Reflective Bible Study

As we continue our journey through Mark’s gospel, we come to a miracle that only Mark includes in his gospel. For one reason or another, Matthew, Luke, and John don’t include this miracle, but when we look a little closer at what happened, we discover some fascinating details within this event.

With that said, let’s dive into the passage and discover what we can learn. Our event and passage for this episode is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will be reading from the New International Version. Starting in verse 31, Mark tells us:

³¹ Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. ³² There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.

³³ After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. ³⁴ He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”). ³⁵ At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.

³⁶ Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. ³⁷ People were overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

Within this miracle and event, I find it fascinating that Jesus takes this man aside, and away from the crowd. On the surface, this detail and decision doesn’t seem that practical or very relevant. After all, who cared if Jesus healed the man with a crowd around or not. What mattered more than anything else is that Jesus could and did heal people like this man.

However, if we write Jesus’ actions off as being unnecessary, especially since the crowd does learn of this healing at the end of the passage, then we will likely miss some key details that lead us to the most likely reason in my mind for Jesus to take this man away from the crowd.

Actually, there are two reasons that I can think of for pulling the man away from the crowd.

The first reason is that nothing in this passage suggests that this man came on his own. Instead, the opposite is described. The passage opens very clearly saying that a group of people brought this man to Jesus. While this man likely had trouble communicating from his set of disabilities, the impression I see when reading this is that this group of people wanted to see Jesus perform a miracle even more than this man wanted to be healed.

Don’t misunderstand this idea. I believe this man did want to be healed, and he likely wanted to be healed really badly, but everything in how Mark describes this event when setting the stage for it focuses us on the detail that other people initiated this event rather than the disabled man himself. Because of this, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the group of people who brought this man to Jesus were more interested in seeing a miracle than on seeing this particular individual be healed.

When this group found Jesus, Jesus ultimately has a dilemma. Jesus sees the disabled man and He wants to help this man be restored. However, Jesus also knows that a simple healing miracle will satisfy selfish-desires on the part of the crowd, and this miracle could be held up as an example of Jesus seeking His own glory for this healing.

The path Jesus takes is a brilliant one. Instead of healing this man directly, with the crowd present, which would have been the simplest and easiest option, Jesus decides to help this man, but do it away from those who are selfishly wanting to see a miracle. This decision results in the man being healed and shown God’s love while those who brought the man to Jesus only get the satisfaction of knowing they helped the man receive Jesus’ help.

I believe this group of people wanted to glorify Jesus apart from glorifying God, and Jesus wanted to avoid this as much as He could. This may be one reason He repeatedly asked certain people to stay quiet after healing them. If Jesus knew that people would spread the word about what He had done, He didn’t want this to happen if God wasn’t going to receive the glory.

Instead, Jesus wanted God to receive the glory for this miracle, and even while He tried to help those present see and understand this was God working through Him, those in the crowd don’t seem to give God the credit that God is due for this miracle. Those in the group who brought this man to Jesus appear to be more focused on what Jesus, as a human individual, was accomplishing.

The other big reason I see in this passage for Jesus to pull the man aside and away from the crowd is to highlight the presence or lack of presence with regards to faith. When we look at this miracle, can we see faith displayed?

On the surface, I don’t see any faith clearly being displayed. However, just below the surface, there are plenty of examples of faith. First, we have the group of people bringing the man to Jesus. While they don’t appear to be interested in giving God the glory for this miracle, they easily have faith that Jesus can heal this person, otherwise they wouldn’t have brought this man to Jesus. Even with selfish-motives, those who brought this man to Jesus display faith that Jesus could heal this man’s deafness and muteness.

Another place faith is subtly displayed in this passage is with this man who was healed. While this passage doesn’t draw our attention onto his faith, there would have needed to be enough faith in this man’s life to at the very least not say no to the group’s offer to take him to Jesus. The implication in this passage is that this man had a tiny bit of faith, but not enough that prompted him to seek out Jesus earlier or on his own.

A third place faith is seen in this passage is with Jesus. Jesus did not hesitate when stepping in to heal this man. Jesus did not timidly comment to try to heal this man while also giving no guarantee that He would be successful. Instead, Jesus pulls the man aside with full confidence that with God’s help, this man would be made well – which tells us that Jesus had faith too.

This passage demonstrates faith on several levels. While the passage doesn’t say whether or not Jesus left both the crowd and His disciples to be alone with this man, or whether Jesus and His disciples together separated this man from those who brought him, we can assume that whichever way this was, the faith that was present in this event was not exclusive to the one being healed.

Part of me pictures Jesus and the man stepping away from the crowd and around the corner where they could be alone. Jesus perhaps shared the details of this event with one or two of His disciples following this event.

If this is what happened, it would mean that Jesus used His own faith to demonstrate God’s love for this man, and when we lean on Jesus’ faith, we see not just one disability being healed at once, but two. In one event, the man could both hear again and talk again easily.

In our own lives, when we lean on Jesus’ faith, we discover that we will have more than enough faith to experience and see miracles in our own lives, and we will also fully know that through Jesus, His faith, and His sacrifice on the cross, we have been saved for eternity! Our faith is limited; Jesus’ faith is limitless!

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. Also, be sure to always give God the glory and the credit He is due. In case you are uncertain, we give God the credit when we do well, and we take the blame onto ourselves when things go poorly. This is how we are called to be humble, and it helps remind us that we need God’s help and Jesus’ life to replace our own.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God each day. God wants a personal relationship with you, and the only way your relationship with Him can be personal is if you are personally spending time with Him. Don’t fall into the temptation of letting your spirituality be dependent on anyone else. God loves you and I so much that Jesus came to repair what sin broke, and this repair allows us to approach God with our requests, our thanks, and our praises. God loves us so much that nothing would stop Him from repairing the gap that sin caused.

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 be tempted into leaving where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we continue reading John’s gospel, we move to how John describes Jesus on the final day of the festival, and on how the religious leaders respond to Jesus, without having heard anything that He said. In this passage, we can discover some amazing themes about God and about human nature.

Our passage for this episode is found in John’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will read it from the New International Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 37, John tells us that:

³⁷ On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. ³⁸ Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” ³⁹ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Pausing briefly, I am fascinated by both Jesus’ words and by John’s side-note. Within Jesus’ words, we see Him claim a prophecy about living water and Jesus takes this claim and applies it to Himself. Within His message, Jesus promises all who believe in Him living water, and John tells us that this living water represents the Holy Spirit.

However, I am a little perplexed at John’s side-note, because from the way John describes Jesus’ promise, the Holy Spirit being given was something pushed into the future. However, I am pretty sure by this point in His ministry, Jesus’ disciples had been sent out in pairs and had cast demons out of people and healed them. The only way Jesus’ disciples could have done any miracles, cast any demons out, or healed anyone is if they had the Holy Spirit working in them.

To reconcile these two ideas, I must conclude that something more significant changed when the disciples received the Holy Spirit following Jesus’ return to heaven, and that the transformation that took place when the Holy Spirit was given was unmistakably different from simply healing people and casting out demons.

However, following Jesus’ words and John’s side-note, the crowd is given a chance to respond and react. Continuing in verse 40, John tells us that:

⁴⁰ On hearing his words, some of the people said, “Surely this man is the Prophet.”

⁴¹ Others said, “He is the Messiah.”

Still others asked, “How can the Messiah come from Galilee? ⁴² Does not Scripture say that the Messiah will come from David’s descendants and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?” ⁴³ Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. ⁴⁴ Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him.

Pausing again, I am fascinated at the thought process that went through the crowd’s discussion about Jesus. In this passage, John describes some people calling Jesus, “The Prophet”, while others openly declared Jesus to be the Messiah.

However, to contrast these positive declarations about Jesus, others in the crowd focused on Jesus being from Galilee, and how scriptures say Jesus was to be born in Bethlehem, and from the line of David’s descendants.

Part of me wonders if Jesus had left at that point, if the crowd was not interested in asking the simple question about Jesus’ birth location, or if Jesus intentionally chose not to reveal the story of His birth and the miraculous escape to Egypt. I wonder if knowing the background of this event would have changed the minds of those in the crowd. I suspect that it would have, but I also suspect that if the crowd was united about Jesus being the Messiah, then it is likely Jesus never would have made it to the cross.

Satan had done a masterful job of twisting the first century culture towards looking for a messiah who would militarily fight against the Romans, and Jesus’ mission as a Messiah was distinctly different. Jesus wasn’t interested in meddling with the politics of that area, and the only time politics entered the discussion was when other people were trying to trap Him to discredit Him.

At this point in Jesus’ ministry, I suspect that He wanted to leave room for doubt within this crowd’s mind, because with room for doubt, we are able to have faith, and with room for doubt, we are able to better identify assumptions we might have.

The crowd assumed that since Jesus grew up in Galilee from a relatively young age, that Jesus was born in Galilee. Drawing this assumption into the light demonstrates how it could easily be proven false, but I suspect that families didn’t separate or move too far apart from each other.

It is also easy to assume that Jesus was born in Nazareth, which was a town in the region of Galilee, because both Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth prior to Jesus’ birth, and they moved there following their return from Egypt. If someone were condensing the story of Mary and Joseph, they could simply leave out anything about the census affecting Jesus’ birth and the young couple’s escape to Egypt, and what would be left is that the engaged couple that we began with who lived in Nazareth was raising the boy Jesus in Nazareth several years later.

However, God did have a plan for this, and I suspect God’s plan for Jesus’ birth when compared with where Jesus would be raised had something to do with challenging the preconceived ideas of the religious leaders.

Picking back up reading in verse 45, John concludes our passage by telling us:

⁴⁵ Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”

⁴⁶ “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.

⁴⁷ “You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. ⁴⁸ “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? ⁴⁹ No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

⁵⁰ Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, ⁵¹ “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”

⁵² They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.”

In this passage, we can clearly see that the religious leaders, Nicodemus excluded, had prejudged Jesus simply because of where He was raised. They discounted Jesus as the Messiah because they assumed He was born in Nazareth, or at least somewhere in Galilee, and that this did not match that single prophecy.

I find it also amazing to realize the extreme prejudice these religious leaders show when faced with the challenge to judge Jesus based on His words and His actions. I suspect these religious leaders are prejudiced against Jesus because they understand that nothing they have seen and heard conflicts with God but that Jesus didn’t match up with their picture of the messiah. The clearest way Jesus did not fit the prophecies in their minds was with their assumptions about Jesus’ origins and Jesus’ place of birth. The religious leaders reject Jesus as someone who is trying to pull the focus and glory away from God and perhaps away from the actual messiah they believed would be born and raised within Bethlehem.

We too face this challenge today when we let our assumptions about Jesus get in the way of simply asking the question. If the crowd had pushed past their assumptions and researched into Jesus’ birth story, they would have discovered a birth that took place in Bethlehem, but circumstances that made it unwise to stay there for long, or to return there when the immediate threat had subsided. We can easily fall into the trap of assuming things about Jesus today, but we are challenged to push past our assumptions, and let the Bible teach us what God wants us to know about Jesus, about His mission, and about what Jesus ultimately accomplished for each of us when we place our faith, hope, trust, and belief in Him.

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 place your faith, your hope, your trust, and your belief in Jesus and specifically in what He accomplished for us through dying on the cross. Trust that when we place our belief and faith in Jesus, we are accepted by God, adopted into His family, and will be resurrected when Jesus returns if we have fallen asleep in Jesus.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to grow your personal relationship with God even stronger. Through regular prayer and Bible study, discover how the Bible opens your heart to God and to His Holy Spirit, and how studying the Bible transforms your life from the inside as you grow closer to God and to Jesus.

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 give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Continuing our year in Mark’s gospel, we come to one of the most shocking events in Jesus’ life, and an event that likely stood out in the disciples’ minds for how Jesus appears to be mean in this case. While Jesus routinely has harsh words for religious leaders who should know better, this case is different. Jesus chooses to be mean to someone coming asking for His help.

Those of you who have listened for a while or who are familiar with Jesus’ life will likely know what event we are focusing in on in this passage, so let’s dive in and discover what we can learn, and what Jesus is trying to teach us in this event. Our passage and event are found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will read from the New International Reader’s Version. Starting in verse 24, Mark tells us that:

²⁴ Jesus went from there to a place near Tyre. He entered a house. He did not want anyone to know where he was. But he could not keep it a secret. ²⁵ Soon a woman heard about him. An evil spirit controlled her little daughter. The woman came to Jesus and fell at his feet. ²⁶ She was a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia. She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.

²⁷ “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her. “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

²⁸ “Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

²⁹ Then he told her, “That was a good reply. You may go. The demon has left your daughter.”

³⁰ So she went home and found her child lying on the bed. And the demon was gone.

In this short event and miracle, Jesus first does something that is very uncharacteristic of Him. We might even call Jesus out for being not politically correct on multiple levels. Not only does Jesus subtly call this woman a dog, but He alludes to her entire race as being lower than that of the Jews.

As I have read the gospels, this event stands out as one of the meanest things Jesus ever does. This event oddly paints Jesus as being unChristlike, if that is even possible.

However, since Jesus is Christ, why might Jesus have insulted this gentile woman like He did? Since this is Jesus, He must have a reason for this cruelty. In at least one other gospel that includes this event, I believe it alluded to this woman following Jesus asking repeatedly for help while Jesus initially ignores her. So not only do we see Jesus ignore this request, but He also insults the requester when finally acknowledging her.

But why? Why does Jesus seem to single out this request and push back in what appears to be a mean way? Could we even call this love?

In this event, I see two big questions that challenge us to look deeper than the surface. Both of these questions would not be possible to ask if Jesus had responded in a more typical fashion. Like the gospel writers share in other parts of the gospel, Jesus was aware of the hearts and minds of those around Him and I believe He sensed He could use this event to teach His followers a couple of lessons.

The first lesson we can learn from this passage is one of the most challenging lessons we face in our lives. This lesson comes from the question: Does your faith persist if it meets resistance or hostility?

While it is never pleasant to think of Jesus being mean or hostile towards someone, we discover through this woman’s persistence that she wouldn’t leave Jesus alone until He had helped her. From what the gospel writers include, I can conclude that nothing Jesus would have done or said would have stopped this woman from persisting in her belief and her request for Jesus’ help. When our faith meets resistance or hostility, will we give up and abandon our faith, or will we continue persisting. We were never promised easy, simple lives, and one reason this might be the case is that an easy life produces only weak faith. Persistence and resistance together strengthen faith, and because of this, our faith can only be strengthened in less than easy environments.

Through Jesus’ resistance to this woman and her request, we see a faith that persists regardless of the obstacles present. This woman is an amazing example for us to model!

The second lesson we see in this passage is one that focuses more on Jesus. While the first lesson teaches us through the woman’s example, the second lesson teaches us through Jesus’ example. While we might look at this event and call Jesus out for being unloving, when we do this, we are met with the question: Is true love based on what you say, or is love based on what you do?

While it is easy to say that both what you say and what you do are important in the discussion of love, if you could only pick one, which would it be? If we look at what Jesus does in this passage and ignore what He says or doesn’t say, we simply see a miracle. Except that we don’t see a miracle directly, but we see Jesus promise the miracle and the woman accepting Jesus’ word.

This leads us to conclude that if we were to define love based on this event, love at its core is more about what we do and less about what we say. While Jesus didn’t walk around looking for people He could be openly mean to, in this event Jesus draws our attention onto the stereotype of the culture that looked down on others, and Jesus challenges us to help other people, even if culture tells us that we should be hostile or mean to them instead.

Jesus came as a Messiah for all humanity, not simply for a single race, religion, or sub-group of people. Jesus came to redeem sinners, and everyone in this world is defined this way regardless of whether you belief in God or whether you believe sin even exists.

As a follower of Jesus, we are called to display Jesus’ love. While this love should also include being kind with our words, it is much more important for us to be kind in our actions. Jesus was clearly kind with what He did in this event, and this was in spite of culture pushing Him to be cruel or mean.

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 and purposefully seek God first in your life and choose to show His love to the world around you. Understand that love is more than simply words. Love includes our actions, our kindness, and our stepping out to help others who are from a different social group or social circle. Jesus helped people who were different from Him even if society told Him He should be exclusive, and Jesus challenged His followers to help others like He did.

Also, like the woman, we should be persistent in our faith and not let resistance or hostility change our faith, our hope, or our belief in Jesus.

Continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to grow and strengthen your faith and your relationship with Jesus, and don’t let anyone or anything get in between you and God. God wants a personal relationship with you. For a relationship to be truly personal, it cannot have anyone standing between you and God, or specifically you and Jesus. Intentionally focus on growing your personal relationship with God!

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 give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we continue moving through John’s gospel, our last episode ended with Jesus secretly going up to the feast, alone, without either His disciples or His brothers. Part of the reason for this was because the Jews were openly looking for Jesus in order to arrest Him. However, as we will discover in our passage for this episode, Jesus had a hard time staying out of the spotlight.

Our passage for this episode is found in John’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will read it from the New Century Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 14, John tells us that:

¹⁴ When the feast was about half over, Jesus went to the Temple and began to teach. ¹⁵ The people were amazed and said, “This man has never studied in school. How did he learn so much?”

¹⁶ Jesus answered, “The things I teach are not my own, but they come from him who sent me. ¹⁷ If people choose to do what God wants, they will know that my teaching comes from God and not from me. ¹⁸ Those who teach their own ideas are trying to get honor for themselves. But those who try to bring honor to the one who sent them speak the truth, and there is nothing false in them. ¹⁹ Moses gave you the law, but none of you obeys that law. Why are you trying to kill me?”

Pausing briefly, the way Jesus opens His response to the question of where His knowledge came from is powerful. First, Jesus acknowledges that what He is teaching is not His own ideas. Instead, Jesus is teaching ideas from God. However, Jesus then makes an amazing statement. In verse 17, Jesus tells this crowd: “If people choose to do what God wants, they will know that my teaching comes from God and not from me.”

This statement is powerful, and it is a promise we can apply in our own lives and our own world today. If we choose to do what God wants, we will know whether Jesus’ teaching is from God or not. The reverse is also true. If we choose to ignore or reject doing what God wants, we will ultimately discount Jesus, His teaching, and everything about Him.

With that said, how do we know whether we are doing what God really wants?

If this is an open question in your mind, we don’t need to look any farther than a few weeks ago in our podcast episodes, and into the previous chapter in John. Earlier in Jesus’ ministry, while challenging the crowd He fed, Jesus shares the answer to the question about what God really wants. In John, chapter 6, verse 29, Jesus tells the crowd plainly: “The work God wants you to do is this: Believe the One he sent.”

According to Jesus, believing in Him is the clearest way to discover whether His teaching is from God or not. In other words, Jesus invites us to try life His way and when we accept Jesus’ challenge, we will discover personally whether Jesus’ way is best.

This is the best strategy to take, because it is a personal strategy, and it opens the door for God to show up in our lives. The worst thing someone could do is ignore Jesus on the recommendation of someone else who has chosen to ignore Jesus and ultimately miss out on the rewards because they didn’t try Jesus’ way out for themselves!

However, the people, or at least some of those in the crowd, are a little confused at Jesus calling out the plot to kill Him. In verse 20, John tells us that:

²⁰ The people answered, “A demon has come into you. We are not trying to kill you.”

²¹ Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. ²² Moses gave you the law about circumcision. (But really Moses did not give you circumcision; it came from our ancestors.) And yet you circumcise a baby boy on a Sabbath day. ²³ If a baby boy can be circumcised on a Sabbath day to obey the law of Moses, why are you angry at me for healing a person’s whole body on the Sabbath day? ²⁴ Stop judging by the way things look, but judge by what is really right.”

²⁵ Then some of the people who lived in Jerusalem said, “This is the man they are trying to kill. ²⁶ But he is teaching where everyone can see and hear him, and no one is trying to stop him. Maybe the leaders have decided he really is the Christ. ²⁷ But we know where this man is from. Yet when the real Christ comes, no one will know where he comes from.”

²⁸ Jesus, teaching in the Temple, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. But I have not come by my own authority. I was sent by the One who is true, whom you don’t know. ²⁹ But I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”

³⁰ When Jesus said this, they tried to seize him. But no one was able to touch him, because it was not yet the right time. ³¹ But many of the people believed in Jesus. They said, “When the Christ comes, will he do more miracles than this man has done?”

³² The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering these things about Jesus. So the leading priests and the Pharisees sent some Temple guards to arrest him. ³³ Jesus said, “I will be with you a little while longer. Then I will go back to the One who sent me. ³⁴ You will look for me, but you will not find me. And you cannot come where I am.”

³⁵ Some people said to each other, “Where will this man go so we cannot find him? Will he go to the Greek cities where our people live and teach the Greek people there? ³⁶ What did he mean when he said, ‘You will look for me, but you will not find me,’ and ‘You cannot come where I am’?”

In this extended time teaching in the temple, I am amazed because Jesus takes one of the groups of people and turns their hesitation into belief. While Jesus shares some challenging things, this group rightly concludes that it would be unlikely for anyone to come afterwards who will do more miracles or be a more positive influence in the world than Jesus was.

While I could share more, the big challenge I see in Jesus’ message is that we should trust Jesus even though there will likely always be unanswered questions. Some of our questions are simply unanswerable, and when we face a question that does not have a good answer, the easy temptation is to doubt because we don’t understand. However, we are called to have faith that every question we have will be answered at the right moment, and it is possible that the right moment for some questions will be when we stand face to face with Jesus after He has returned and brought us home to heaven.

The big thing for us to remember and focus on is doing what God wants us to do, and that is believing the One He sent, and testing Jesus’ teachings out in our own lives to know personally whether what Jesus shared is from God or not. When we have personally walked the path God created us to walk, we’ll discover who Jesus truly is and we’ll get a glimpse of the amazing future God has prepared for us 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 believe in Jesus and trust that His sacrifice on the cross is enough to pay the penalty for your sins. Choose to take Jesus at His word and trust that He will give you the answers to your questions when the time is right.

Also, pray and study the Bible for yourself and try God’s way in your own life. Choose to pray and study the Bible for yourself and test God’s truth by applying it into your life in order to know whether Jesus’ way is really the best way to live. I’ve done this in my own life and determined that Jesus’ way is both better today, even with the challenges it brings, and the rewards for following Jesus are better than we could even imagine. This is what I have discovered in my own journey, and I challenge you to take the journey for yourself instead of taking anyone’s word for it.

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!