In Mark chapter 8 we read of a curious interaction between Jesus and His disciples. They are in a boat going to the region of Dalmanutha. The disciples had just seen Jesus feed four thousand people with seven loaves and a few small fish. When He tells them “Be careful, watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod”, by way of warning them not to get tangled up in the religious or political spirit of the day, they panic and think He is concerned that they haven’t brought any of the bread with them!!!
Well not surprisingly Jesus says “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” They reply ‘twelve’, and then He asks the same question about the feeding of the four thousand. Then He says to them “Do you still not understand?” Mark 8:21.
I think that Jesus is saying to them “You’re worrying about not having any bread, but you’ve just seen two amazing miracles. You need to look at the present situation, i.e. ‘we have no bread in the boat’, through the lens of what you have just witnessed, and not through your present circumstance. If you look at your present circumstance, without the lens of past miracles, or times of God’s faithful provision, you may find your heart is hard and you have no faith for the ‘now’.
If we can view our current circumstance through the lens of past victories, ours or those of others, and not through the lens of our past defeats and failures we will be better placed to see God’s hand move in power and deliverance in every challenging situation that we face. Psalm 119:24 says ‘Your testimonies are also my delight; they are my counsellors.’ And verse 111 says ‘I have inherited your testimonies forever, for they are the joy of my heart.’ NASB.
Meditating on the testimonies that we read in the bible or that we hear from our brothers and sisters, as well as our own stories of God’s help and deliverances, makes perfect sense. Feeding on what He has done builds our faith and helps us to look at our current circumstances through the lens of ‘what is possible here’ rather than a more discouraging narrative of, ‘well that didn’t work last time’ or,’ I didn’t have faith for that before’.
So let us make sure that unlike the disciples we don’t forget the miracles, blessings and provisions that we have seen in the past, that we don’t forget the times when God has worked on our behalf, and especially that we don’t dismiss things as ‘coincidences’ when we have been asking God for something.
We can do that by keeping note (in a book preferably) of all that the Lord does for us. Then we can remind ourselves, with lots of thanksgiving, for those interventions in our lives. We can add our own testimonies to those we read in the bible and the next time we need to see God working on our behalf we can find the right lens through which to view the situation, and our faith will keep on growing.
