The Drawing of the Father

John 6 begins with the feeding of 5,000 men plus women and children from five barley loaves and two fish. The crowd follows Jesus, hungry for more, but he tells them they seek after the wrong food. "I am the bread of life," he says. "He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty." Wow! Food -- the acquirement of which consumed the majority of their time and energy -- in permanent supply. That had to seem like an unbelievably good deal, and since he had already delivered what seemed like an impossibility the day before, why not take him at his word?

The blessings of God are good. I would be crazy not to want them. But when I begin to covet the blessings, I am in danger of missing something infinitely better -- Jesus Christ Himself.

"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him," John 6:44. Oswald seems clearly to believe that personal revelation persists today. God draws us -- not just once but daily -- and when he draws, we need to leap in response. As I write this, a plethora of rational objections spring up, demanding consideration: Isn't that what crazy people -- like Jim Jones and his followers -- do? How could you ever possibly know that you were hearing God's voice and not your own sinful desires or worse? After all, the Bible says the heart is deceitfully wicked. You might just hear what you want to hear. That's how heresy gets started . . .

Rational objections indeed, but Oswald writes, "The hindrance is that I will not trust God, but only my mental understanding. As far as feelings go, I must stake all blindly. I must will to believe, and this can never be done without a violent effort on my part to disassociate myself from my old ways of looking at things, and by putting myself right over onto Him."

I am struck by the word "violent," which reckons back to an earlier entry on wrestling. Opposition is assumed and striving is required.

I think we each need to realize our own tendencies. Leaping without looking isn't one of mine. Indecision and inaction are. With safeguards and accountability in place, I need to listen for the voice of God and leap.

Barbara

P.S. I began my study of the Holy Spirit today by looking at Romans 8. I also read this in Tyndale's New Bible Dictionary: "Life for the believer is therefore qualitatively different from what it was prior to faith. His daily living becomes his means of responding to the Spirit's claim, enabled by the Spirit's power. This was the decisive difference between Christianity and rabbinic Judaism for Paul. The Jew lived by law, the deposit of the Spirit's revelatory work in past generations, an attitude which led inevitably to inflexibility and casuistry, since revelation from the past is not always immediately appropriate to the needs of the present. But the Spirit brought an immediacy of personal relationship with God, which fulfilled the ancient hope of Jeremiah and which made worship and obedience something much more free, vital and spontaneous." It occurred to me that I have been living more like the Jew than the Christian.