Mark 4-7: Searching for Mysteries

Today the Lord has revealed to me a secret of the kingdom of heaven. And because of it I am now going to (the Lord willing) write all that He shows me in my quiet time with Him hear for all to see. It is not something I want to do or am comfortable doing but here is the promise He showed me that is leading me to do this:

"And he said, 'The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come." Mark 4:26-29

The Lord has shown me that the kingdom of heaven is like this - whatever we wish to reap is what we must sow. The farmer here does not just throw out any old seed into the ground. He picks exactly the kind of seed he needs to sow the fruit he desires to reap. And this is how the kingdom of God is. If we sow the right kind of seed into the soil of our Father, He will grow the harvest. And we will not even know how it has already reached the harvest! But He promises that we will reap the harvest. All we must do is sow the seed.

So I thought to myself, "Lord, what kind of harvest do I even want to have?" Because I don't know what seed to sow if I don't know the harvest I want. And I realized I wanted three things in my harvest: 1. The knowledge of the deeper things of the Lord, 2. A love for the Lord that is unquenchable and 3. A love for all the people of the earth that is the same as that of my Father in heaven.

So I asked Him, "Lord, how do I sow into the deeper knowledge of you? How do I scatter the right seed for this harvest?" And He said to me, "Blog all that I tell you in secret. Every day when you wake up, after our time together, shout our secret time out on the mountaintops ("What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops." Matt. 10:27). This is how you scatter the seed upon the ground and you will reap a rich harvest.

So this is me, sowing into the knowledge of the deeper things of God. Because there are deeper things that can be discovered.


And this is what I have learned this morning, and I am scattering my seed to you, that the Lord may give me even more!

Today He has showed me that there is a posture of faith and pure trust and believing that we must take when we come into His presence if we are to receive anything new from His hand. And here are all the little things He showed me in this area:

"For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.' And he said to them, 'Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.'" Mark 4:22-25

God is like a Father who has hidden secret upon secret in His word to be found by His children. And these secrets are endless, because He is endless. But they will only be found by those who set their heart to finding them. That is why some people can read the Bible and find incredible and unbelievable mysteries and others read the same passages and fall asleep. The first group came to the Word of God with a hunger and a heart that was ready to receive (like good soil just waiting to take in seed and water in order to grow a harvest). And because there are layers upon layers of treasures to be found (each hidden in a deeper and more secretive place), we must always be searching harder and more eagerly into the Word of God for more and more and more truth and mystery!

But here is the promise:

"'To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables, so that 'they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven.'" Mark 4:11-12

"He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything." Mark 4:34

We are the disciples of Christ, and though God always speaks in parables (His word is full of them and because Jesus, who is God, only ever spoke in parables, we can believe the same is true for God. He wants us to seek Him!) we must always go to Christ and the Spirit he has placed inside of us in order to know the secrets that all these parables and stories in His Word have to reveal to us. And the promise is incredible! He will explain everything to us! Whenever Jesus' disciples came and asked Him about a parable, He always told them what it was about. This is true for us as well. We must ask God to explain His secrets to us whom He has promised to reveal them to.

"And he said , 'With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown n the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.'" Mark 4:30-32

Even if we sow faith into God as small as a mustard seed (it's super tiny!), His soil is rich enough that we will reap a rich harvest! We just have to put anything and everything we have into Him and He will bring forth incredible abundance! There is only incredible gain to be found in Christ when we sow into Him.

This is also true about the people coming to him for miracles:

"And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had head the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.' And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, 'Who touched my garments?' And his disciples said to him, 'You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, "Who touched me?" And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, 'Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.'" Mark 5:25-34

This is just like today. There are many people pressing up against Jesus, but who are receiving absolutely nothing from Him. No power, no healing in their hearts or in their bodies, and no change whatsoever in their lives. They may be in close contact with Jesus and His disciples, but there is nothing happening at all. (This whole thing doesn't just happen through osmosis. It requires something from us.) But this woman was different. She came with expectation and faith. ("For she said, 'If I touch even his garments, I will be made well') She touched him (the smallest piece of his garment) in such a way that she was completely healed in an instant. In such a way that the Power within Jesus, was given to her. If we are to receive anything from Jesus when we come up and touch Him (church, Bible studies, prayer, looking at Creation, talking with believers, any interaction with Him at all) we must come believing that "He exists and that he rewards those who seek him" (Hebrews 11:6). 

Then there is the story of the synagogue ruler's daughter. She had died and there are people mourning for her outside the house when Jesus comes up and this is what he says to them:

"'Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.' And they laughed at him." Mark 5:39

Let us not be the ones who read God's word but do not believe him and trust that it is the truth we are reading. May we never laugh in his face because what he offers to us looks too good to be true. Nothing is ever too good to be true with God. 

Another example of those who did not come to Jesus with a heart of faith is found right after this:

"He went away from there and came to his hometown...and many who heard him were astonished, saying, 'Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty words done by his hands?...And they took offense at him...And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief." Mark 6:1-6

Again, we must have faith when we come to Jesus. He wants to heal us and make us whole, but he can not do it unless we come to him with faith and believe that he can and will heal us. But for those of us who are in Christ (we have said "Yes" to following him), there are two more promises I found:

"And he entered a house and did not want anyone to know, yet he could not be hidden." Mark 7:24

When there are people desperately searching for Jesus, he cannot be hidden from them. For those who chose to turn their eyes away from his light, he will not be visible (because he's behind them...), but for those of us who choose to seek him with all of our hearts, we will find him (Jeremiah 29:13). He cannot be hidden from us.

Finally, there was a story at the end of Mark 7 about friends who brought a man to Jesus who "was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him." Jesus healed the man and look at the reaction of the man's friends: 

"And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, 'He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.'" Mark 7:37

This is my promise and yours. These men had never seen Jesus heal a man who was deaf and had a speak impediment before. They didn't actually know for sure if Jesus could do it. But they came anyway and asked with hope in their hearts, that Jesus would do this impossible thing. And Jesus did. And these men were so astonished by the things that Jesus had done for them that they could not hold it in. They were "astonished beyond measure. Their minds had been blown. :) 

And the Lord Jesus will do it again and again and again if we ask Him to. He will not disappoint us!