On This Day: When That’s Not What We Expected

   The disciples of John reported all these things to him. And John, calling two of his disciples to him, sent them to the Lord, saying, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” And when the men had come to him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’” (Luke 7:18-20)

   I am old enough to have had many of my church scenarios unfold quite differently than I had imagined. I can picture times when I was so clear that God was leading me into something I thought would be one scene of exciting ministry after another, only to find out years later that the real-life story was quite different than I expected. John being in prison at the end of his service to God has a certain ring of familiarity to it!

   One of my early lessons in how the unexpected should be expected was in a journey through the book of Exodus a few decades ago. It kept standing out to me that what God called Moses and Israel to do consistently turned out differently than they had imagined would happen.

   For example, after God spoke to Moses about his role in delivering Israel out of Egypt, and after God had responded to all Moses’ complaining and questions, Moses went to the people, the people worshiped God for hearing their prayers and coming to their rescue, and everyone was united in knowing and doing God’s will.

   That is, until Pharaoh responded to Moses by doubling the workload of the people!!! Suddenly the people all turned on Moses as if he had lied to them! 

   When we follow this through the ten plagues, and on into their early adventures of trusting the Lord on the way to the Promised Land, we see the same pattern. God showed the people what he was doing, he even appeared to them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, but every time things turned out differently than the people expected, they complained that there was something wrong with GOD!!!

   And what exactly was the problem? 

   That God kept putting them in situations they could only face by faith. That is exactly what they did not want then, and it is exactly what so many church folk don’t want now. We want to live in a constant state of sight-based living where everything turns out exactly as wonderfully as we expected. For God to keep putting us in impossible situations where only he could fulfill his word sends us into a tailspin. 

   I will get to Jesus’ reply to John tomorrow. But today some of us need to stop here long enough to attach to the God who is with us in prison. He is with us in scenarios that are painfully different than we thought they would be. He listens to our questions asking whether we got it right in the core issues surrounding our understanding of his will. 

   God’s encouragement to us is that when we are in scenarios like what John the Baptist was experiencing, we should send word to Jesus about it just like John did. Except for us, that would mean pouring out our hearts to our God in prayer and then meditating on whatever he shows us next in his word to see how he is answering the cry of the distressed.

   Psalm 102 begins with this heading, “A Prayer of one afflicted, when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the LORD”. God puts these things in his word so we can come to him with words he himself has given us for the occasion. And when our occasion is feeling weary with how differently things have turned out from what we had once thought God was doing, John the Baptist in Luke 7, and the psalm writer in Psalm 102, may help us bring our own perplexing questions to God. 

   However, no matter what questions fill our hearts, and no matter which Scriptures we read next, God will hear and answer our prayers. Just expect that his replies might be of the unexpected variety.

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: When Jesus Marvels at a Man’s Faith

   When he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends, saying to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me: and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard these things, he marveled at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” And when those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the servant well. (Luke 7:6-10)

   I trust it’s “enough said” about the contrast between Jesus marveling at great faith and marveling at great unbelief. We should know in our hearts which group we are in, and which group we want to be in. 

   For the rest, I want to share how we travel through the Beatitudinal Valley in the Beatitudinal Journey of transformation. This is based on Jesus’ Beatitudes of Matthew 5:1-12, his introduction to what is known as the Sermon on the Mount. 

   The first four Beatitudes are what I call the downside of the valley. If we attach to the blessing of God in each one, there is a feeling of going deeper inside ourselves with each step until reaching the core of our being where we absolutely long for what God is doing in us in Christ. The second four Beatitudes describe what we become like once we have encountered God in the humbling work of the downside into his mercy. 

1. “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” As we stand between the two scenes of Jesus’ marveling, we feel God’s blessing as we recognize in ourselves the many ways we fail to have such great faith as that centurion. Yes, it is a blessing when we look at this scripture passage and realize it does NOT describe our kind of faith. And it is a blessing when we look at Nazareth and its unbelief and feel that is far more what we are like. God is blessing us with the realness of admitting our true soul condition.

2. “Blessed are those who mourn…” While the natural inclination of the flesh is to run back up the downside of the valley and get out of there because we don’t like how our humbling feels, when we feel God blessing us, we find ourselves irresistibly going deeper into the mourning of our soul-condition. To let ourselves feel grief over why we have so little faith (instead of self-justifying that we are not so bad after all) is God’s blessing. There are comforts that are only experienced by those who will mourn their poverty of spirit. 

3. “Blessed are the meek…” At this point, we still refuse to go back up the downside in an “I will do better next time” kind of way, and instead, in meekness, we go deeper and admit we can’t fix our lack of faith, but Jesus can. Knowing the miserable state of our soul condition, we yield to Jesus’ authority to transform us into his likeness from one degree of glory to another, and we know it will not happen until we give up on ourselves and surrender to him.

4. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” When we are fully aware that we do not have the great faith Jesus honored in the centurion, and that we have dishonored our Savior with so many episodes of unbelief, we find God blessing us with the hunger and thirst for the “righteousness of faith”. It is a blessing to feel this hunger at the most real experience of our poverty of spirit because now God can satisfy our hunger in a way he could never honor our good works. 

5. “Blessed are the merciful…” Once we are hungering for the righteousness of faith by grace instead of any good works, we know what mercy feels like. We can‘t judge others weak faith because God has mercifully addressed our own! Instead, knowing how God has blessed us in his mercy, we become merciful to others who struggle with their faith. As Paul said, “As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions” (Romans 14:1). Once we have been blessed on the downside of the Beatitudinal Valley, we begin the upside journey by relating towards everyone from a merciful heart.

6. “Blessed are the pure in heart…” Weak faith is a double-minded faith. We want to trust Jesus, but we trust other things more (like the self-protection of our unbelief). As God humbles us through the Beatitudinal Journey, we find ourselves wanting to simply live by faith in every situation. We cling to Paul’s “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). We want “the prayer of a righteous person” that “has great power as it is working” (James 5:16). We simply want to be “the righteous shall live by faith” in everything.  

7. “Blessed are the peacemakers…” This is a faith issue. Church folk who do not labor to bring people to have peace with God do not have faith that God would use them, or that the good news of great joy is the only hope of escaping God’s wrath against sin, or that Jesus alone can grant eternal life to those who believe. By now we should see how the Beatitudinal Journey gets us here so that our mercifully pure hearts are desperate for everyone we know to have peace with God, and so we tell others about Jesus by faith that we are joining God in his work of saving souls.

8. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness…” I hope we can see why this is not the first step of the Beatitudinal Journey! But once we have experienced the blessing of God in the first seven Beatitudes, we are so in love with leading people to have peace with God that we can at least grow in our sense of blessing that any persecution that comes from this way of life is a joyful evidence of our fellowship with Jesus Christ our Lord.

   Now, while this On This Day sharing is a bit longer than most, this has still been a very brief example of how to apply the Beatitudinal Journey to today’s lesson about Jesus’ view of our faith. It should give us all hope that we can feel blessed by God as we face our poverty of spirit as much as if we were already on-fire-for-the-Lord peacemakers being persecuted because we are causing so much trouble to the world, the flesh and the devil. 

   The bottom line is that Jesus marveled at the great faith of the centurion and the great unbelief of his hometown folks. I’m not sure whether he still marvels at things in his ascension to the right hand of his Father, but how he views both faith and unbelief will not have changed. Today’s lesson from Scripture calls us to step out in faith to grow up in faith, and this includes whatever steps of the Beatitudinal Journey God is focusing on today (and tomorrow, and…).  

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: When Jesus Shows What We Are Like

   “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great.” (Luke 6:46-49)

   I won’t detail the storm, but the description of “a flood arose,” and “the stream broke against that house” hits home. That’s why Jesus used parables, word pictures, metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech. They are so easy to say, “I know what that one feels like!” 

   For a few decades, I have practiced beginning my time with God by telling him how I am doing. No, I am not informing him of things he doesn’t already know. Rather, I am admitting to him my “soul condition” so I can attach to the “soul provision” he has given me in his Son. The more honest I am about how I am doing, the more Bull’s Eyeish is my experience of attaching to what he says in response. 

   Today this hit with the simple awareness that Jesus was asking me, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?” Or at least that’s the way it sounded to me. At first. 

   I then found myself wondering whether he saw me as the man who did put his words into practice or the one who did not. How would I know? Does this mean “perfectly” kept his word, or devotedly tried to keep his word? 

   Yes, I struggled through such thoughts and feelings, being honest to the core of my being, and that’s when Jesus ministered to me through his word and his Spirit so that I KNEW what he was saying to me. His words pierced me like I had never read them before in my life: “I will show you what he is like…” 

   Now it felt not so much like Jesus was confronting me with all the ways I may have failed to put his words into practice, but that he was declaring his view of my life, that he knew “what he is LIKE”! Not PERFECTLY! But this is what Montgomery Paul Vigh is LIKE! 

   And suddenly I could say that the next words applied to me. It wasn’t the storm I’m facing that says I am the people who say “Lord, Lord,” but never do what Jesus says. It’s the other way around. Because I have been seeking to live in “the obedience of faith” since my youth, I have withstood one storm after another for one simple reason: God has taught me to hear my Savior’s voice and follow him where he leads. No perfection. No measuring myself as better than anyone else. No earning my standing with God through good works. Just looking back and knowing which group I am in. I am in the group of people who come to Jesus, hear his words, and put them into practice. 

   When I went downstairs for my prayer time, I realized that I had never confessed to God that I had sinned by not getting baptized when Jesus told me to. I caved to abuse. Yes, understandable. No, not excusable. Yes, I know I was under God’s mercy. No, I did not do what Jesus called me to do. I chose self-protection over knowing and doing the will of God. 

   However, when I brought the pain of that experience to God this morning, I confessed my sin, received God’s forgiveness, handed over to him the guilt, shame, and fear of what I had done, and grieved how I had hindered my siblings who wanted to get baptized by not being the big brother who would lead the way. YES, being THAT gut-level honest with God is so REWARDING! The way we get to know our Savior when we are honest with him is so worth the pain of facing such wounds. 

   The conclusion of the matter is that I dealt with one more thing Satan has tried to use to his advantage. Instead, I have ringing in my heart that Jesus is the one Mediator between me and God, and he is my Advocate in responding to the devil’s lies. Jesus says to Satan himself, “I will show you what my servant Monte is like”. 

   I know it is only by grace through faith that I have any relationship with Jesus Christ at all, but today my Savior assured me that he knows what I am like as his little brother. And then he showed me the children in our daycare whose efforts to put our words into practice are childlike, sometimes childish, immature, not as good as we would do, but so absolutely heart-captivating to see how they are putting their hearts into trying to do what we say. 

   And today, Jesus told me he sees me like that as well. A little kid trying to walk in the obedience of faith. And so, in Jesus Christ my Lord, I take my stand. 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: Good Person, Good Treasure, Good Fruit

   “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:43-45)

   When I come to a passage like this, I think of it as a “self-examination text”. Jesus is addressing things we must first apply to ourselves before considering how to contribute to God’s work in the body of Christ.

   I found it helpful to discover that the “good” in the tree, the heart, and the fruit means moral goodness. It isn’t fruit in the sense of how we are affecting others, but fruit in the sense of what the tree produces whether anyone notices or not (an apple tree is an apple tree even if no one eats the fruit!). 

   The main point is that in Jesus’ kingdom, the work of God is so transforming that there cannot be any disparity between the person we are, the things we treasure in our hearts, and the way we act towards others. 

   Which reminded me of a huge lesson I learned in the early 90’s, that God always begins his work in our hearts and people are more committed to self-protection than to knowing and doing the will of God. 

   The reason that stands out today is that self-protection makes liars out of us. Hypocrites. We try to act like good people on the outside, but God’s transforming work is hindered because we won’t give up lordship over our hearts. God can’t transform us without leading us out of our old hearts into the new hearts the prophets foretold, but our fortresses of self-protection are defiant that no one is going to mess with the things we have hidden deep inside, not even GOD! 

   For some of us, the “log” that needs to be removed from our eyes is the log of self-protection. Whatever it is we do to hide a traumatized, reclusive soul must be removed so we can be “transformed into the same image (as our Savior) from one degree of glory to another” (II Corinthians 3:18). 

   Opening our hearts to the Holy Spirit’s inspection will invariably lead us into another journey through the Beatitudinal Valley. God will bless us with the poverty of spirit that admits the ways we are not doing well in what he is teaching us. He will bless us with the mourning that grieves what he is showing us about ourselves that is not like our Savior. He will bless us with the meekness that gives up trying to fix ourselves and opens the door of our self-protection in submission to the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord. And he then blesses us with the hunger and thirst for the righteousness of being in our hearts what we are trying to portray in our works. 

   This then leads to us being blessed by becoming genuinely merciful people because of the mercy we have experienced in our hearts. We are blessed by having pure hearts that make us the same on the outside as we are on the inside. We are blessed by becoming peacemakers who genuinely want everyone to experience peace with God, and that leads to us being blessed with joy in our persecutions because we know that the way the world is treating us is because we truly are becoming like our Savior (based on the Beatitudes of Matthew 5:1-12). 

   In Luke 6, Luke is showing us things Jesus taught about life in his kingdom. If we have confessed with our mouths that Jesus is Lord (over every part of our being, self-protection included), and we have believed IN OUR HEARTS that God raised his Son from the dead, the salvation we claim to have will show in what we do (Romans 10:9-10). If that is not what is showing, it’s time for a heart-to-heart with our Father in heaven in the name of Jesus Christ his Son. It will be transforming.  

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: The ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind’ Principle

   "Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.” (Luke 6:37-38)

   One memorable experience of helping people with the bad kind of judging was when I was talking with a young couple about how they were doing. The wife began presenting some complaints against her husband and I listened to try to understand what was going on. I soon realized that I was seeing a 2-column page in my mind with “subjective” on the left and “objective” on the right. Each of her statements were subjective so I mentally put them in the left column and kept asking her to go deeper. 

   After a handful of complaints were added to the “subjective” side, she suddenly said something objective that had happened to her long before they had even met, and it had to do with her Dad, NOT her husband! 

    Suddenly, the couple was united in addressing an unresolved experience of childhood trauma instead of wasting time and attachment on things that either weren’t happening at all or weren’t happening to the degree that was imagined. 

   Since then, I have witnessed many instances of the contrast between the unrighteous judging that weaponizes perceived faults or failures as reasons to join the enemy's work of “stealing, killing, and destroying” (John 10:10), and a few instances of the righteous judging where objective sin was handled as Jesus instructed in Matthew 18:15-20. 

   The part that ministered to me the most in my time with God this morning was simply that I must agree with my Savior that letting my mind wonder, or evaluate, or imagine what might be going on with someone when nothing is visibly presenting itself for my participation is wrong. It isn’t just the concluding that someone must be doing something wrong when I haven’t seen it, but letting my mind spend time trying to figure out if someone is doing something wrong is what is forbidden. 

   The “out of sight, out of mind” adage is the way I will remember this. Do I see objective sin going on with someone? No? Then stop thinking about them and turn my mind to, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Philippians 4:8). 

   Do I see objective sin going on with a fellow believer? Yes? Then I must go and talk with the person in private and follow Jesus’ instructions with the aim Paul added, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted” (Galatians 6:1). 

   I know that worldlings love to misquote Jesus about his “do not judge” teaching as if we are not allowed to call their sin what it is. But Jesus himself always called sin to be sin while “in God’s kindness” always working “to lead you to repentance” (Romans 2:4) so he can restore us and forgive us. 

   Now, here is a thought: what would happen in Jesus’ true church if we would judge the sinful judging done by our own people in the way Jesus taught us to confront sin, and required our people to avoid any kind of unrighteous judging where no one even saw anything happen at all?  

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: Love in the Absence of Forgiveness

   “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. (Luke 6:29-31)

   One of the most significant facets of being one “who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:5) is loving the words God chose to breathe out into the Scriptures (II Timothy 3:16-17). However, on the flip side, this includes loving the absence of words that people read into God’s word so that it corrupts what our Father in heaven has told us. 

   As I came to the above text, it stood out again that Jesus did not tell us to forgive our enemies, forgive our haters, forgive our cursers, or forgive our abusers. And since adding “forgive them” to such texts subtracts something from the full meaning of Jesus’ words, we must consider what these things look like without forgiving people. 

   This stands out so clearly in Paul’s rebuke, “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4). People were “presuming” that God was okay with their sin because he was kind, forbearing, and patient in his dealings with them. Paul turns the picture around to show that his perceived blessings while we are sinning are not approval of our sin, but him loving us “to repentance”. 

   The next sentence makes it clear that without repentance there is no forgiveness, “But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5). 

   So, when we know that no one can possibly be forgiven without repentance, we don’t say, “I forgive them” and move on. Instead, knowing that our enemies, our haters, our cursers, our abusers, and our persecutors cannot be forgiven without repentance, we keep loving them towards repentance. We keep doing good to them in the hope they will repent. We keep blessing them with our prayers for their repentance. 

   Now here’s an example of this. People often claim that the best example of God forgiving unrepentant people is what Jesus said from the cross. His words were, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). People say that was Jesus forgiving his enemies, haters, cursers, abusers, and persecutors. 

   HOWEVER!!!

   Jesus did NOT say, “Father, I forgive them…” He said, “Father, forgive them…” What is that called? It is called PRAYER. Jesus was praying for his enemies. What did he tell us to do? He said, “…pray for those who abuse you.” 

   What happens when we pray for our enemies to be forgiven? Answer: we’re not done until they repent. 

   I have learned by personal experience that it is far more loving and liberating to pray for God’s kindness to lead someone to repentance so he can forgive them than to do the “I forgive them, and I’m done” routine. Not only does it call for greater love than forgiving and moving on, but it is what is WRITTEN.

   The bottom line is that, if we are going to “live by every word that comes from the mouth of God” as Jesus taught, let’s not mess it up by trying to live by words that did NOT come from the mouth of God!

   And with all that said, God has brought some people to mind who fit the description of who to love, do good, bless, and pray for, so it is time for me to go downstairs and pray! And yes, I do hope he answers by letting me show love to them, do good to them, bless them, and let them know I am praying for their forgiveness.

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

On This Day: How to be Angry at Sin Without Sinning

   On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” And after looking around at them all he said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus. (Luke 6:6-11)

   I’m writing this part after I had my time with God in his word, after I shared my box of sharing (to the left) online, and after having a time of prayer that followed the example of Jesus who “would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16). God wove these three stands together to minister to me in so many ways that left me knowing what he was saying, seeing what he was doing, and joining him in his work. 

   Have you ever read something about Jesus in the Bible and thought, “You mean that Jesus experienced the same things as me?” 

   The way this hit me today was in the definition of “watched”, as in, “And the scribes and Pharisees watched him…” The word carries nuances of meaning that are very telling of their soul-condition, but also very comforting to know that our Savior faced such things!

   “Watched” means “to observe (keep watch over) v. — to watch attentively, as keeping a record of activities in the mind (for later use)” (Bible Sense Lexicon). When we picture the religious elites watching Jesus, we must include these factors. They were watching attentively, but not with curiosity about what they could learn about him. It wasn’t to see if his actions would answer questions about whether he truly was the Messiah. 

   Rather, it was the attentive eyes of narcissistic hearts building a record of Jesus’ activities that they could save as weapons for later use. And the extent of this narcissism is clarified in what they did when Jesus healed the man, “But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus” (vs 11), meaning, “how to destroy him” (Mark 3:6). 

   It helped me to look up Mark’s description of how Jesus felt about these religious narcissists: “And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was restored” (Mark 3:5). The kind of anger Jesus felt in response to the hardness of heart in the scribes and Pharisees was “Anger: wrath n. — a feeling of intense anger that does not subside; often on an epic scale” (Bible Sense Lexicon). Yes, Jesus was THAT angry!

   I learned a long time ago that anger is a secondary emotion. It is triggered by a primary emotion. In this case, Jesus’ primary emotion was “grieved at their hardness of heart” and his secondary emotion was intense anger that they were willing to destroy the work of God while claiming to be the teachers of the people of God. 

   The short story on how God ministered to me while I was praying was to turn my attention from what I have experienced to how it has affected me. He affirmed the narcissism I grew up with in my home. He agreed with my memory in all the narcissists I have seen destroying families and churches. And then he showed me that he saw the pain it had caused in me and how I learned from an early age to try to protect and defend myself.

   The conclusion was that I attached to God in repentance and faith, repenting of every way I have succumbed to defending myself from the narcissists’ fault-finding instead of relying on him, renouncing any and all ground I may have surrendered to the enemy by relying on myself in this area, and declaring my faith that I would learn to trust him when in the narcissists’ line of fire the way Jesus did. 

   Now I am watching for who needs ministry along with me today and I intend to join God’s work in them with faith that Jesus is still at work to set the captives free. I also will watch carefully my feeling of anger at the narcissists who keep trying to destroy God’s work in others. I am eager to see what God does in me and around me as I walk with him today. 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com 

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)