On This Day: The ‘Again he began to teach’ of Jesus

Again he began to teach beside the sea. And a very large crowd gathered about him, so that he got into a boat and sat in it on the sea, and the whole crowd was beside the sea on the land. And he was teaching them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them: (Mark 4:1-2)

 

   Before I looked at the next section of God’s word in the gospel of Mark, I was already wondering how God would break through my familiarity with the gospels to teach me what I needed to walk with him today. Some days that thought leans more toward despondency, and other days more toward excited expectation. But it is always there, that I am dependent on God to make known to me whatever he pleases through his word.

   As a bit of background, I learned a few years ago that our brains process information from the right-side to the left-side. The right-hemisphere is focused on bonding (who or what we are attached to) and the left-hemisphere on believing. 

   This is fascinating and explains so much of why people in churches struggle to attach to truth. It isn’t because the truth of God’s word doesn’t make sense, it’s because they have bonded to someone or something that is restricting their ability to believe the good news.

   For example, I have had many professing Christians in churches struggle to believe God loves them. For a long time, I didn’t understand why such obvious truths in Scripture as God’s love for his beloved children had virtually no impact on some people. When I heard that anything I taught was processed on the right side of the brain before it got to the left side, and that it was the deepest bonds that were filtering what a person could believe, I realized that these people needed help with their relationship with God (bonding) more than their instruction about God (believing). 

   I don’t have room to say more in this short post, but ever since I learned how our brains process the intel of our five senses, I have also helped myself by watching for signs of bonding issues that need ministry so my believing issues are free to “delight in truth in the inward being,” so God can “teach me wisdom in the secret heart” (Psalm 51:6). 

   For today, I simply loved the “inward being” feeling of my “secret heart” that delighted in the attachment I felt to Jesus “again” beginning “to teach beside the sea”. Aside from the fact that I grew up in Sandspit, BC, with the “sea” right outside my bedroom window, knowing that God has given me everything I need to meet with Jesus Christ my Creator, Savior, and Lord every morning and day of my life is awesome in the real sense. And knowing that through the word of God in the Bible, I can hear Jesus teaching me by his Spirit today as clearly as those people heard him then fills me with so much wonder and awe that I do not want to miss anything “the Spirit is saying to the churches”. 

   Part of the application for me is to “again” pass on to you those “wonderful words of life”, as the old hymn expressed it. And the verse that just came up with Psalm 51:6 seems like such a beautiful way to conclude, “The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth” (Ecclesiastes 12:10). 

   I’m going to head out on a prayer walk shortly. I will be praying for whoever reads this, that any right-brain bonding issues will be met and comforted and healed by the God who “heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). This will include praying that anyone who needs help and healing for their bonding issues will find it through the body of Christ expressing the love of Christ by serving one another in love just as our Savior does “again” and “again”.   

© 2024 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.)