Grant 00:00:00 Welcome to Torah Today Ministries. My name is Grant Luton.
Robin 00:00:11 And I’m Robin.
Grant 00:00:12 And we are here to discuss — well, I’ll let Robin explain how we got to it, but I have to first of all share a new word. This is a word Robin came up with.
Robin 00:00:22 It’s a Robin word.
Grant 00:00:23 And somehow it’s going to be used in the title of this Breadcrumbs episode. And the word is “enoughness.” (Robin:I like that word) Yeah, me too. I’m going to use it more in conversation.
Robin 00:00:33 I think we all struggle with the fear of not having enough, whether it’s time or money or energy or wisdom or intellect. We’re lied to by the enemy that we don’t have enough for ourselves to be content, let alone to share with others. So we need to be really afraid.
Grant 00:00:54 And what’s funny is every single time you and I have sat down to do our Breadcrumbs, you would say, “I don’t know that we have enough to share. I don’t think I’ve —” We turn out almost running overtime every single time.
Robin 00:01:09 I do. I do fear that. And you know, here’s where my mind’s been going. And this series, Breadcrumbs, is all about just inviting all of you into whatever conversation we happen to be having that we feel is enough to share. So all that to say, I was thinking a lot recently about how fear makes our world shrink down and it puts us in a very small place and robs us from peace. And I realized that if peace comes from seeing things in their wholeness and their truth, then misery stems from a loss of that perspective, and it shrinks us down in our perspective and everything gets distorted and we’re miserable.
Grant 00:02:01 It’s spiritual tunnel vision.
Robin 00:02:02 It’s tunnel vision. And I thought, it is giving over to smallness that opens us up to misery. And I don’t want to live a small life.
Grant 00:02:12 That’s right.
Robin 00:02:13 And I think there is a lot of misery around us. So all that to say, we were studying our Torah (תּוֹרָה) portion for the week, and the schedule suggests a passage from the Gospels to go along with the portion. And it took me to Mark 6. So that’s our launching-off point to talk about this sense of trust, really, we need to have in order to remember our source.
Grant 00:02:42 That’s right.
Robin 00:02:43 Because when we remember that, there’s never a fear of not enough.
Grant 00:02:46 That’s right.
Robin 00:02:47 There just isn’t.
Grant 00:02:48 Well, how about if we just dive right into the passage in Mark 6, and we decide we’re going to start in verse 30. A very, very familiar story.
Robin 00:02:57 You know, it’s funny when you’ve read the Bible for years, especially if you grew up in Sunday school — or Sunday school, even in the synagogue — you hear stories from the Old Testament and then us in the New Testament as well. And they can become so familiar, you don’t hear them or see them anymore. And I love that experience.
Grant 00:03:18 Of rediscovering.
Robin 00:03:19 Rediscovering it from a different vantage point. Hopefully that’s what will happen as we talk about this.
Grant 00:03:24 For me, I find the desire to change — then I see the scriptures in a different way with new eyes.
Robin 00:03:32 Well, I think going back to what we’ve just mentioned, our perspective gets broadened. So we see new nuances in things.
Grant 00:03:41 Oh, let’s jump into it.
Robin 00:03:42 Okay.
Grant 00:03:42 So we’re in Mark 6, verse 30.
The apostles gathered together with Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ), and they reported to him all that they had done and taught. — Mark 6:30
Robin 00:03:52 They had been really busy.
Grant 00:03:53 Yes, Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) had sent them out two by two, and they had healed the sick and raised the dead, cast out demons — and you can read about that earlier. And so they come back, and they’re thrilled and excited about all the things that God has done through them. And so in verse 31:
He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.” For there were many people coming and going. They did not even have time to eat. — Mark 6:31–32a
So Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) sometimes tells us — sit down, be still, put your feet up, take a rest, get something to eat, feed yourself.
Robin 00:04:30 Yeah. Like a good friend that unfortunately we lost recently — he used to say, “Sometimes life looks terrible and you think you’re depressed, and all you need is a good lunch and a nap.” And it helps a lot.
Grant 00:04:46 I do it as often as I can. Those two things.
Robin 00:04:48 Yes, you do.
Grant 00:04:48 So I’m happy.
Robin 00:04:52 Yes, you’re so content.
Grant 00:04:53 Yes, I am. Fat and happy. All right.
Robin 00:04:55 No comments on that.
Grant 00:04:55 Oh, boy. All right.
Robin 00:04:57 Keep going.
Grant 00:05:00
They went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves. The people saw them going, and many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all the cities and got there ahead of them. When Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) went ashore, he saw a large crowd, and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things. — Mark 6:32–34
So what Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) is doing here is feeding them spiritually.
Robin 00:05:27 Right.
Grant 00:05:27 He’s feeding them spiritually. That’s what a shepherd does. He protects and feeds the sheep.
Robin 00:05:32 Right.
Grant 00:05:33 Verse 35:
And when it was already quite late, his disciples came to him and said, “This place is desolate…” — Mark 6:35
In other words, there’s nothing here.
Robin 00:05:44 Right.
Grant 00:05:44
“…and it is already quite late. Send them away so that they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” And he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” — Mark 6:35–37a
And I started thinking just this morning — we were talking — how many times we’ll talk to someone, try to share the word with them, share the Lord with them, and then we say, “Now you need to join that church, you need to go to that synagogue, you need to get into that group where you can get fed.” And sometimes Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) is saying, “Why don’t you feed them?” But we think they need to go to a feeding station or an official professional feeding station to grow spiritually.
Robin 00:06:28 Well, you know why we often feel that we don’t have the capacity?
Grant 00:06:35 We don’t have enoughness.
Robin 00:06:37 Exactly. But here’s the thing. He’s our shepherd too. And if we allow him to be feeding us, then whatever pasture he leads us into and we look around and see hungry sheep, he is going to allow us to have enough to share with them.
Grant 00:06:59 All we do is we see the desolate space.
Robin 00:07:02 We do.
Grant 00:07:02 And we think, “Travel over there, spend your energy getting to that place where there’s a revival going on, where there’s a big group, where there’s a — whatever.”
Robin 00:07:13 Or my M.O. in the past has just been to stick a book or a pile of books in their hands — like, “Read these books.”
Grant 00:07:19 Yeah. Go away. Send them away.
Robin 00:07:22 And the master is saying, “I looked around and saw these hungry sheep and had enough compassion to spend time with them. You need to do the same.”
Grant 00:07:33 Yeah. Feed them.
Robin 00:07:34 Because you do have enough to feed them.
Grant 00:07:37 But it doesn’t look like it. (Robin: we don’t feel like we do) We don’t feel like we do. [we say] “I don’t know enough.”
Robin 00:07:42 Well, we get afraid. And when we get afraid, our perspective shrinks. And we want to like, send them away so that the professional can take care of it.
Grant 00:07:52 Now, of course, we’re not saying there isn’t a time to help them find a community to be a part of or something else.
Robin 00:07:58 This is in our daily life.
Grant 00:08:00 But that shouldn’t be our first go-to. Let’s feed the people God has put in our circle. Let’s meet their needs, whether we feel like we can or can’t. Let’s do our best, and God will show us the next step.
Robin 00:08:12 You know, be a friend for a while. Listen to them.
Grant 00:08:15 That’s right.
Robin 00:08:17 A lot of what we call counseling these days, like 90%, I think, just involves listening and hearing them and letting them know that you see them and you recognize that they have a need. They often will talk themselves right into the solution.
Grant 00:08:38 That’s for sure. I’ve seen that many times. Okay, so we left off — this place is desolate. In verse 37, “You give them something to eat,” Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) says to his disciples.
And they said to him, “Shall we go and spend 200 denarii on bread and give them something to eat?” — Mark 6:37b
In other words, do we take up a collection?
Robin 00:09:03 Like, how will we have enough money to do this?
Grant 00:09:06 And isn’t it true that so many times we think the solution to every problem is more money. We need more money.
Robin 00:09:11 I think so. To buy something physical. Now, there are times we need to spend money to meet physical needs.
Grant 00:09:18 And God knows that and he provides. But our first thing is, if we only had more money, we could do so much for God.
He said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and look.” And when they found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” — Mark 6:38
Now, we have 5,000 people here. These are men, plus wives and children. So let’s say there’s 10, 12,000 people. We have five loaves and two fish. Like, was that even worth taking the time to count? Because we already knew there would not be enough.
Robin 00:09:52 So what is the point here? I think what Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) is teaching us and teaching them is: look at what I’ve provided you, here and now, in this situation, and trust me to multiply it to meet the needs of the people I’ve brought into your life.
Robin 00:10:14 That’s so huge, Grant.
Grant 00:10:16 Well, we look at our limited resources, and then we look at the task at hand, and in our minds, there’s no way these resources can accomplish this task — because we forget. We forget the one who’s — we’re following. We forget our master.
Robin 00:10:32 Well, you know, I know we’re never going to get through this little passage, but it’s important to remember that abundance is what he wants us to recognize and to experience. But abundance is an internal experience.
Grant 00:10:49 And abundance follows obedience.
Robin 00:10:51 And obedience involves trust.
Grant 00:10:54 Yes, absolutely.
Robin 00:10:55 And so a person who trusts and really has an obedient heart that recognizes where they’re sourced — in the divine, in the eternal — they don’t have this sense of scarcity. They don’t feel like they have to go out there, out there in the external world, to figure out a solution to everything. Because he really does supply our needs according to what?
Robin 00:11:25 His riches.
Grant 00:11:26 Yes, in heaven, right.
Grant 00:11:30 Well, I love verse 39.
And he commanded them all to sit down by groups. — Mark 6:39
Robin 00:11:36 So he didn’t want them to be fed like as a mega mass, like a big group. He allowed his followers to experience the joy of having a smaller group of people that they could be connected to and feed.
Grant 00:11:56 You know, I picture the modern version of this parable, where Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) would say, “Okay, get them all up here close. Bring them up close to the stage.” Then he takes breadcrumbs and fish —
Robin 00:12:07 No, first he has us turn to our neighbor and shake their hands. I’m sorry, that was —
Grant 00:12:12 That was sarcastic. That’s enough of that.
Robin 00:12:15 Keep going.
Grant 00:12:15 Not that we’ve ever been in a place —
Robin 00:12:19 Keep going.
Grant 00:12:19 But I picture him saying, “All right, get everybody up here close as you can, take your neighbor’s hand” or something like that. And then he breaks up the bread, the fish — starts throwing it up in the air and everybody’s jumping up and down and screaming and picking it up off — just a big mosh pit experience.
Robin 00:12:35 Yeah.
Grant 00:12:35 That would be the modern —
Robin 00:12:38 It’s terrible.
Robin 00:12:39 It’s terrible.
Grant 00:12:44 But he had them sit down in small groups. Rest in small groups.
Robin 00:12:45 In order.
They sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. — Mark 6:40
That sounds like big groups, but we have 5,000 plus.
Grant 00:12:52 Yeah, it’s all relative.
Robin 00:12:53 Groups of hundreds and fifties are pretty small.
And he took the five loaves and two fish, and looking up toward heaven, he made a blessing, a bracha (בְּרָכָה). — Mark 6:41a
Robin 00:13:04 And we know what that blessing is, don’t we?
Grant 00:13:07 “Baruch atah Adonai (בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה אֲדֹנָי), Eloheinu (אֱלֹהֵינוּ), Melekh ha’olam (מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם), hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz (הַמּוֹצִיא לֶחֶם מִן הָאָרֶץ)” — Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.
Robin 00:13:11 So he’s bringing it forth with our cooperation.
Grant 00:13:15 Yes. We simply put in his hands the limited resources we have —
Robin 00:13:19 That came from him in the first place.
Grant 00:13:20 Yeah. So it doesn’t say he blessed the food. If you have a Bible and the phrase “the food” is in italics, it’s not there in the Greek. He blessed — he made a blessing, made a bracha (בְּרָכָה).
Then he broke the loaves and he kept giving them to the disciples to set before them, and he divided up the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied. — Mark 6:41b–42
Robin 00:13:47 This is amazing. It really is, on so many levels. First of all — why the five and the two?
Robin 00:13:58 Yeah.
Robin 00:13:59 Why the five loaves?
Grant 00:14:00 Well, there’s all kinds of speculations about that. But what’s the spiritual food we’re given right there at the front of our Bible that comes in five pieces?
Robin 00:14:12 Oh, it’s the five books of Torah (תּוֹרָה).
Grant 00:14:14 The Torah (תּוֹרָה) is in five. And that is our spiritual bread. That is our spiritual bread.
Robin 00:14:19 And we don’t live by physical bread alone, but by every word —
Robin 00:14:23 That proceeds through the mouth of God.
Grant 00:14:25 And then the two fish — well, the Tanakh (תַּנַ”ךְ), the Hebrew scriptures, are divided into three sections. You have the five books of the Torah (תּוֹרָה) — that’d be like the five loaves of bread. And then you’ve got the Prophets and you have the Writings.
Robin 00:14:40 The two fish.
Grant 00:14:41 The fish, yes.
Robin And then Messiah comes, and he walks in all this truth as an example of what knowing and living all of this looks like. And he says, “I’m the bread of life.” And if you come to me, you won’t be hungry. In other words, you’ll have enough. You’ll have food that will never, ever run out.
Grant 00:15:07 Now, when you look at the dynamics here, it says “he kept giving them to the disciples to set before them.” In other words, what are the disciples doing? They go to Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ), they get a basket full of food, they go out to the groups and spread it, they go back to Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ), get more food, take it.
Robin 00:15:27 Why didn’t Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) hand it directly to the people?
Grant 00:15:30 He loves to do it through his followers, through his disciples.
Robin 00:15:33 So important.
Grant 00:15:34 He could. He could, but he chooses to use you and me and the people who are listening. He wants us to participate with him.
Robin 00:15:42 And when we cooperate and trust him, whatever’s in our hands just becomes enough.
Grant 00:15:47 Yeah.
Robin 00:15:48 It becomes more.
Grant 00:15:49 It becomes more.
Robin 00:15:50 Oh, it’s so cool.
Grant 00:15:51 There’s not only enough, there was more than enough.
Grant 00:15:55 Now, this next part made me think of when I was in Sunday school as a child. It says:
They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up twelve full baskets of the broken pieces and also of the fish. — Mark 6:42–43
I remember my Sunday school teacher every year — or every time we’d come to this story, she’d say, “Now, do you know why there were twelve baskets full? Because there were twelve disciples. They each got a basket to take home.” And it sounded kind of cool at the time. But then as I got a little more sophisticated, I thought, “Well, that’s a little too cute. That’s kind of silly.” But now that I’m an old man, it’s like — I think she was spot on.
Robin 00:16:38 Yeah.
Grant 00:16:39 If Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) had 15 disciples, there’d have been 15 baskets left over. If he had four disciples, there’d be four baskets left over. If he had 100 disciples, there’d be 100 baskets left over. In other words, I think the principle here is that when we allow Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) to take our limited resources and bless them and prosper them and use them to feed people, we get fed more ourselves. We feast more ourselves than we could ever imagine.
Robin 00:17:09 It’s so true. Even if it isn’t physical resources that we’re sharing, but it’s our time or our spiritual wisdom that we may have — just feel like we have a drop, just a drop. But when you see someone’s eyes light up and hope come over them, it feeds you more than you’re sharing with them.
Grant 00:17:32 And every time I’ve talked to someone, maybe help them prepare for a teaching, help them study, and after they’re done, I say, “Who got fed more — you or the people you taught?” And they always say, “I got fed more than anybody.”
Robin 00:17:48 Even when you’re just working — I love teaching little ones, little people, and I always come away fed more than — and it takes a lot of energy, but it feeds you back. There’s a verse in Proverbs 11:25, Grant, that says:
The generous man will be made fat, and he who waters will himself be watered. — Proverbs 11:25
And I think that that’s the principle here. If you’re not afraid to share what you have, you will have enough. You’ll have more than enough. You’ll have a basket of bread left over — which I love that we’re talking about this on Breadcrumbs. They had a basket of breadcrumbs each.
Grant 00:18:36 And fish. And you know, it’s so sad when I hear people who have been believers for years and then they start moaning about their community — “Oh, I’m just not getting fed there.” I have to think it’s because you’re supposed to be doing some feeding. God has a basket full of food for you to eat, but you only get it if you start feeding others.
Robin 00:19:00 And there are times there’s just no spiritual food.
Grant 00:19:04 That’s true.
Robin 00:19:04 But you get what you give.
Grant 00:19:06 Yes. Yeah, you get what you give.
Robin 00:19:09 You get what you give.
Grant 00:19:10 With interest.
Robin 00:19:11 You know, we’ve mentioned this so many times — how we don’t see the world around us as it is. We see the world around us as we are. Because our inner world — we’re souls. We’re spiritual creatures. So we see according to our reality on the inside. I read something recently that you’ve probably gotten tired of hearing me say, but it just really made sense. It says: “If you must meet the outer world with your inner world, or existence will crush you.” If you don’t have an inner world that is abundant, and you’re aware of it, and you’re just trying to live life according to the physical things that you see outside of your skin, you’re gonna get crushed.
Grant 00:20:06 What a tiny little world.
Robin 00:20:08 It’s a tiny little world, and you’ll live in fear.
Grant 00:20:11 Yes.
Robin 00:20:11 You will live in fear.
Grant 00:20:12 Absolutely. Well, a question comes up then, is this: where did all the bread and fish come from? It started with five loaves and two fish, and it turned into obviously thousands of loaves and fish. But where did all the extra physical food actually come from? And you know where I’m going with this.
Robin 00:20:35 I do. I do.
Grant 00:20:36 Are we ready to share this?
Robin 00:20:38 I think so. We were just listening to a podcast the other night, and we looked at each other and went, “What?”
Grant 00:20:44 We had no idea we’d be talking about this.
Robin 00:20:46 It was just like when you read something in science and hear something that confirms what you know is true because it’s a spiritual truth. It’s just so cool.
Grant 00:20:58 Well, what I’m going to share is something that is scientifically proven. We know it’s true, but it’s one of the most bizarre things you may hear all day and maybe all week. And it corrects somethings I’ve taught wrong for all these years. I’ve used trees and fruit and everything and seeds for teaching examples. And I would talk about a tree grows out of the ground because the tree puts out its living roots and turns the dirt into wood and into fruit and all this —
Robin 00:21:29 Because that’s what we all kind of learned.
Grant 00:21:32 It’s dead wrong. There’s no truth to it. Back in the 1600s, there was a scientist named Jan Baptiste van Helmont, and he was wondering how this process worked — about how a tree would take dirt and convert that dirt into more tree. So he did this experiment — and again, this is back in the 1600s, well documented, and it’s an experiment anyone can repeat. So what he did is he took 200 pounds of dirt. He weighed it out — dry dirt, 200 pounds. Then he got a small willow tree that weighed 5 pounds, planted the willow tree in the dirt —
Robin 00:22:19 And the dirt was in a container.
Grant 00:22:21 Yes, in a container.
Robin 00:22:22 So it would never be added to.
Grant 00:22:25 So he would water this thing. He watered it, you know, day after day as it needed it. He did this for five years. Five years. (Robin: This is so cool.) Then he took the willow tree out of the dirt, got all the dirt off the willow tree, weighed the willow tree, and the willow tree now weighed 169 pounds. It had gained 164 pounds over five years.
Robin 00:22:48 And it was suddenly more mass.
Grant 00:22:51 Physical mass.
Grant 00:22:51 Yes.
Grant 00:22:52 So you’d expect there to be less dirt. He dried out the dirt completely, weighed the dirt, and there was still 200 pounds of dirt there. Well, it lost 2 ounces. It lost 2 ounces, but basically it was still 200 pounds of dirt. So the question is — you put a 5-pound willow tree in 200 pounds of dirt, it grows into a 169-pound willow tree —
Robin 00:23:20 Where did the —
Grant 00:23:20 But you still have 200 pounds of dirt. Where did the tree come from? Where did it come from? And then when you think a mature oak tree can weigh upward of 10,000 pounds — that’s more than five tons. Where’s the tree come from? Because it’s not turning dirt into tree. And this scientist, he never could figure it out.
Robin 00:23:47 Then he figured Maybe it’s water.
Grant 00:23:49 And it wasn’t the water because he dried the dirt out.
Robin 00:23:52 Right. So water wasn’t being transferred into physical mass, and dirt wasn’t?
Grant 00:23:58 No, because H₂O is two atoms of hydrogen which have practically no mass whatsoever. And then we know that the tree gives off the oxygen.
Robin 00:24:09 So it doesn’t even keep the oxygen.
Grant 00:24:11 No. (Robin: Because photosynthesis happens) You know, some of the sap has some H₂O with it, but that does not begin to make up the mass of this tree. Well, over time, scientists have figured out that trees are made out of carbon. They’re made out of carbon. And they get the carbon from the air. So a 10,000-pound oak that might be in your backyard right now — all of that wood, which is all carbon, all came out of the air.
Robin 00:24:45 Which is invisible.
Grant 00:24:46 Invisible. So the visible comes out of the invisible. If you have fruit trees, that fruit is made out of the carbon in the air. Everything we eat comes from — The air.
Robin 00:25:00 It does.
Grant 00:25:01 And if you eat a cow, well, that cow eats grass, and that grass comes from the air. So going back to Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ), he takes this little bit —
Robin 00:25:15 Didn’t a little boy bring his lunch? Is this the story —
Grant 00:25:19 Yeah, well, that’s — yeah, the Matthew, I think. So he takes, let’s say, five pounds of fish and bread and turns it to 169 pounds of fish and bread. I’m sure it’s probably a lot more than that.
Robin 00:25:33 Right.
Grant 00:25:33 But it all came out of the spiritual realm.
Robin 00:25:37 And physically, rationally speaking, it defies logic — if you believe that we are physical beings and that trees are just physical things. But the Bible calls us trees. So we aren’t sourced in anything that you can see.
Grant 00:25:57 We think that it’s because of the earth and the world and its riches and everything it provides that we become who we are. No, that’s an anchoring point.
Robin 00:26:06 But aren’t we just told that from him and through him and to him are all things? And I just got so happy inside when we were listening to this, because it just confirms what we know to be true.
Grant 00:26:24 It’s so true.
Robin 00:26:25 It’s so true.
Grant 00:26:26 It all comes from the invisible realm. You know, in the scriptures, the air is a picture of the spiritual. We can feel it move at times. We can’t see it. And yet it is all inside of us. It animates every single cell in our body. It’s what we breathe. If we don’t have air, we die. So almost as if in the air we live and move and have our being — it’s a picture of God.
Robin 00:26:55 It is.
Grant 00:26:55 It’s a picture of him, our invisible God, who can move with great force.
Robin 00:27:00 And that air that that tree is thriving in is infused with light from the sun.
Grant 00:27:06 That’s right.
Robin 00:27:08 And he just gives us this metaphor of a world to live in — if we would see things as they are, not as we are.
Grant 00:27:19 Now, just a little footnote. I know people are going to say, “Well, wait a minute. So why do we use fertilizer and all those other things?” Well, remember, the dirt was reduced by two ounces, and those would be some minerals and nutrients that made their way into the tree. So there is a little bit of the soil that is absorbed into the tree.
Robin 00:27:39 And there’s that principle of how important it is for our roots — our invisible roots — to go deep. Because like you mentioned already, it anchors us.
Grant 00:27:47 Yes, it anchors us.
Robin 00:27:49 It anchors us. And without that depth, that secret life — like we talked about in our last podcast, the importance of having a secret world, a modest hidden world with the divine — and then no matter what storms come, we know that we’re strong.
Grant 00:28:09 Well, you know, the short little letter of Ephesians that Paul wrote — Paul had a handle on this. Because in the first chapter, he tells us that we are seated in heavenly places with Messiah Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ). We are seated. We’re at rest. That is our support. It’s unmovable. This is our strength in spiritual places. Then you go a little bit further — he says, “But we walk in this world.” We do the two at the same time. Spiritually, we are at rest. We are seated in the spiritual, invisible realm. And we have to keep that as our focus. And if we do that, then we can walk in this world. But if you try to walk in this world and accomplish what you need to do in this world without resting in him, you’re going to be exhausted. You’re just not going to make it.
Robin 00:28:55 And he affords us — isn’t this principle what Shabbat (שַׁבָּת) is all about? Because when he sent the manna (מָן) in the wilderness, he said, “Just gather enough for today, and trust me that it’s enough.” And then on Friday, gather enough for tomorrow, because I’m going to give you the rest you need. And the rest that I give you is enough to give you what you need to gather the manna (מָן) the next day.
Grant 00:29:25 It’s almost like God said, “I’m going to take a rest too. I’m not going to provide manna (מָן), and you’re not going to collect manna (מָן). But we’re all going to eat. We’re all going to be just fine.”
Robin 00:29:34 We’re going to have what we need because I am your source and I’m love. And when you are walking in love instead of fear, there’s an expansiveness instead of a smallness.
Grant 00:29:47 Well, this story also takes us right to John chapter 4. And this probably be a good thing to close with. And you maybe have another verse or quote or something you want to share. But in John chapter 4, the story of Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) meeting the Samaritan woman at the well, while the disciples go to the town to get food. So there’s another food story. So they’re in the town getting food. In the meantime, Yeshua’s (יֵשׁוּעַ) sitting here having this one of the deepest conversations recorded in the Gospels — he’s having with a Samaritan woman, this outcast. It’s a far deeper conversation than he had in chapter 3 with Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin. But that’s another story.
So anyways, he finishes this conversation with her. She runs into town excited to tell everybody she’s met the Messiah. And she passes the disciples coming back with food. And so they — in verse 31, John 4:31, it says:
Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” And he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought him anything to eat, did he?” — John 4:31–33
And what does Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) say? I love this, because this sums up everything we’ve said.
Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his purpose.” — John 4:34
And you know, Robin, that’s your food, and that is my food as well. And anyone who’s listening to us right now — if you want to be fed, then do the will of him who sent you and accomplish his work. Do the thing you’ve been sent here to do, and you will be fed more than you could imagine.
Robin 00:31:30 And have compassion on the other sheep around you, trusting that you’ve encountered them because you’ve got something to share with them, because they’re hungry. And you know what also kind of comes into this story that I just can’t fail to mention — is the heart of Messiah is so tuned in to what we truly need spiritually, that he offers us that rest and he’ll give it to us when we need it. At the beginning of this passage, he says, “Give yourself a little time and a little bit of solitude. You’ve come off of a lot of hard work. You’ve been giving a lot.” And I have to think that they probably had gotten news that their dear friend and the cousin of Messiah had been killed — he’d been beheaded. So there’s grief involved here. And he says, “Take a moment to grieve, but don’t allow it to consume you to where your world shrinks and you forget that I will always, always provide enough.”
Grant 00:32:42 That’s right. So true. Yeah, he’s more than sufficient.
Robin 00:32:48 He is.
Grant 00:32:48 But we want him to do all these things for us. And we think, “Now, if I feel properly equipped enough, I’m going to go out and then I’ll help someone else.” And Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ) says, “No — you start helping. And as you do that, you’re going to be fed, fulfilled, and energized. But start doing the bit of work I’ve given you to do.” And he says, to take his yoke upon us — his yoke’s easy, his burden’s light.
Robin 00:33:14 And there are so many other — rest, rest, rest. And there are so many other stories and examples in the word and in our life that bear this out. And so it was just a fun thing to return to and look at from a slightly different perspective. So yeah, I just pray and encourage all of us to recognize the enoughness, the abundance that he really does provide. And it’s not in the dirt of this world.
Grant 00:33:48 It’s in the invisible realm.
Robin 00:33:50 The invisible realm. That’s where all of our satisfaction and all of our supply comes from.
Grant 00:33:57 And then you can be a tree that is growing and fruitful and just rejoicing.
Robin 00:34:04 Absolutely.
Grant 00:34:04 Yeah.
Robin 00:34:05 Yeah. Isn’t it amazing?
Grant 00:34:06 Wonderful. I think so.
Robin 00:34:08 All right. Well, this was fun.
Grant 00:34:09 Yeah. Did we have enoughness to do the —
Robin 00:34:15 I guess we’ll let our listeners be the judge of that. But I’ve enjoyed the conversation.
Grant 00:34:20 Absolutely. All right, folks, well, until next time we wish you shalom (שָׁלוֹם) and may God bless.
Robin 00:34:25 Shalom (שָׁלוֹם), everyone.
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