DULLED SENSES

Well hello there!

How are you doing today? Here's hoping that you are fine and that you continue to enjoy God's direction in everything you do. 

Welcome to today's gist. 

While preparing another gist for today, I was reading the Bible this morning and something literally slapped me from Scripture and I decided to share that instead. 

So in Mark 6, after the feeding of the 5000, Jesus instructed His disciples to cross the boat to Bethsaida and while He sent people home and then went to pray. Later that night while the disciples were on their voyage, they ran into a violent storm and Jesus, seeing that the disciples had run into problem, decided to come to them, walking on top the water!

No be the walking on the water hit me oo! It's the fact that Jesus came to the disciples as soon as He saw them in their predicament. They hadn't even realised that they should call out to Him oo, while they were still struggling to do what they could, Jesus was already on the matter, coming with the solution to their problems. As I ruminated on this fact, I was struck anew with the magnitude of God's love for me; it is not just that He knows what I'm going through, it is that He is already actively working out my rescue even before I realise it. It's like Mercy Chinwo sang, "when I was worried and couldn't sleep, He was working behind the scenes…." God loves me that much! He loves me enough to come to my aid before I even start to understand my need for Him, this is a testament to His faithfulness; that regardless of how I am behaving, God will remain true to His nature and be forever faithful, He commends His love to me in that while I was yet a sinner, Christ died for me(Romans 5:8)! The God that loved me enough to pay the price to bring me to Him won't leave me helpless now. 

Scripture continues to say that when the disciples say Jesus, they cried out thinking He was a ghost. Jesus calms them down and tells them that He is the One. And the moment Jesus steps into the boat, the winds stopped! You know wetin Bible talk after that? "...and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered. For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened."(‭‭Mark‬ ‭6:51‭-‬52‬ ‭KJV‬‬)

Ehn?! 

You say!!

These people were coming from where Jesus just used 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish to feed over 5000 people, yet e dey wonder dem say E stop wind? Bible even says that they had not considered the miracle of the loaves for their heart was hardened! And in my mind, I was thinking, "you just witnessed this miracle, like it hasn't even been 24 hours oo!"

And then the Bible goes further to tell us that when they got to Geneserat and disembarked, the people saw Jesus and recognised Him at once and began to bring their sick in droves to wherever they heard Jesus was, and they weren't even trying to talk to Jesus oh! All they were they were trying to do was touch the border of His garments knowing that it would be enough to bring them healing. 

Now this is what slapped me about this story: some of these people who were running in droves to meet Jesus may have only known Jesus from stories they heard or from meeting Him 'once once', yet they had such firm belief in Jesus' power and His ability while the people who were with Jesus day-in and day-out were the ones in doubt of His power. And as I was thinking about this, I remembered something I had heard while in Secondary School; someone, I think my Biology teacher, had said that while the nose is the most sensitive of the sense organs, it's the one that quickly becomes acclimatized, so while the nose picks up smell, good or bad, quickly and reacts to it accordingly, it is also very quick to become used to the smell that its sensors are 'dulled' by it and it 'forgets' the smell, a phenomenon known as olfactory adaptation. As I remembered this, I realised that it was what happened to the disciples; they were quick to recognise Jesus and follow Him, leaving everything and everyone behind. Yet it would seem that their prolonged contact with Jesus had 'dulled' their senses and they began to forget who Jesus is and regard Him as one of the them, perhaps that's even why none of them thought to call out to Jesus for help when their boat was faced with the storm. 

The prayer that rose in my heart immediately was that I would never become so 'used' to Jesus that I would begin to downplay who He is and what He can do. You see sometimes it's easy to forget that God has power even while not forgetting, so while you remember that He is God and that He is Omnipotent, you look at issues and begin to magnify them so much that they seem to become bigger than God, like God power no fit reach that side. That's the wrong approach! The correct approach is to magnify God, to dwell so much in and on Him that your problems pale in comparison with Him every time. 

May God help us to never let situations that we go through cause us to forget His immense power and ability to save and to wrought wonders for us because if He could give us Jesus to die for us, will He not freely give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

NLS HOT GIST: It's 22 days to Bar Finals! Pray for me, and for everyone in Nigerian Law School; we need it!! 

In other news, my normal food vendors traveled and locked up for a week last week and omo! May God keep all of them in good health and prosperity oo because wetin my eye see for that one week? I no go like see am again. 

Well, that is that about that as far as that is concerned, see you next week!

Love,

Achenyo. 

PS. Which love note from God have you sent your own love note to?