The Hungry Disciple

I'm The Hungry Disciple, and I've been chewing on Newness! When Jesus began His ministry He did not go down to the local synogogue and choose the top 12 Bar Mitzvah boys. He could have. He had been one of those young men himself, and considered discussing The Scriptures as being about His Father's business. Yet The Holy Spirit did not instruct Him to choose those Bible students, among them Saul of Tarsus, as students of The Kingdom of God. No He was instructed to choose simple fishermen, a tax collector, a political rebel and nobodys to teach His New and Living Way. One of the ways He explained His choice was by saying that it ruins the wine and the wineskin to attempt to put new wine into old wineskins.  We all know that grape juice becoming wine produces a gas and the container must stretch. The Hebrews used animal skins or stomachs to store liquids and they were used over and over and over. Eventually, after being used to hold new wine many times ...

I am The Hungry Disciple and I've been chewing on The Word. Have you ever noticed that The Word of God uses the same word in a negative and positve context? I have been thinking about the word stronghold. The Bible uses the word stronghold both as a decription of God's protection and as a place we are ensared in mental torment, confusion and wrong believing. The picture of both is one of being surrounded by a high an impenetrable place; one a place of safety and the other a prison. The Bible tells us we have wrong thoughts of every kind and that those wrong thoughts and the wrong beliefs they are based on cause us torment and can prevent us from knowing and receiving all the Truth that Jesus Christ is for and in us. This flawed thinking is not something we can change in ourselves. All the self-discipline in the world may control such thinking for at time, but the word stronghold implies that these thoughts are ingrained, like a rut in a muddy road that...

I'm one of those people who eat when they are emotional. I eat anything-things I don't really want. I'll go stand in the kitchen or gaze in the cupboards and refrigerator just thinking about what I can eat next. I haven't had much success overcoming that habit and you know, food is just not helpful. It looks good. It smells good. It tastes good. It offers no warnings. It is silent, never saying , "Ahhh, I'm nutrionally bankrupt", or "I'll put a good five pounds on you if you keep eating me."   Unfortunately, my wrong believing-that food is comforting, or distracting, shows on the outside of me too. Lots of us show the effects of wrong believing on the outside, but even if our wrong believing has no visible effect, wrong believing always has an inner effect. I often wish I had been one of those people who could eat anything and maintain a healthy weight. However, hidden from view, my arteries would be clogging and my liver would be ge...

God I 'm depressed and you aren't changing my feelings, but you are  joy. God I 'm discouraged and you aren't comforting me, but you are love. God I'm disillusioned and you aren't explaining anything, but you are good. God I am furious that you aren't fixing anyone or anything, but you are faithful. God  my heart is hard and cold and I can't feel you, but you are here. God says "let there be light" and  suddenly everything is different

  Christians probably hear more teaching about faith than they do about Jesus. During my walk with Jesus He has taught me many things about faith, but in all my struggles to learn about faith, faith has never taught me anything about Jesus.  When you think about it, we all have faith. Believers and unbelievers, even blasphemers have faith. Most humans have faith the sun is going to rise every morning, but does our faith in its rising cause the sun to rise?  Actually, we have faith the sun will rise every morning because the sun has risen so many mornings. Because of all the sunrises we experience, on cloudy days we do not panic. We know the sun is still there. I've struggled with many teachings I have heard about Christian faith but with none so much as the concept that faith is something that we speak which leaves scores of Christians thinking that finding something in The Bible that is true and saying it over and over and over is going to make it happen beca...

  A Canaanite woman approached Jesus as He walked along the road. She implored Him as The Merciful Son of David to heal her daughter.  This woman was a gentile, an enemy of God’s people. She had no covenant. She had no right to ask anything of Jesus, but she had heard something about Jesus that made her approach Him. Jesus did not say a word back to her. So normal was the distain of the Jewish people for her people that the disciples advised Jesus to send her away. She was a bother to them; no more than a fly that needed to be swatted away.  Jesus, our kind and merciful Savior, then told this woman that He wasn’t sent for her but to the Israelites. He tells her He is not available to her, and still her response is to fall at his feet and beg Him to help her.  He then says, I am able to help you, but I won’t because it’s not right to take the children’s food and give it to dogs. She knew who she was. She knew she wasn’t a Jew. She knew she wa...

Job 36:32 With clouds he covereth the light; and commandeth it [not to shine] by [the cloud] that cometh betwixt This rather innocent verse in Job, a description of God, is a wonderful example of cloudy translation-pun intended.  It is from the KJV and it’s important to know that when a word or group of words is in brackets in the KJV they have been added by the translators to make the verse make sense.  Many times the verse is better understood without the additions. Even more troubling are mistranslations of words, and that is what I want to look at here. This verse is composed of 5 Hebrew words. The KJV uses 18 English words to translate it.  The actual Hebrew words used are listed below with their meanings in the order we are to read them. כף   kaph 1)   palm, hand, sole, palm of the hand, hollow or flat of the hand      (rooted in the word bow or bend)    a...