Reflective Bible Study

In our last podcast episode, we stopped before finishing a longer challenge Jesus gives to the crowd of people who found Him following the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus walking to the disciples’ boat as they were struggling to cross the lake.

In Jesus’ challenge, He begins by emphasizing what God wants most from His people. After the crowd challenges Jesus to give them a sign, which tells us something about the character of this crowd since they just experienced a sign when Jesus fed them in the wilderness, Jesus shifts to talking about the bread God gives, and how He is the Bread of Life.

Reading a few of the last verses from our previous episode to give this episode’s passage some context, let’s pick back up where we left off in our last episode. Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 6, and we will read it from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 47, Jesus continued speaking, saying:

⁴⁷ “Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. ⁵⁰ But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”

⁵² Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

⁵³ Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. ⁵⁵ For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷ Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. ⁵⁸ This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” ⁵⁹ He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Let’s pause reading here. What Jesus has just described is one of the most challenging things He says in the entire Bible, and on the surface, it sounds like Jesus is telling His followers to become cannibals.

However, the only way these verses about eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking Jesus’ blood make sense is when we understand them spiritually. In a literal sense, no one has eaten Jesus’ flesh or drank His blood. The single opportunity that people would have had would have been as He was being taken off the cross and buried, but nothing like this is even hinted at in any of the gospels. While Jesus was dying, most of the disciples were hiding for their lives, and it is only after Jesus is raised from the dead that they begin to venture out. After Jesus was raised from the dead, there was no way the disciples could literally eat His flesh or drink His blood because He appeared and disappeared at will.

Instead, the spiritual truth Jesus teaches His closest followers later on during His ministry, when they are eating the Last Supper together on the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested. In this Passover meal, Jesus takes bread and symbolically equates it to His body, and He takes wine and symbolically equates it to His blood.

However, at this earlier point in Jesus’ ministry while He is teaching this crowd, we don’t have any hint at this symbolism, only a strange literal-sounding declaration about becoming cannibals. Because of this, when we continue reading in verse 60, we see the response of the crowd. John tells us:

⁶⁰ On hearing it, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”

⁶¹ Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this, Jesus said to them, “Does this offend you? ⁶² Then what if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before! ⁶³ The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. ⁶⁴ Yet there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him. ⁶⁵ He went on to say, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”

⁶⁶ From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.

⁶⁷ “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.

⁶⁸ Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. ⁶⁹ We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

⁷⁰ Then Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” ⁷¹ (He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.)

In this passage, and in its conclusion, we discover that Jesus subtly reemphasizes the spiritual nature of what He shared with these followers by saying in verse 63, “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life.”

This is the biggest clue that Jesus is speaking in a spiritual, symbolic sense, rather than literally. Remember eating Jesus’ flesh doesn’t make sense when Jesus tells us directly that the flesh counts for nothing.

So a better question for us to ask is why would Jesus press this crowd with this truth?

When I look at the broad event, I suspect that Jesus understood something that we did not. I suspect that Jesus understood that the larger the crowds were that followed Him, the greater the danger that this crowd would derail His mission into this world. This specific crowd presents an interesting challenge of its own. This crowd, prompted by emotion, had wanted to make Jesus their earthly king following His miracle of food multiplication, but this same crowd then demanded more signs from Jesus to prove He was from God.

This crowd reflects a decent portion of humanity who are ruled by their emotions, while claiming to be ruled by logic. This crowd was self-serving, only interested in Jesus for what He could do for them, and they likely would not have been satisfied for long with any miracle or sign Jesus would have provided to prove that He was from God. Less than 48 hours after an amazing miracle they were a clear part of, we see them demanding another sign. This crowd discounted every reason they were given to believe in Jesus, while claiming they wanted Jesus to give them reasons for them to believe.

Because of this crowd’s overtly self-serving attitude and focus on bread from God, I believe Jesus took this theme and pushed it to its extreme. Jesus did not lie, but Jesus shared a spiritual truth that was deeper and more direct than any of these people were willing to accept. Jesus shared how He was God’s manna from heaven, and how the manna foreshadowed His coming into the world.

This spiritual truth was so challenging, that it prompted many of His followers who were disciples to desert Him. While we think of disciples as the twelve men Jesus chose, John uses this term to describe a bigger group of regular followers of Jesus, and John describes the twelve closest followers in this passage as simply “the Twelve”. From how this passage frames the aftermath of Jesus’ message, it appears like Jesus took this huge crowd and pushed every person away until He was left with only the Twelve disciples. The bigger the crowds following Jesus got, the harder Jesus pushed them with spiritual truth.

However, while Jesus pushed those in the first century with hard spiritual truth, we are called to believe Jesus’ words, because Jesus’ words bring life and Jesus’ life brings eternal life. God has promised that those who believe and trust in Jesus will be given eternal life. Even if Jesus challenges us with some very difficult to accept challenges, His perspective is bigger than our own, and even when we don’t understand, we are called to believe and look forward to the day when all our questions will be answered when Jesus returns to bring us home.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to trust in Jesus even when He says some challenging words. Study into the challenging messages Jesus shares to discover some amazing spiritual truth that is worth applying into our lives. Remember, through Jesus, we are promised eternal life, and because of what Jesus did for us, we have the assurance of salvation.

Also, as I always challenge you to do, intentionally pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow from God’s Word. God has preserved the Bible for thousands of years, and it has the power to transform lives when we let the Holy Spirit speak through it. No other book or collection of writing has the Holy Spirit behind it like the Bible. We can trust the Bible will give us an accurate picture of God when we look at it holistically and in context.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or fall away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we continue looking at the parables Jesus told, we turn our attention to one of Jesus’ shortest parables. While the setup for this parable gives this parable an extra verse, the parable itself is only one verse long. This isn’t the only parable that is under two verses, but because it is so short, don’t think for a moment that it isn’t challenging, relevant, or significant. In just a few short phrases, Jesus masterfully illustrates several aspects of God’s kingdom in a way that lifts us up while also challenging us regarding our mission in this world.

Let’s read this parable and discover what we can learn from Jesus’ illustration. While this parable is found in Matthew’s gospel, Luke also includes it. Since most people look at Matthew’s version of it, let’s be different and focus in on Luke’s gospel, even if both parables are written almost identically. With this said, our passage for this episode is found in Luke’s gospel, chapter 13, and we will read it from the New Century Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 18, Luke tells us that:

¹⁸ Then Jesus said, “What is God’s kingdom like? What can I compare it with? ¹⁹ It is like a mustard seed that a man plants in his garden. The seed grows and becomes a tree, and the wild birds build nests in its branches.”

In these few phrases, we have our parable. While Jesus then immediately shares another parable, we’ll hold off on focusing on that parable until our next episode, even though both parables have a number of similarities.

In this parable, we discover God’s kingdom being compared to a mustard seed. I don’t know much about mustard seeds, but what I do know is that they are among the smallest seeds that can be seen without magnification. Perhaps what is significant about this truth is that while the seed is small, the seed’s smallness does not indicate the size of a plant the seed will become. In a similar way, God’s kingdom started incredibly small, but with the Holy Spirit and a little bit of time, God’s kingdom has expanded in amazing ways.

Something else that seems to stand out to me whenever I read about this parable is the final phrase. The last thing Jesus shares about the seed that became a tree is that this tree had “wild birds build nests in its branches”. This is significant, because it tells us that God’s kingdom exists to be a shelter and refuge for God’s creation.

While we could take the idea of wild birds literally, they might also be a metaphor for those living in this world. While many of us listening to this episode are already a part of God’s kingdom, when we have intentionally allied ourselves to Jesus, do we live our lives in a way that helps those in this world who are not yet followers of Jesus? Is the witness we display in the world one where other people are loved, welcomed, helped, and lifted up?

According to this parable, God’s kingdom grows into a place where those who are near it benefit from it. God’s kingdom gives more than it takes; God’s kingdom does not behave like a parasite. Everyone near God’s kingdom benefits from its presence.

When I look out at the world today, I don’t see many clear examples of people living to serve others in a sacrificial way. Most serving, if we could call it that, seems to be centered on how we can help others while being compensated in some way for it. While there is nothing wrong with being compensated for helping others, is the goal of our help to get paid, or is the goal of our help to serve? Is the goal of our help and our service towards others aimed at building up a name for ourselves or is aimed at building up the name of Jesus Christ?

One test we can use when asking ourselves if we live up to this ideal is if a random person passing by would miss what we are doing if we were to disappear. Another way we could test this is asking ourselves if we were to stop doing what we are doing, would God miss it? While these are not perfect tests, know that if the mustard tree in our parable were to disappear, the wild birds who had taken up residence would definitely notice. God would also notice because He values every plant, animal, and human He created!

When we join God’s kingdom, we get a new perspective. This perspective changes from what can I do to help me succeed to what can I do to help others succeed. Our perspective also changes from what can God do to help me to what can I do to help bring glory to God through blessing others. When we join God’s kingdom, our focus shifts away from ourselves and onto saying thank You to God by giving Him glory, honor, and praise.

Another way to describe this from our parable is remembering that the tiny mustard seed that grew into a tree represents God’s kingdom. This seed does not represent us and it does not represent anything we can do. Without the Holy Spirit, any efforts we put into growing our own spiritual seeds will result in nothing more than tiny, spiritual seeds.

However, with the Holy Spirit, our efforts into helping God’s kingdom grow transform from the insignificant gifts we have into being the transformative gifts God will use to bless others. This only happens when we remember that we are building up God’s kingdom, and God’s kingdom is focused on giving glory to Jesus!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first and place Him first in your life. Choose to say thank You to God for everything He has done for you by helping others, by blessing others, and by giving God the glory and credit for everything you accomplish. If it was not for God, you would not be alive today!

Also, always pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each day. While learning from other people is nice, choose to let the Holy Spirit teach you through the pages of the Bible as you study it personally. Nothing can replace personal prayer and Bible study as you build a strong spiritual foundation for your life!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Following Jesus feeding the crowd of over five thousand people, and then walking on the water to His disciples as they were struggling in their boat to cross the lake, we come to our passage for this episode. Leading up to this passage, Jesus had sent the people away following the miraculous feeding of food, and the following day they return looking for Him.

The crowd saw Jesus’ disciples leave without Jesus in their boat, but when they came back looking for Jesus, they could not find Him where that miracle had taken place. The crowd then travels to the other side of the lake looking for Jesus.

This background leads us into our passage for this episode, and a set of powerful truths we can learn from it. Actually, the teaching we are looking at in this passage is too long for one episode, and because of this, we will split this teaching into two parts.

Let’s read the first part of what Jesus shared, and discover some amazing things about how Jesus pushed His crowd of followers.

Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 6, and we will read it from the New Century Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 25, John tells us:

²⁵ When the people found Jesus on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Teacher, when did you come here?”

²⁶ Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, you aren’t looking for me because you saw me do miracles. You are looking for me because you ate the bread and were satisfied. ²⁷ Don’t work for the food that spoils. Work for the food that stays good always and gives eternal life. The Son of Man will give you this food, because on him God the Father has put his power.”

²⁸ The people asked Jesus, “What are the things God wants us to do?”

²⁹ Jesus answered, “The work God wants you to do is this: Believe the One he sent.”

I must pause here to draw out this huge truth. In Jesus’ response, we have the clearest answer for the mission of Jesus’ followers on earth. Above anything and everything else, we are called to believe the One God sent. In other words, we are to believe Jesus and place our faith, our hope, and our trust in Him. When we believe someone, we trust their words and adjust our actions accordingly. When we believe Jesus, we trust His words and we align our lives into His will.

However, the crowd has another question. After Jesus tells them to believe the One God sent, we continue in verse 30, and read:

³⁰ So the people asked, “What miracle will you do? If we see a miracle, we will believe you. What will you do? ³¹ Our ancestors ate the manna in the desert. This is written in the Scriptures: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

³² Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven; it is my Father who is giving you the true bread from heaven. ³³ God’s bread is the One who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

³⁴ The people said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

³⁵ Then Jesus said, “I am the bread that gives life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. ³⁶ But as I told you before, you have seen me and still don’t believe. ³⁷ The Father gives me the people who are mine. Every one of them will come to me, and I will always accept them. ³⁸ I came down from heaven to do what God wants me to do, not what I want to do. ³⁹ Here is what the One who sent me wants me to do: I must not lose even one whom God gave me, but I must raise them all on the last day. ⁴⁰ Those who see the Son and believe in him have eternal life, and I will raise them on the last day. This is what my Father wants.”

⁴¹ Some people began to complain about Jesus because he said, “I am the bread that comes down from heaven.” ⁴² They said, “This is Jesus, the son of Joseph. We know his father and mother. How can he say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”

⁴³ But Jesus answered, “Stop complaining to each other. ⁴⁴ The Father is the One who sent me. No one can come to me unless the Father draws him to me, and I will raise that person up on the last day. ⁴⁵ It is written in the prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. ⁴⁶ No one has seen the Father except the One who is from God; only he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷ I tell you the truth, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread that gives life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but still they died. ⁵⁰ Here is the bread that comes down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will never die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give up so that the world may have life.”

Let’s stop reading here and finish this passage in our next episode.

In this first portion of Jesus’ challenge to this crowd, I am amazed that they are this stubborn and unbelieving. It is as though this crowd is looking for reasons to not believe in Jesus than for reasons to believe.

This is the clearest to me when they directly ask Jesus what sign He would give them from heaven. I suspect you caught the irony like I did when the crowd uses the example of God giving the people manna in the desert. They quote scripture saying that God gave them bread from heaven to eat.

The irony in my mind is that these people just finished eating a clearly miraculous food miracle, where the only place for this bread to have come from is God. A boy supplied his meal big enough for one person, and Jesus multiplied it into food for over 5,000 with plenty of leftovers. After witnessing this miracle, likely less than 48 hours later, this crowd completely discounts the miracle of food multiplication, and they want a clearer sign instead of remembering back to what had just taken place.

Jesus redefines the source of the Bread from heaven, and in a symbolic way, Jesus takes the manna that the Old Testament Israelites ate, and He turns it into a symbolic prophecy about God sending Him into the world.

Jesus clearly tells this crowd in no uncertain terms that He is the symbolic bread that gives life. Jesus says in verse 35 that “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus is speaking on a spiritual level that many in this crowd do not understand, and those that do understand this are not willing to accept it.

Those in the crowd are unwilling to accept Jesus because many of them knew the family Jesus was raised in. Whether Mary and Joseph kept Jesus’ miraculous birth a secret, or whether they stopped trying to tell people because no one believed them, this crowd saw Jesus as simply being Joseph’s son and nothing more significant. The amazing miracles that God did through Jesus were not enough to break through to them that Jesus was more than simply a carpenter’s son.

However, we have an advantage, because three of the four gospels shed light on Jesus’ origins, and on how Jesus did in fact come from heaven. While this passage may be enough to cause some people to trip up in their faith like those in this first century crowd, the biggest truth I see included in this passage is Jesus’ repeated promise about His own task and responsibility.

In this first part of Jesus’ challenge to this crowd, He repeatedly tells them that He is the Source of eternal life, and that His responsibility is raising up all of God’s people on the last day. When we place our trust in Jesus, not only to we trust in His sacrifice to cover our sins, we trust that He is more than capable of raising us up personally when He returns on the last day.

Jesus’ promise is a promise pointing forward to resurrection, and it is a promise I firmly hold on to. Jesus conquered death, and I know He is preparing a place for all of us who have placed our faith in Him as we all together look forward to the day He returns to bring us home!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As always, continue seeking God first in your life and intentionally place your faith, your hope, your trust, and your belief in Jesus and what He did for you on the cross. Also place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus and His power to do exactly what He has promised for all of God’s people, which is raising each and every one of them up when He returns. It is Jesus’ responsibility to raise up God’s people and it is His responsibility to not lose even one of those who have given their lives to God. We can trust that even when we don’t know why or how, Jesus knows, He is trustworthy, and God is working in ways we likely cannot see yet.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to personally grow closer to Jesus each and every day. The Bible is the best way to discover Jesus for yourself, and prayer and study are the best ways to open your heart to Jesus and fall in love with Him like He has fallen in love with you!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

In our last episode, I hinted at the next several episodes being focused in on a series of parables found in Matthew’s gospel. However, before we continue looking at the series of parables, Mark’s gospel includes similar but unique parable that sounds related to the parable we focused on in our last episode. In planning our year of podcasts, this seemed like a great point to briefly detour away from Matthew to look at it.

While Mark includes this similar sounding parable to Matthew’s Wheat and Weeds parable, the key idea in Mark’s parable focuses not on the harvest, even though a harvest is included, but the time between the planting and the harvest, and Mark doesn’t include any details about weeds.

Let’s read Jesus’ parable from Mark’s gospel and discover what it can teach us about our lives today and the current world we are living in. Our passage is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 4, and we will read it from the New International Reader’s Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 26, Mark tells us that:

²⁶ Jesus also said, “Here is what God’s kingdom is like. A farmer scatters seed on the ground. ²⁷ Night and day the seed comes up and grows. It happens whether the farmer sleeps or gets up. He doesn’t know how it happens. ²⁸ All by itself the soil produces grain. First the stalk comes up. Then the head appears. Finally, the full grain appears in the head. ²⁹ Before long the grain ripens. So the farmer cuts it down, because the harvest is ready.”

When reading this parable, one of the first things that I thought of might make me sound a little skeptical, but it is simply that nowadays, we know how a seed germinates and becomes a plant. With our scientific advances, we know how this happens. We also know that soil left to its own won’t produce anything. If there is water and other soil with plants nearby, without some intervention, the soil in question might gain some of the plants from the nearby soil or it might get the pesky unwanted plants we call weeds.

However, soil with no water or moisture won’t produce anything lasting. We know more about how plants grow today than perhaps at any other point in history.

However, this was the logical, and perhaps a little skeptical, side of me. But what if Jesus isn’t really talking about farming?

Remember, this is a parable, and Jesus begins His parable by stating that His illustration will describe what God’s kingdom is like. With this introduction, we discover that this illustration about farming is not about farming at all. Instead, farming becomes a metaphor for spiritual growth.

With that as a frame of reference, do we know how spiritual growth works? I’ll be the first to say that we know a little bit about it, but similar to how Jesus describes the farmer not knowing how it happens, there are a lot of unknown details in the process.

When we talk about spiritual growth, we know some things that help and other things that do not. We know that prayer and Bible study help with spiritual growth, while many of the latest blockbuster movies, games, or other forms of entertainment don’t help us grow spiritually.

To sum up what we know and compare it to what we don’t know, what we do know is that there are some environments that help with spiritual growth, and other environments that don’t help with growth. This is similar to the parable from a couple episodes ago where seed falls on different types of soil with different results. Seed landing on soil is going to grow a lot better than seed landing on a solid slab of pavement. The environment matters when we talk about spiritual growth.

However, with the right environment, do we know what causes spiritual growth?

Again, we know something that can stop spiritual growth in the right environment, and that is a selfish, self-centered attitude. Also, a closed, hard heart towards God will stop spiritual growth. Judas Iscariot is the prime example of this. Everything spoke to Judas Iscariot having the same opportunity as the majority of the other disciples, but Judas chose to reject and betray Jesus because of His self-focused attitude, when the other disciples ultimately became ambassadors for God’s kingdom after they received the Holy Spirit.

So with the right environment, the right attitude, and the right focus, will we grow spiritually? I believe we will, but I also believe that we don’t truly understand how it happens. We can describe growing spiritually as receiving the Holy Spirit, learning new spiritual truths, having a new perspective and outlook on life, and being transformed by God, but how this happens is still a mystery.

Like the parable, we can see the outward stages of growth happening, all the way to being mature and ripe, but how spiritual growth happens within a person’s life is still a mystery. As the common metaphor goes, we can see the effects of the wind, but we cannot see the wind itself. We can feel the wind, but we cannot see it. We can feel and see spiritual changes in our lives and our perspectives, but that doesn’t mean we understand how we grow spiritually.

However, just because it is a mystery to us does not mean that this is a mystery to God. God knows and He understands. In this parable, Jesus subtly leaves one responsibility to us, and then we are to leave the rest to Him. This parable subtly challenges us to plant spiritual seeds. When we share God with others, when we live a life that gives God glory, and when we don’t back down when we are challenged spiritually, our lives are planting seeds in the lives of those we meet. This is what God has called us to do.

While we don’t understand how spiritual growth works, we can trust that God knows. God sends the spiritual sunshine, the spiritual water, and God prompts the spiritual germination that starts the spiritual growth in someone’s heart and life. Spiritual growth is something that is entirely based on the Holy Spirit. Once a seed has been planted, it is up to the environment to help facilitate the growth. We cannot control someone else’s spiritual environment, so we let God handle the growth.

With God focusing on the growth and the environment, every one of the seeds planted in His people will grow into spiritual maturity and become ripe for His harvest. God has left us with the responsibility of planting seeds, so let’s plant spiritual seeds and let Him worry about how to help them grow!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As always, seek God first and intentionally open your heart to Him. Ask Him to send the Holy Spirit into your life to help you grow, to help you live for Him, and to help you plant seeds through how you live your life. Trust that God is more than willing to answer this heartfelt prayer in your own life!

Also, don’t neglect the environments you place yourself in. Continue to set time aside to pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow personally towards God. While the environment you are placed in is different from the one I am in, God knows how to grow someone spiritually when we stay connected to Him!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or wither away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!