyone have a basket now?

  1029. You think so? There.

  1030. It's better than the tail. That's the last of it.

  1031. Yeah, that's the last of it. All right, Marcus, you can have

  1032. your basket back. What?

  1033. Is your basketball? You see this?

  1034. You see all this? Come on,

  1035. I've kept you here all this time giving you spiritual food, but

  1036. you clearly need actual food now, so let's eat.

  1037. Isn't that beautiful? Just to when I was watching it,

  1038. I'm so visual. I realized that I love their

  1039. expressions when they open these baskets and it's full with bread

  1040. and fish. Like what an amazing moment.

  1041. What is the area of your greatest barrenness today?

  1042. Has it been your financial status?

  1043. Your relational status? Your parenting status?

  1044. Your career? Your studies?

  1045. What is it? Where is the area of greatest

  1046. emptiness? This God who met the disciples

  1047. and all of those people's needs can today do the same for you

  1048. and me. It just requires that I'm

  1049. prepared to be broken before my breakthrough.

  1050. It just requires. That before I'm blessed, there's

  1051. something that has to happen. There's a process.

  1052. He breaks, but he blesses. He's a God who requires that we

  1053. are insightful, that we're sensitive to the matters of the

  1054. spiritual realm so that we know Him more because He desires to

  1055. know us. He already knows us, but He

  1056. desires us for us to know Him more and for Him to get closer

  1057. to us. But that requires that our

  1058. spiritual sensitivity increases. It requires that we have a

  1059. breaking before the breakthrough.

  1060. It requires that we surrender everything before our blessing

  1061. follows. It requires that our motives are

  1062. in a good place, our heart is in a good place before we do good

  1063. for him. It's so important to remember

  1064. these things because too often our excuses stand primary,

  1065. tantamount. Everything comes around.

  1066. God, I can't do this. You're asking me to set up this

  1067. organization. I don't have the funds, I don't

  1068. have the know how, I don't have the people, but God is saying

  1069. will you trust me? What do you have in your hand?

  1070. Bring that to me. Maybe like the disciples you're

  1071. saying I have all my logic in place.

  1072. My calculations don't sit well. Jesus did say count the cost

  1073. before you follow me and that's why probably the disciples were

  1074. also saying this is the cost 200 denarii not possible.

  1075. I love that in feeding the 4000, they say, Lord, this place is

  1076. bad and where are we going to get food?

  1077. And I'm reminded that the very same man they're talking to is

  1078. the one who in the wilderness was being tested for 40 days and

  1079. the devil tested him saying, turn these stones into bread

  1080. because you're so hungry and tired.

  1081. And yet what did Jesus reply? He said it's not by bread alone

  1082. that man lives, but by the word that comes out of the Lord's

  1083. mouth. And today God understands our

  1084. questions. Our questions could be actually

  1085. quite valid, but he's saying, will you still engage with me to

  1086. know what my plans are? Will you be sensitive enough to

  1087. what I'm doing so that you can partner with me and see the

  1088. Kingdom of God come? Will you step out in doing good

  1089. again and again, even when you have been bruised by people that

  1090. you did good for in the past? Because he's saying this time

  1091. you are different. You have changed, you have

  1092. evolved, you have grown. I can work more with you.

  1093. Can I promise? That bad things won't happen.

  1094. I cannot, I cannot remember what happened to Jesus, but I can

  1095. tell you that our lives, as short as they are, will have

  1096. greatest of impact when we're living the Kingdom life.

  1097. And so as we close, I want to ask you, have you been waiting

  1098. for a breakthrough? Have you been waiting for

  1099. something to change so that the landscape changes?

  1100. God is saying I will bring the breakthrough, but there will be

  1101. some breaking that has to be done before that.

  1102. Maybe you're saying my blessing is I feel like it's just there,

  1103. but I can't possess it. But maybe we need to look at

  1104. ourselves and say, Lord, is there something I'm withholding

  1105. from you without submitting it? Maybe I'm really trying to

  1106. control all these pieces and everything seems to be falling

  1107. out of my hands. God is saying, bring it to me in

  1108. submission and surrender. Maybe you feel that you need to

  1109. step up in your insight, in your discernment, because the truth

  1110. is what we see in the physical eyes is only so much.

  1111. There's more than meets the eye. Things are happening around us

  1112. that we have no clue about. And I was reading this verse

  1113. from Deuteronomy, which says the revealed things are our

  1114. responsibility. The things that are not revealed

  1115. are God's responsibility. So there's a lot of stuff we

  1116. shouldn't dabble in that'll amount to occultism and all of

  1117. that. That is not for us to get into

  1118. God. What have you told me?

  1119. This is your word. I take you at your word.

  1120. You don't lie. You're not a man.

  1121. You keep to your word. You are faithful till the end.

  1122. If you said it, you will do it. If I can hold on to that, if I

  1123. have the discernment to see, God is saying there's some more

  1124. coming, there's some more pressing, Endure it.

  1125. The blessing is around the corner, the breakthrough is

  1126. there, but you need to endure. If God is speaking that to you,

  1127. you need discernment. Maybe your ears have been tuned

  1128. to the wrong voices. Maybe your heart has become

  1129. hardened because of the kind of battering you've experienced

  1130. with life. But God is saying, I want to

  1131. circumcise your heart. I want to cut off all those hard

  1132. edges so that it's supple in my hands.

  1133. So I can speak to you as I would a friend.

  1134. But it comes down to will you be ready?

  1135. Will it matter enough to you? Because it all comes down to

  1136. this. Does the Kingdom of God matter

  1137. to you? Do you want to live a Kingdom

  1138. life? If you did, this is essential.

  1139. So as we pray, I want to ask first that you would commit

  1140. yourself. To living the Kingdom life, it's

  1141. no point. If you've decided to live your

  1142. own way, this will not make sense to you.

  1143. But if you want to live a life of blessing, of impact, of

  1144. continuing growth, of blessing others, you know the way

  1145. Abraham's blessing followed him when he said you know what?

  1146. You're going to be a blessing and the whole world is going to

  1147. be a blessing. Through you.

  1148. If you want to live that kind of life, you need to be committed

  1149. to living the Kingdom way. So as we pray, can you just

  1150. first ask God, can we just lift our hands and say, Lord, I

  1151. commit. I commit to living this Kingdom

  1152. life. I know it's not easy.

  1153. I know there's going to be hard days, but God, I pray you would

  1154. give me the encouragement. I need the spiritual strength to

  1155. push through and receive what you have for me to lay hold of

  1156. that prize you have for me. We thank you God for Jesus.

  1157. We thank you Lord, that He has gone before as the author of our

  1158. faith, the finisher of our faith.

  1159. We thank you that Lord, when we have no role models to look

  1160. around outside, we can look to him.

  1161. We thank you, Father, that you are going to bring breakthrough

  1162. in many people's lives as they are watching this.

  1163. I believe that God they're going to open themselves up to you for

  1164. you to break mold and prepare them for their breakthrough.

  1165. I thank you for those who are waiting patiently for the

  1166. blessing that you have promised. Lord, wherever a surrender has

  1167. to happen in Jesus name, they would surrender if it is their

  1168. family, Lord, if they have to surrender the upbringing they

  1169. have had, if they have to surrender the, the birth

  1170. family's traditions for you. If they have to, Lord, give up

  1171. on something that is holding them back that they would do it

  1172. so willingly. And I know God, you are not a

  1173. debtor. I know that You would come

  1174. through for them, Lord. I pray for those who are

  1175. struggling with their condition of their heart.

  1176. Lord, they want to do good, but their heart is not in a good

  1177. place. I pray right now that they would

  1178. invite You in to consecrate their hearts and set them apart

  1179. for the great things they are marked out to do of earth.

  1180. I pray right now for every believer who is watching this.

  1181. I pray Jesus that they would step up in their spiritual

  1182. awareness, God, that their eyes will be opened, their ears will

  1183. be opened, hearts will be softened so that they will know

  1184. what they must know of what you are doing, of how you mean good

  1185. for them, of how you love them. I pray that you would continue

  1186. to move in our midst, help us and be with us.

  1187. Lord, in Jesus name I pray, Amen, Amen.

  1188. I would really encourage you to go back home.

  1189. If you are at home, you can continue to read it at home.

  1190. But if you can meditate on these two chapters, it's Mark chapter

    Mark 6 chapter mention

  1191. 6 and Mark chapter 8. Just read it through as a

    Mark 8 chapter mention

  1192. narrative to understand the progression of how Jesus did

  1193. this. And you can even watch the rest

  1194. of the chosen clip. There's a larger clip that you

  1195. can watch, or you can watch it on Netflix or wherever.

  1196. Watch it just to be amazed at what God did then and what God

  1197. still does. He has not changed.

  1198. So if you need a miracle, this is the man you need to go to.

  1199. This is the God you need to go to is Jesus himself.

  1200. He is still working for his Kingdom to be established on

  1201. earth, which means it'll happen through US ordinary individuals.

  1202. So don't discount the ordinary natural parts of your life

  1203. because that's where the supernatural permeate and come

  1204. through and impact so many people.

  1205. So God bless you. Have an amazing week.

  1206. Thanks for listening to this message.

  1207. We hope you were blessed to hear more messages like this.

  1208. Make sure to subscribe and check out our podcast channel for past

  1209. episodes. If you like what you are

  1210. hearing, consider rating us, subscribing and even sharing it

  1211. with friends. That would really help us.

  1212. For more content from Via Zion and to connect with us, go to

  1213. Via Zion dot in. Remember, whoever finds Jesus

  1214. finds life.