Greetings to all who have come across my blog for this month. May the Lord rain down His mighty favor on you and may His mercy be extended to all!!

Recently, the Holy Spirit  took me to John 6:60-70 and began to speak some challenging but all so true words to my heart. It is the account of where we read that many disciples of Jesus decided to leave Him.

A crowd of people had gathered at Capernaum and asked Jesus ,”What must we do to do the works of God?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent.”

The crowd, wanting to make sure they had chosen the right person to believe in, said to Jesus, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you?” Our forefathers ate manna in the desert; as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is Hewho comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” In their eagerness to have this wonderful bread to eat, the people ask Jesus to kindly give them this bread to eat from now on.

From this point on it takes a turn for the worse, you might say for Jesus. He goes on to tell the people He is the bread of life and that anyone who comes to Him would not go hungry and he who believes in Him will never be thirsty. Jesus went on to speak many more difficult words for the people to grasp. The Jews soon began to grumble at what Jesus was saying and said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can He say, I came down from heaven?”

The Jews went on to say, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Then Jesus puts the nail on the coffin by saying, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink of His blood, you have no life in you.”

Later on in the same chapter we read where many of Jesus’ disciples, those who had chosen to follow Jesus, turned back and followed Him no longer because of the difficult words Jesus had declared. Jesus then turns to His Twelve disciples, the ones whom He had chosen and says, “You do not want to leave Me too, do you?” I love what Peter says next and it is what I want to focus on. Peter says to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that You are the Holy One of God.”

As Joshua was about to die, he gathered the twelve tribes of Israel and said to the people in Joshua 24:14-15 “Now fear the Lord and serve Him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your forefathers worshipped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Jesus says in Luke 9:62 “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

Everyone one who has chosen to follow Jesus has a past to look back to. Sadly, too often we are more enamored by our past and of what we thought it once held than we are of what the Lord has for us now and in the future. We must forever keep in our minds that we have been called to die to our old ways and live for the Lord.

Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life.”  Could you truthfully say that to Jesus today if He was to ask you if you were looking back to something in your past and looking to Him?

I truly believe there is a time coming in the church where we will be required of the Lord to make a choice as to who we are following. I want to be able to declare from the depth of my very being just as Joshua said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

If it suddenly came down in your life that you had to make a choice of giving everything up this world has to offer to follow Jesus, what would you chose, where would you go my friend?  Peter said, “You (Jesus) have words of life.” My prayer is that is what all of us would say 🙂