On This Day: I Heard the LORD Call My Name

   Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? (John 6:28-30)

   Every day, as I spend time with my Father in his word and talk to him in prayer, there is a weaving together of his world and mine. He is not outside my world speaking in, but “God with us” in everything.

   Today, this ministered to me in another journey with God from one thought to another. Each discovery is an experience of knowing, and each truth known prepares for the next truth to be told.

   One of the most notable experiences of my present journey through John’s gospel is noticing themes that have not stood out before. And one of the most glaring is hearing Jesus teaching the same things to different groups in different words. It is like I am hearing a rhyming of thoughts emphasizing the realities of God for all people.

   For example, when Jesus talked with Nicodemus (John 3), he went straight to, “You must be born again”. No new birth, no kingdom of God experience.

   Then, in talking with the Samaritan woman (John 4), Jesus told her that if she had known who he was, she would have been asking him for living water, and that this living water would well-up within a person to eternal life.

   When Jesus got in trouble for healing an invalid on the Sabbath (John 5), he told the Religious Elite, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” Being born again, drinking the living water, hearing and believing Jesus’ words, are rhyming thoughts emphasizing the need to trust in Jesus for eternal life.

   And today, I’m in the midst of Jesus’ dialogue with the multitude that had experienced him feeding them with a miraculous distribution of bread and fish. First he confronted them with the fact that he knew they were looking for him only because he had filled their stomachs and they wanted more of the same.

   But what stood out was that it was the same kind of response as Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman. Nicodemus wondered how in the world he was to re-enter his mother’s womb so he could be born again. The Samaritan woman wondered how Jesus could give her this living water so she could stop coming to the well.

   And when Jesus began telling the multitude how “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent”, and the people wanted to know what works they were to do “to be doing the works of God”, Jesus reiterated, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

   And when they continued presenting their queries, he told them “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” As with the new birth, and the living water, the bread from heaven was all about Jesus.

   However, when the people replied, “Sir, give us this bread always,” it was the same as the Samaritan woman asking for the earthly version of the living water.

   In other words, Jesus kept speaking to the people the truth of God and watching the crowd to see who heard him. He would so often say something like, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” All seven letters to the churches in Revelation end with the same appeal of, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

   We cannot escape the fact that faith comes from “hearing”, not from “seeing”. The people all wanted to see signs. Even the religious elite who were bothered that Jesus gave the sign of healing an invalid couldn’t accept it because (to them) it was a violation of the law to heal on the Sabbath and so they asked for more signs. The multitude who went out to see Jesus because of his signs, concluded he was the Messiah because of his signs, and wanted a relationship with him based on his signs. However, he was only using the signs to reveal his glory so people would hear his voice and follow his words!

   And that’s when God took me back to seven years of age. I was in the front yard in Sandspit BC. Something made me suddenly look up at the sky and know God was watching me, and that it was good. Except that I didn’t “see” anything. No signs. But what God clarified this morning was that my experience was not of me thinking about him. It wasn’t me asking for or responding to a sign. Rather it was me hearing him call my name. In that childhood moment, I was responding to his thoughts about me as he chose to make them known right then and there.

   My next memory was of “hearing” my mom teaching our Sunday School class in Sandspit about Jesus. At twelve years of age, it was “hearing” the gospel and believing. At fourteen years it was “hearing” a certain facet of the finished work of Christ that settled that Jesus’ “once for all” death gave me my “once for all” salvation. And from there, the hearing and believing has continued to grow.

   I love what I have been able to share with you this morning as a golden thread in the divine tapestry, connecting the new birth, the living water, and the bread from heaven as God’s provision of salvation in Jesus Christ.

   But the greater thing is a testimony that if we will have a daily time with God in his word and prayer, and listen to sermons, Bible studies, biblical podcasts, Bible-centered videos, and even the Scriptures while driving places, we who belong to Jesus will constantly hear his voice, know what he is saying, and discern how to join him in his work.

   And, in doing so, we will keep getting to know the Triune God better every day than we have ever known him before.

 

© 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.)

 

A Poem of Hope When the Sorrows are Strong

    I just came across this poem I had written four years ago. As I reminisced my way through it, I realized that the feelings I was expressing then are just as familiar now. I thought I might as well share it online in the hope it would encourage someone else to walk in hope when the sorrows are most overwhelming.

The following introduction and the poem were written on August 6, 2021.

    “Over the years I have heard many people resist bringing their childhood traumas to God because they fear that if they ever started opening their hearts they would be stuck in a flood of overwhelming emotions for months or years. What I have witnessed is God bringing us into relationship with himself where he will prepare us for looking at things, bring them up when it is time, and quickly comfort us and give us peace about each thing we need to face. And today I just had to try writing a poem about it.”

 

A Poem of Hope When the Sorrows are Strong
 
In a moment of grief between laughter and tears
(the quiet that comes before morning appears),
An old wave of sorrow came over the rise,
And poured down the valley where the secret heart cries.
 
The sun would soon come with the duties of life,
Calling for realness in comforts and strife,
And the fresh wave of sorrow that threatened the soul,
Had only this moment to wield its control.
 
The shadows of night gave their nod to the grief,
While the Morning Star shone with its promised relief,
But the flooding of sorrow felt too much to bear
For the heart that was sure it would always be there.
 
While dragons breathed fire and demons screamed, “Fear!”
The soul in the darkness felt no friend was near.
And so, what was known of the all-present past,
Boasted to love, “I will surely outlast!”
 
But the first beam of sunshine to hit the far hills,
Welcomed the Father who does as he wills.
And the secret heart crying in shadows of night,
Had hope that its Savior would make all things right.
 
So, the brightening hues of the promised relief,
Broke the grip of the night that had flooded with grief.
And the child who had thought that the darkness would stay
Walked into the light of the Father’s new day.
 
“But what of the monsters that come in the night?”
The little child asked while enjoying the light.
“They are but a dream that is gone when you wake,
And I love to slay monsters for my own great name’s sake!”
 
“So walk in the light of this gracious new day,
And listen so well to the words that I say.
As they are the truth that will set your soul free,
For even in sorrow, you will still be with me!”
 
Poem © 2021 Monte Vigh (August 6, 2021)

 

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

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

 

On This Day: The Ultimate Higher is Jesus Himself

   But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
(John 4:23-26)

   For a very long time I have had a verse of Scripture overlaid over everything I do, and everything I desire for other people. It is Jesus’ words in his High Priestly prayer of John 17, “And this is eternal life, that they KNOW YOU, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

   Everything the Scriptures say about eternal life is ultimately about knowing the Triune God. Everything we do in the church is about people knowing God. Every leader of anything in the church should have a testimony of knowing God in a constantly growing and maturing kind of way.

   With that in mind, when I look at Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman, and I consider his aim of leading her to drink of the living water that would well up within her to eternal life, and then I feel the weight of his concluding words, “I am he”, I see how masterfully he led her to HIM. He was leading her to KNOW him.

   As I consider a lifetime of Highers-Deepers with Jesus, I see how he led me through “the valley of the shadow of death” on so many occasions to get me to the next experience of feeding in green pastures and lying down beside quiet waters. These experiences were all coordinated by God to lead me to know that “The LORD” who is “my shepherd” is “Yahweh” the Son. Meaning, Jesus is the shepherd David was talking about.

   This is why David was so personal about everything long before “the gospel” (good news) rang out at Jesus’ birth. Because the Lord Jesus Christ is my shepherd, “I shall not want”, or be lacking in anything I need. And then it is so clear:

   “HE makes me lie down in green pastures.”

   “HE leads me beside still waters.”

   “HE restores my soul.”

   “HE leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

   Therefore, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for YOU are with me; YOUR rod and YOUR staff, they comfort me.” Note the amazing change of focus from telling us about HIM, to speaking to HIM about how personally we can know him.

   “YOU prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies”.

   “YOU anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”

   “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD (Yahweh) forever.”

   What David testified in Psalm 23 a thousand years before Jesus came was a prophecy of the believer’s life. It would be about knowing God. Our life “in Christ” would be all about knowing God. The grand conclusion to Jesus’ dialogue with the Samaritan woman gives us an enduring picture of what it looks like to come to know God.

   I often talk to God about why he chose such a lonely road for me. He often reminds me that his ways and thoughts are so much Higher than mine that I need to trust his sovereign goodness and join him in whatever work he shows me each day. However, he also reminds me that his Holy Spirit has directed me into my place in the body of Christ so I can just be myself in Christ and trust him to build up others as he chooses. 

    Which makes me want to encourage you all the more to set your heart on knowing God. Agree with him about every Higher he shows you in his word no matter how painful or hopeless your life appears to be. Admit to him every Deeper thing you come to next and present it to him the way the Samaritan woman did. And remind yourself that the Samaritan woman was interacting with Jesus for real before she even knew who he was!

   As I write this, I keep having Paul’s words echoing in my mind, “that I may know HIM and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10). Paul’s example is based on the universal gift of God to all who believe: eternal life. And that eternal life to all believers has a universal reality: to KNOW God.

   Our journey through the Higher-Deepers of the Samaritan woman, along with our own personal experiences of God’s gracious ministry to our souls, invite us to “hunger and thirst” for the “righteousness” of knowing God, because Jesus has already provided everything we need to fulfill the “they shall be satisfied” promise.

 

© 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 Time for New-hearted Worship

   Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:21-24)

   Many of us are familiar with the expression “worship in spirit and in truth”. My experience is that few want what Jesus was talking about.

   It helps to remember the three possible views of how church people relate to this. The Legalistic pendulum extreme on one side focuses on truth without spirit. The Charismaniac pendulum extreme on the other side focuses on spirit without truth.

   Between the two is the Plumbline experience of worship that always keeps the two together. The “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth”.

   The Samaritan woman was coming from a background where the worship was physical rather than spiritual. It was all earthly history, earthly heritage, earthly location, earthly prejudices between the Jews and Samaritans.

   It was also false instead of true because the Samaritans had a corrupted version of what God had given in the Scriptures and so their ideas about God and worship were on the wrong track.

   However, even though Jesus clarified that “salvation is from the Jews”, he didn’t mean that the way the Jews were worshiping in Jerusalem was acceptable to God. He meant that the salvation God was now offering the world through his Son came through the Jews. The foundation for knowing God was not in Samaria, it was in Israel. And Jesus was the one who was giving the good news of great joy that a Savior was given to man by which all people could repent and experience the born-again life.

   Jesus made this clear with Nicodemus who needed to be “born again” just as much as the woman at the well needed to drink Jesus’ “living water”. The two expressions are facets of the same diamond. No one is inherently saved. No one is inherently good enough for God. Everyone needs to be born again by drinking the living water of salvation in Jesus Christ our Lord.

   Since I am sharing this as part of the Higher-Deeper way Jesus was relating to the Samaritan woman, I expect that anyone who opens their hearts to how Jesus taught her will also see their own Higher-Deepers in effect. All of us are called to look Higher in worship than we ever have before. Not to something different that no one has ever thought of, but what is in Jesus’ words, that our worship must be both spirit and truth. And we must look Deeper inside ourselves to bring everything within us to worship God spiritually and truthfully no matter what we see coming up from our secret hearts.

   It is twenty-five years ago that God was leading me into home church ministry without me seeing the destination. He had spoken in his word of some Higher things that were in the works, but I had the same obtuseness of the disciples that simply couldn’t see where he was going with the Deeper things that were unfolding.  

   However, only months later I could see this most amazing gift of a group of people discovering that we did not need to confine our worship of God to church buildings, single locations, structured rules and regulations, denominational distinctives, or anything else that was physical.

   Rather, we were on our way to learning a new dimension of worshiping in spirit and in truth. We could gather in anyone’s home, any time that was good for our people, seeking what was best in encouraging our spiritual attachment to God in fellowship with a love of the truth of his word.

   No, worshiping in spirit and in truth is not confined to home church ministry since that would just be continuing the Jewish/Samaritan feud about where to worship.

   Yes, anyone who has been born again into the new life of the Spirit can worship in spirit and in truth anytime they worship, anywhere they gather with fellow believers in their version of church, and with anyone who is a spirit and truth worshiper of God.

   So, why do I think that many church folk know this Scripture, but few want to live it?

   Answer: because I am now old enough to have decades of experience in many different churches that has shown me what Larry Crabb prophesied to me in his book, Inside Out, 35ish years ago: church people are more committed to self-protection than to knowing and doing the will of God.

   Using the Highers-Deepers of the Samaritan woman as a measure, I have now learned that people will initially feel an amazement and wonder that they are getting to know God in Higher ways and beginning to learn how to relate to him from their Deeper state of being.

   However (and this is close enough to unanimous to treat it as such), the consistent pattern has been that one day, God leads someone from the amazing Higher they just shared about with excitement, to a Deeper that opens a door through their self-protection to things they had hidden from everyone (God included), and suddenly they can’t trust God for the next Higher. And yes, I have seen this as much in home churches as in institutional churches.

   I share this as a Higher-Deeper of its own. The Higher is God’s calling to worship him in spirit and in truth because he seeks us out with a desire to have us, and he has given us the new covenant in Jesus’ blood which gives us new hearts by which to worship him in the “new way of the Spirit”, as Paul called it.

   The Deeper is whatever we see inside ourselves that isn’t there yet. Hidden sins? Childhood trauma? Unresolved guilt, shame, and fear? Feeling worthless and seeing no hope of that every changing? Experiences shrouded in darkness that do not want to come into the light?

   We can bring ALL THOSE THINGS to God the Father in spirit (a genuinely spiritual way) and in truth (letting what is true about us cling to what is true about God). And meeting God in our Deepers that do not yet know him for real will continue leading us into the Highers of knowing God for real in spirit and truth kinds of ways.

   If any of this doesn’t sound quite right to you because of thoughts that are coming out of nowhere, please do not read things in to this that I’m not saying as if I’m the one saying them. And please do not take my word for it! Join Jesus and the Samaritan woman in the Higher-Deeper journey of John chapter 4, and make sure you are relating to God in your spirit (new heart), while seeking to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth of God from his word and his Spirit.

   And, if you don’t have anyone in a church to talk about whatever is coming up for you, make sure you keep talking to God your Father about it without fail, and let me know if I can contribute anything from my place in the body of Christ.

 

© 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 Higher-Deeper of Heaven and Earth

   Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” (John 4:10-12)

   As I continue through John 4 (Jesus’ visit with the Samaritan woman), I am sharing how Jesus led her to look at something Higher than she had ever had to think about, followed by something Deeper inside her that she had to admit before the next Higher. I can’t recall when I first noticed this pattern (my first writing about it appears to be January of 2008), but I have not been able to unsee it!

   The first Higher-Deeper for “the woman at the well” was that Jesus blew her mind by giving her a first-time experience of a Jewish man treating her with respect, followed by her deep feelings of how the animosity from the Jews had shaped her understanding of herself in their eyes. From Jesus’ first words, “Give me a drink,” something was radically different. You can read more about this in my previous post.

   The next Higher is expressed in Jesus’ words, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” This lifts the woman’s thoughts into something that could only be revealed from heaven, that there was a gift of God, and there was something distinct about Jesus. These realities together were of such a profound goodness and grace that, if she had only known these things when she saw Jesus at the well, Jesus wouldn’t have even had time to ask her for water, because she would have been pleading with him for the living water that only he can give.

   This sense of, “If you knew…” hit me very personally. It took me back through the spiritual markers of my life where I came to know God better than ever. Each time that happened, it was Jesus giving me something I hadn’t known. And it led me through Highers and Deepers I did not even recognize as a pattern for many years.

   I believe there is a universal sense in which we can come to God’s word every day and expect a Higher of the heavenly variety. God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, so every time with God, every sermon in church, every teaching video online, will have something in it that lifts our thoughts higher than we have ever considered. And as we expect this to happen for us, we will get a sense of what it felt like for the Samaritan woman the first time it happened for her.

   The Deeper part of this is the way it led the woman into her heart where she had to verbalize a simple reality: all she knew about a gift from God was “our father Jacob” who “gave us the well…” That may have been a unique Deeper for her, but it is also a universal Deeper for us as we realize that, at the same time as God opens our minds to some new truth from heaven (as revealed in Scripture), it will confront the limitations of our earthly experience. Perhaps the limits of our church’s denominational distinctives, or the limits of our parent’s experience (or non-experience) of God, or even just the fact that every day we are only so far along on our journey and today’s lesson from heaven will show us the limit of where we left off the day before.

   While there is so much more to say about this (including how this continues to rhyme with what Jesus taught Nicodemus, and how it shows the Beatitudinal Valley Jesus was leading the woman on at the same time), the focus for today is to consider how the Holy Spirit will reveal Highers to us in the word that feel like we are being told kingdom-of-heaven things we hadn’t known before, and this will expose the Deepers of whatever earthly limitations we have put on our walk with God up to this time.

   My encouragement is to meet God in both. If his word says something Higher we simply haven’t seen before, welcome it right away and feel the childlike wonder of a heart, soul, mind, and brain, being graced with the gift of knowing something that is on our Father’s mind.

   At the same time, if the “if you knew…” truth exposes a Deeper awareness of how earthly our thinking is about ourselves, and God, and the kingdom of heaven, and the “good news of great joy”, and walking in the Spirit, praise God for the “blessed are the poor in spirit” gift of grace and tell him what you’re thinking. Whatever thoughts come to mind, tell “our Father in heaven” in prayer, and continue meditating on his word as he works these things out in our lives in the most real and personal of ways.

 

© 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 Higher-Deeper of Love and Prejudice

   Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

   A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) (John 4:1-9)

   Years ago, my journey through Jesus’ visit with the Samaritan woman led me to see the way Jesus would say something to her that made her thoughts go HIGHER than ever before, but that led to her having to look DEEPER into herself than she had ever done. Ever since, this HIGHER/DEEPER way of relating to God in his word has richly blessed me.

   So, coming again to John 4 is like a return trip to Ucluelet, BC. There is a history of visits to this passage of Scripture, an anticipation of seeing things I haven’t seen before, and the expectation of experiencing it as the person I am this time through the journey.

   The first Higher/Deeper experience came in the opening scene of the drama. We have what appears to be a typical Jewish man resting by the local well. Enter stage right is a not-typical Samaritan woman. Typical in being Samaritan, yes. Typical in being a woman, yes. But not-typical in coming to the well all alone.

   Think of the shock and strangeness to this woman when a lifetime of animosity between Jews and Samaritans is blasted with something she could never have expected. The cultural stereotype of prideful and hateful Jewish men relating to despised and hated Samaritans (and the feeling was mutual) was being utterly broken by Immanuel, God with us, the Word who became flesh to dwell among us.

   The first application of this is to encourage you to have a daily time with God in his word and prayer where you listen for what he is saying, look for how he is working to accomplish his will in those things, and diligently join him in his work as best as you know to do. As much as we can learn from someone else’s sharing from the word, we always learn more from attaching to God for ourselves in the two-way relationship of his word and our prayer.

   The second application is to consider our own experience with encountering God’s Highers and our Deepers. Every time we read God’s word, he will be revealing something to us that is Higher than what we have learned about him. When we say, “I’ve never noticed that before,” or “something stood out that I never considered,” or “Why have I never noticed that verse!”, or even just, “What stood out today was…”, we are describing a Higher. And, since God says that “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9), we sure better expect that when we meet with him, seeing “higher” things is a way of life for his children.

   The Deepers to look for are always where God points his spotlight inside us. What do we suddenly see inside ourselves that tells us how we are doing? What clash do we feel between the Higher thing God is showing us in his word and our “blessed are the poor in spirit” acknowledgement of how sadly we aren’t experiencing what is written, or we just don’t know him like that. This is the gift of the Deeper, seeing where we are in relation to what God is saying and doing.

   In the case of the Samaritan woman, her Deeper was the inescapable feeling of being despised and rejected by the Jewish people. She had to feel that before discovering that this was the Messiah who “was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3).

   Do you see that? In the first-step of the Higher/Deeper she encounters a man who is willing to break all the barriers of custom and culture to give her the honor of helping him out with a drink of water, and she feels this strange event on the Deeper of a heart that has borne the shame and disgrace over her ethnicity in the eyes of Jewish men. And that, we will see, is the genius of the Savior who has compassion on the people living in darkness because he saw them as sheep without a shepherd.

   I am truly looking forward to the rest of this journey through John 4 and the gift of meeting with Jesus and this woman who becomes my sister in Christ before the scene is finished. I am in awe and wonder that John takes us from Jesus’ one-on-one with Nicodemus, a good, Jewish religious leader who struggled with Jesus’ teaching on being born again, and leads us through Jesus’ one-on-one visit with a sinful Samaritan woman who entered the kingdom of heaven on the same day she just went to the well for water.

   In all of this, as John put front and center in his prologue, “…we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace… No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known” (John 1:14-18).

   This is what was happening to this poor and unsuspecting Samaritan then, and it shines even more brightly for us today as we get to see the whole scene in just a few minutes of reading (and hour-upon-hour of meditating!). Can you see how God is doing this very thing with you 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.)

 

On This Day: When Today’s Nicodemus Meets Jesus

   Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? (John 3:9-12)

   For a long time, I have pondered how different modern “apologetics” is from what I read in Scripture. The whole idea of apologetics comes from the Greek word “apologia”, which means to make a defense. Peter spoke of this when he wrote about “always being prepared to make a defense (apologia) to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).

   As I have considered that Peter was writing to persecuted Christians, not contemporary Bible students, and that the New Testament is full of examples of what it means to give a defense for the reason we have hope, it has stood out that the biblical focus is not proofs for creation, proofs for the worldwide flood, proofs for the divine authorship of any particular book of the Bible (all good things), but on explaining what God has done for us in Jesus Christ and then watching how it divides the “few” from the “many”.

   Quite recently, when I went through the book of Acts, I was drawn to the way Paul shared the good news in Athens where the people had no knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures or what Jesus of Nazareth had done to secure our redemption. It was very instructive to see what Paul did and did not emphasize. I could see that he stated the truth of what we all must deal with in relation to God, and then met with those who believed.

   Now I am in John 3 where Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus is showing me how the Messiah addressed what this “teacher of Israel” needed to hear. And what I conclude today is that Jesus wasn’t doing left-brain apologetics. He wasn’t matching proofs to challenges.

   Instead, he was seeing the soul-condition of a man who was not alive. This teacher of Israel was still dead in his trespasses and sins.

   And THAT attracts my attention. How did Jesus speak to a man who saw nothing more than signs that proved Jesus must be from God in some way he couldn’t figure out?

   Answer: Nicodemus, “You must be born again”!

   How does that explain the hope that is within me?

   The reason for the hope within me is that I have been born again!

   How have I been born again?

   Well, let me tell you a story…

   And on we go into the “good news of great joy” that God has given us “a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

   Let me tell you what Jesus Christ did for us through his sinless life, his horrifying death, and his liberating resurrection. 

    Let me tell you about how “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” and how the Good Shepherd of Psalm 23 came “to seek and to save the lost”.

   Let me tell you how “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (II Corinthians 5:21), and how “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14).

   And let me share the wonder that “God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27) so that my hope is perfectly defensible. It makes perfect sense that I would have hope in Jesus’ return, in my resurrection, in me becoming like him when I see him as he is, when you list all the things that God did for us through Jesus Christ so that the faith I have in the present time is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

   Which brings me back to this whole soul-condition stuff. Jesus came to give “rest to our souls”. That rest includes the justification by grace through faith I have already experienced upon being born again by the Spirit. It rests on the sanctification by grace through faith whereby I am presently being “transformed into the same image (as Jesus) from one degree of glory to another” (II Corinthians 3:18). And it rests on the promised glorification by grace through faith by which I will finally be “glorified with him” who secured our so great salvation.

   How do I see Jesus doing this with Nicodemus?

   The central thing is that Jesus spoke exactly what Nicodemus needed to hear to be born again. We can’t improve on that.

   What do our present-day Nicodemuses need to hear? “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

   And when they complain that this doesn’t make sense, what do we say? “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

   And how do we explain why we aren’t going to argue in earthly ways? Because “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Which means, arguing in the flesh only produces fleshliness. Earthly thinking. It goes nowhere. That’s why Paul warned Timothy not to waste time in such things.

   And when the Nicodemuses still defend their right to unbelief, we echo Jesus’ words, “You must be born again.”

   This continues into Nicodemus asking, “How can these things be?” Isn’t that a perfect time to go into contemporary apologetics and explain all the reasons we know the Bible is true? There may be some room for this, considering most people we will talk with don’t know their Bibles like Nicodemus did.

   However, while contemporary apologetics seems to aim at helping people understand, Jesus’ focus was on helping Nicodemus see that in his soul-condition he did not understand. Jesus made a point of it. He made Nicodemus admit, at least in his mind, that he was a teacher of Israel and did “not understand these things”. He pointed out that his problem was, “you do not receive our testimony”.

   And today, I have been meditating on this: “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (John 3:12).

   What stands out is that Jesus did not try telling Nicodemus earthly things to help him accept heavenly things. Rather, he exposed the sinner’s soul, that his inability to understand the earthly things made the heavenly things impossible.

   This wasn’t to show him it was impossible, but that it was impossible for HIM, for Nicodemus, for the man who was not born again!

   And just in case anyone is wondering if I would turn this into a system whereby I develop my own brand of apologetics, no, I’m not interested in that. Neither am I suggesting that the apologetics that can explain all the background information to other religions, to atheists, agnostics, and skeptics is without value.

   All I am sharing is that, when we look at how Jesus did things, his work was to address people’s soul-condition in a Beatitudinal way that would cause them to feel poverty of spirit, to mourn their sin and ignorance, and to meekly resign to their own helplessness and the authority of Jesus Christ. Why? So they would hunger and thirst for righteousness that is satisfied while every man-centered quest for righteousness is constantly denied.

   Ever since I began factoring in the Beatitudes into everything God is doing with me and others, it is apparent that Jesus was doing this all the time. He wanted Nicodemus to feel his poverty of spirit. This would not come from earthly arguments about how we know the Bible is true, but from the admission in a sinner’s heart that he or she does not have eternal life.

   I am eager to see how John 3:16 will sound to me a few verses from now when I get to it. But right now, do any of us need to admit that we are not born again and that is why we are always looking for signs instead of attaching to Jesus’ words?

   Do we need to agree with Jesus’ assessment that, for all our searching, our problem is that we do not understand (because we are not born again)?

   Do we need a reminder that we have already repeatedly NOT received the testimony of Jesus, John the Baptist, and the apostles in what they have written of the kingdom of God?

   And do we need to admit that we have struggled to understand the earthly things (like evidence for the Bible’s divine authorship), and that is why we are having so much trouble accepting the heavenly things?

   I know I have a propensity to say far too much. But I hope this little bit explains how Jesus seems to focus on exposing people’s soul-condition rather than giving left-brain evidences that prove the Bible can be trusted. If people aren’t born again, they cannot see beyond the “signs”, the external evidences of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

   As I’m watching Jesus’ ministry to Nicodemus, I have in mind that there is good reason to believe he did become a disciple in the end. He was one of the men who took Jesus’ body down from the cross and placed it in the tomb. But I’m also watching how Jesus shared the good news with him in a Beatitudinal way so that, instead of left-brain arguments, he gave right-brain attachment to show that Nicodemus did not have attachment to God. And Jesus’ signs weren’t enough to give him that. He needed to be born again.

   Centuries ago, Augustine described how he had to believe to understand rather than understand to believe. He was expressing the new birth. He had to be born again to “get it” about everything else, and that is what we see Jesus doing for Nicodemus back in the day, and us in our time.

   If none of this is clear to you, take the time to read the first two chapters of John to see how they lead to Jesus’ visit with Nicodemus in chapter 3. Perhaps you need the same journey he took to come to know Jesus for real.

 

 

© 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 Crucified Savior Who Resurrects Himself

   So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:18-22)

   I recently heard someone refer to this verse where Jesus said he would raise himself. Then I was watching some Gary Habermas videos yesterday (I highly recommend the guy) about Jesus' resurrection.

   So, when I came today to Jesus' own words on the matter, that he would raise himself, I considered the whole thing going on with Jesus' body/soul/spirit humanity and his eternal deity.

   I would remind you that my focus in getting to know God through his word is not on forming doctrinal statements, but on understanding his word and growing to know him better each day than I have ever known him before.

   In the brain science view, I don’t just want a left-brain belief; I also want a right-brain bond with God. I want to know the truth about him, but I also want to know him in his truth.

   As I pondered all these things this morning, I found myself wandering into a field of thoughts I had never really considered: What happened to Jesus in his body/soul/spirit/deity when he died?

   First off, the only “part” of Jesus that died on the cross was his body. Like any other human, his soul/spirit was still alive, and this was in union with his divine nature. I do not want to do an injustice to this by reducing it down to words, but to invite you into what G. Campbell Morgan once said, that “out of wonder, worship is born.”

   Yes, this is about feeling wonder about Jesus as “the Word” who “became flesh” to live among us. This is the wonder of considering the union of Jesus’ humanity and his deity during his 30+ years of living among us. We don’t need to reduce it to a perfectly worded statement; we need to let ourselves be the children who stand in awe of our glorious Savior in his place in the glory of the Triune God and delight in the feelings, and thoughts, and desires that come with that. The wonder of having a Father whose thoughts are so far above us that we cannot contain them all, but what we can contain causes us to delight in him, and rejoice in his love, and praise him for our security in Jesus Christ.

   Which brings us back to Jesus' claim that he himself would raise himself from the dead. Yes, Jesus, fully alive and fully himself, raised his human body from the dead, re-entering it in some way that seems mindboggling to me, and in his glorified body made so many appearances to his disciples that even unbelievers and skeptics admit that the early church absolutely believed that Jesus was divine, and that he was raised from the dead.

   Two dozen years of watching what children are like with us in our home has helped me immensely in appreciating why God wants me to come to him like a child, rest in his love, feel the reverence and awe and wonder of his presence, and, today, marvel at how Jesus now lives forever in his glorified human and glorious divine existence because he raised himself from the dead.

   And I really look forward to seeing him as he is!

 

 

© 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.)

 

 

Today's Short: "Watching Disciples Being Discipled"

 

© 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: A Sign of Glory for a Disciple’s Faith

   Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.” So they took it. When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him. (John 2:6-11)

   Today was one of those “domino” kind of experiences in the word. One thought kept leading to another until I found myself somewhere that felt both brand new and familiar at the same time.

   When I consider what a sign meant in John’s writing, I relate it to what signs do today. They point us somewhere we are intended to go. So, where are we going with this sign?

   When I read about how the sign “manifested” Jesus’ glory, I want to let myself see this. I want to be real with it, like I don’t want to miss anything it is showing me.

   And that means that it isn’t first and foremost about what I see, or what I am getting out of my devotions, or what I have time for today, but what God is manifesting to us today in what he manifested about his Son back in the day.

   It is standing out that what Jesus manifested in that sign was his glory, and that John’s prologue has already told us to expect this. Our guide for the journey (the apostle John in this case) has already told us something about how to think about what we are seeing.

   Which begs the question, are we the people who won’t be convinced of Jesus’ glory until we have seen every sign and come to a conclusion about them? Or are we the ones who already know that the whole gospel account of John will be revealing and manifesting the glory of the Word who became flesh, the Word who was God, and was with God, and was the Life that is the Light of men to this day, and we are ready for it, watching for it, receiving it, delighting in it?

   The biggest part of this seemed to be where I ended up in my journey, that a disciple is someone who has attached to a specific teacher for the purpose of learning that teacher’s way of life. At least two of Jesus’ first disciples had already been disciples of John the Baptist, which meant they had attached to him as a teacher and were learning from him. But as soon as John pointed them to Jesus as “the Lamb of God”, they became disciples of Jesus instead, exactly as John had wanted.

   The part of discipleship that really stood out to me was the attaching to a teacher part. Disciples had purposefully attached to a teacher they believed in as a good teacher, a good role model, a good example of living as a human being. This was the common way of educating oneself, to become a disciple of a teacher.

   Lately, I have seen so many cheap grace pop-ups that focus on proving to people that there is nothing expected of us except to believe. They believe that anything more than that is a work in progress. But they leave out what the gospel calls us to, and that believing means fully attaching to what the gospel says. It is all of faith, but as the two disciples had first attached to John the Baptist as their teacher, and then they switched to attaching to Jesus as their teacher, when we are told by Jesus to “go and make disciples,” we are already under obligation to Jesus as our teacher that we put into practice what he says, which means making disciples who from the first breath of salvation are eager to attach to Jesus as their teacher.

   You know, like we want to learn from him.

   Or more precisely, that we want to be filled with the Holy Spirit who “will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (John 14:26).

   Why are we to be taught all things?

   So we will be the “wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock” instead of the “foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:24-27).

   I keep coming to the way Paul introduced and concluded Romans with the aim “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Romans 1:5) and “according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26).

   Does your personal discipleship under Jesus Christ your Lord look like you are eagerly learning whatever Jesus is teaching you through his word and his Spirit every day? Do you describe your response to God’s word each day as “the obedience of faith”? If our belief in Jesus is no better than what the demons believe, we can’t even be sure we are saved!

   But if our faith in Jesus looks like sheep following their Shepherd, like children following their firstborn brother, like disciples learning from their teacher, with everyone watching knowing we are disciples by our love for one another, it is likely that the fruit is proving the tree good.

   Where are the dominos of God’s word leading you today? And are you already to do whatever it takes to keep in step with the Spirit?

 

 

© 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.)