Guest Post By Alicia

Today's reading from the One Year Bible Chronological Reading Plan is
John 6:22-71; Mark 7:1-23; Matthew 15:1-20

Forgive me if this is brief, I've had a small flu bug since last night.

I loved Jesus talking about being the bread of life. It brought me back to my post last Sunday about the Lord's prayer and made me rethink what that means. "Give us this day, our daily bread." I usually think that means that he provide what we need to survive. Yet, he is our daily bread! Daily I need to partake of what he has provided. That was convicting to me.

It's true that the stark word images he discusses before may of the disciples leave him, are quite odd. Perhaps they thought they had come across some weirdo with gory ideas. Of course, as Jesus himself says, these things are not made understandable to men until God the Father makes them so.

Then, the rest of the passages deal with the importance of a clean heart over outward "clean" living. I find this very interesting. It is still so easy for Christians to focus on outward ritual rather than inward need of cleansing. The fact is, inside any great looking Christian exterior is a liar, a thief, an adulterer, a murderer and so on! No matter how we dress ourselves up with spirituality, we are the same dirty rags inside. Just like the previous teaching of the bread for our life, so the unclean heart can only have one cure, the work of Christ.

How quickly we want to pull out our Godly checklists and feel the satisfaction of making off our spiritual completion. We forget our true need which is not for covering, but for cleansing. We forget him, we don't believe. We believe instead that our checklist is helping us. We believe that working for our physical food will satisfy. We forget that we are not just flesh but spirit. Trying to perfect and provide for the flesh while leaving the spirit starving and filthy is our mistake. Jesus is trying to teach us to make us hunger for intimacy from him and cleansing from his work alone.


Tomorrow's passage:

Mark 7:24-30; Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:31-37; Matthew 15:29-31; Mark 8:1-10; Matthew 15:32-16:4; Mark 8:11-21; Matthew 16:5-12

Prayer Request: If you don't mind, I'd like to ask for prayer that I'd get back to doing my daily reading. Many times I have to catch up but it's been hard for me the past few weeks to have time with the Lord. I really need to get my priority back in place. I'd appreciate prayer for that and I hope it's okay that I post this on my post.