Eating with Joy

 

  

 

This isn't the type post I ever hoped for this blog. But there comes a day when you just feel like you have to lay everything at Jesus's feet. And that's the focus of this outpouring today.

Dear, Lord, help me speak truth, and to walk in your truth. Amen. ... That's the kind of post this is, today.

I remember when I first heard someone say, with conviction, that we were coping with "a trick of the enemy." A fatherly cousin said just that one day.

So, today, I stand ready to say that, often, when someone is frustrating your faith for living free of children of disobedience, your faith for escaping horrors, your faith for witnessing Jesus, your faith for moving forward — when a schemer points at your Heaven-sent provision and plan, and points the word "scheme" at you instead of at his or her own self — you may be coping with an enemy (even an enemy within the church).

That enemy may preach a false gospel that money is power, that being naked is being free, and that the born-again were meant to taste of death.

And you just need to rebuke that enemy. You can rebuke him or her through a direct response, or simply by the way you keep hoping and witnessing and reaching forward to live.

You can cry out that Jesus gave us instructions to remember His sacrifice in a clean, not a bloody, way: that He has given us unleavened bread and the juice of grapes in place of death and blood.

You can cry out that the light of Heaven has no communion with spiritual darkness. You can cry out that Heaven's instructions to Peter were to trust the Lord's judgment (not this world's judgment, but the Holy Spirit's judgment) about meats Heaven has made clean — meats made clean for food, meats sparing us the taste of death.

You can cry out that every good and perfect blessing is from Heaven.

You can cry out that the disciples had not eaten on that very long day when the multitude was fed, and that a boy's fish may have become needed sustenance for all of them — all of the disciples — while those among the multitude were each satisfied with a small portion of bread, because they had eaten at home that day (and then had been spiritually filled by witnessing Jesus's sayings and doings ... on that very long day). That seems to be the most possible truth about that day, according to the King James account of the gospel according to Mark. You can cry out that the multitude went home, where thy likely did eat again. And you can cry out that that's why many churches have a homestyle meal together sometimes, after a long day at worship, even if they've had communion at worship.

You can cry out that God never intended anyone's physical well-being to depend upon a portion of communion alone, but upon every word of our new covenant, including words encouraging us to "eat."

When an enemy within says our Christian joy depends upon lack and tribulation, you can cry out that our joy depends on having met Jesus! Our joy doesn't depend on evil! Our joy survives or persists despite evil. And, if you don't believe that, search the scriptures. Look at the immediate joy in the eunuch from Ethiopia. Look at Paul's joy in remembering the days he first knew his salvation. And then, remember your own walk of faith in Christ, if, indeed, you've walked in Him.

If you've walked in Jesus, you know.

And Heaven knows.