Fear, Exhaustion, Prayer, Fasting - Being Human 2
Hebrews 5:7, 8
Thoughts on failure don't necessarily make a great cause for meditation. Often when we think of being human we use phrases like, "I'm only human", i.e. I am fully capable of failure and exercise the extent of that capacity often. Then we begin to apply our thinking about Jesus being fully human, yet without sin. Here it is important to again take a step back, see how we fail to look at what evidences which indicate how Jesus was indeed fully man, yet lived His life very dependent on His Father making it a very, very close intentional life relationship that made Him being fully man and still not sinning.
.Maybe we must recognize how we fail to be able to see that what Jesus faced is typical to what we face and how He recognized His need for His constant dependency on His Father (e.g. "I and my Father are one"). EXTREMELY IMPORTANT as weponder this is that when we say what WE face also of necessity includes that with each one of us in our own lives in our own cultures, that is to say 6 or 8 billion people on this planet each have our own individualized temptations and He faced them all. Someone quite pious might just quote that when we are tempted we are drawn aaway of our own lusts. Well yes, 6 or 8 billion different ways. So I learn of my own wicked self, that old nature that Paul tells of in His great struggle in Romans 7, and recognize how I fail (often enough it seems like time and time again) and apply the how and what temptations I alone face as being what He faced.
First is my recognition that I have been warned by God.
Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.
1 Corinthians 10:12 GNV
When we think that we are strong this we face. As a teenager when going off to college for some very stupid reason I thought I was a "strong" believer. Some might say the hubris of youth, but this really stuck in my mind as simply thinking, "I have this", and had no very intentional dependence on God, even though in my mind I thought I did. The Lord had to bring my false view of myself and knowing that He was the only way out. Yes, after that lesson there was no desire to say, "look at me, I am everything God wants us to be."
Further take this man how he thinks, and the nature of his thinking is the nature of his speech.:
For as though he thought it in his heart, so will he say unto thee, Eat and drink: but his heart is not with thee.
Proverbs 23:7 GNV
But not only the like nature is his thoughts being who he is, but more is that it comes from the heart that stores it. And for everyone, I definitely know for me that my heart stores a lot of both good and bad. Galatians 5:22, 23 tells that of that list of good, and that against such there is no law. But here in Matthew is the list that defiles a man.
But those things which proceed out of the mouth, come from the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false testimonies, slanders. These are the things, which defile the man: but to eat with unwashen hands, defileth not the man.
Matthew 15:18-20 GNV
Wait! That distinguishing between heart and mind, out of the heart come evil thoughts. Wisdom is in the heart, not in the mind, the brain. Evil thoughts come from the heart, not the mind, the brain. The heart is where man can be defiled before the Lord. He searches the heart. It is obvious that is where we fail, where Jesus needed the greatest protection, His heart. His heart needed to be one with His Father's heart.
See Psalms 32 and 51 where David recognizes his relationship to God in His failing, against thee and thee only have I sinned. Whether David facing his sin, Jonah facing running from God, or the woman taken in adultery brought directly in front of Jesus the Father's view is as Jesus said, Go, and sin no more. The source for each was their heart.
But Jesus made a point to His disciples at the Passover feast the relationship of the vine and the branches and the absolute necessity to abide in Him. There is an old hymn entitled "Constantly Abiding". Our lives as believers isn't ever that we "get our batteries recharged" after being away from "the source", but rather to remained always plugged into the continuous power source. I have an old tablet, an old laptop computer, and an old cell telephone that each would die within seconds or minutes if not being plugged in to that contiuous power source. If we recognize nothing else of the life of a believer the Holy Spirit is constantly within us. We have absolutely no reason not to continually draw on His power.
In John 3 John the Baptist tells of Jesus:
He that hath received his testimony, hath sealed that God is true. For he whom God hath sent, speaketh the words of God: for God giveth him not the Spirit by measure.
John 3:33-34 GNV
Nothing was held back from Jesus of the power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brought Jesus where He would be tempted when His ministry began (see Matthew 4). As we continue tolook for places where Jesus prayed, fasted, and if given the words of what He prayed we hope to learn more of how He remained "the vine", in His Father, fully dependent on His Father to keep from sinning.