Repetition Has Value
Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and they in turn to the people. They all ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. The number of those who ate was four thousand men, besides women and children.
Matthew 15:36-38 (NIV)
While many who study Scripture have tried to suggest that the feeding of the 4,000 is the exact same episode as the account which numbers the people at 5,000, it is crystal clear to me that these two incidents are totally different.
In this instance, the supply came from seven loaves and a few small fish, not five loaves and two fish. Here, the leftovers filled twelve baskets. In the other instance, only seven basketfuls of fragments remained.
I think these details are given to us because God must want us to notice that these are two different—yet repetitive—events. Why? Why would God repeat such a similar narrative?
It appears to me that God is teaching us that repetition is powerful for our learning about Him, about us, and about God's purposes in and for our lives.
I have sometimes wondered about—and have also counseled many who struggle with—the repeated experiences of life. The things that seem to keep happening. The hurts that keep resurfacing from certain toxic interactions. The haunting thoughts that follow us no matter how elevated our positions in life. The cycles we thought we had broken. The decisions we keep making. The resulting stresses and strains that often come from them.
When you follow Jesus, you wonder in faith why God heals some things but lets others repeat themselves over and over again. Why does God bring total resolve to some things while letting other things keep revisiting us?
What is the spiritual value of experiential repetition?
I declare to you that we don't ever go through repetitive experiences where God has not attached spiritual meaning to them. He attaches purpose to each and every one of them.
So don't let the struggle of it, nor the familiarity with it, make you ignore it or take it for granted. I know it's not easy when the pain of the last cycle greets you again in the current cycle. You may not feel like you have the energy or the stamina or the faith or the spiritual fortitude to repeat a season. But I'm suggesting to you that God sometimes allows repetitive experiences and conditions and interactions and altercations and thoughts and experiences for this reason: They are necessary for shaping you into the person He wants you to be.
Some of the most important lessons we learn in life are learned through repetition.
A Future and a Hope
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV)
Jeremiah had the painful mission of being the minority prophetic voice to a people that found his message unappealing. His message was an attempt to turn Judah towards spiritual repentance, and he repeatedly announced to the people that it would be a wise choice if the nation would make the decision to rid the land of idolatry.
Now, God had warned Jeremiah that the people would ignore him and that they would be sent to captivity by their own spiritual rebellion. And as a result of Jeremiah’s unpopular message, he was never short of naysayers. He was never short of adversaries who were always lined up to make attempts at taking his life. And more than a few attempts were made to kill the tenderhearted prophet.
Of course, as you would imagine, this had a deep emotional effect on the prophet of God. He was God’s mouthpiece, but he was also human. As best as he could, he attempted to manage isolation and rejection and hurt. When you read his reflections, it is all too easy to discern how tired he was from being the daily laughingstock of the city and the constant target of cruel communal mocking. And yet he kept prophesying. Over and over again, as he declared the word of the Lord, he was thrown into prison. And the vicious cycle followed him throughout his entire ministry.
If anyone faced nothing but hopeless struggles, it was Jeremiah. But even though he faced those constant trials, he knew God would deliver him someday. And knowing that kept feeding his hope. He bleeds this blessed hope in chapter 29, verse 11 of the book that bears his name. In reflection about his calling versus his constant isolation and mistreatment, he tells us that God said to him, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you…thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Can you relate to Jeremiah? Are you weary from the constant trials, the pain of rejection, or the emotional rollercoaster of life? The words God spoke to Jeremiah can also be said of you: God is thinking about you. God’s thoughts about you are of peace and not of evil. God wants to give you a future and a hope.
Cling to that hope today.
Believe What You Believe
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
Hebrews 10:23 (NKJV)
If your core convictions can be hit hard enough that you will abandon them, then they really aren’t that core, are they?
On the other hand, if your core convictions are really cemented and anchored, it doesn’t matter how hard they get hit. It doesn’t matter how confusing God’s actions might be. It doesn’t matter how confounding life can become. It doesn’t matter how disorienting your journey is—because you have absolutes that you will never abnegate.
For example, I may not have heard the Lord give me a specific answer to my prayer, but I know He’s good, and I know He’s God. I may not know why He let life hit me so hard. I may not know why He’s let the road become so crooked. I may not know why the sun has been replaced by darkness. But I’m not giving up on what I believe about God: I believe He’s good. I believe He’s strong. I believe He’s all-powerful. I believe He loves me. And because I believe these things, I’m going to hang in there during the storm. I’m going to walk through the struggle, and I’m going to keep my testimony while I’m going through it.
This is where your faith, certainties, and convictions have to be sure.
Maybe it feels like God has hit you hard. But you must cling to what you know to be true: God will not dismiss you. He will not disregard you. He always has you in mind. His love is from everlasting to everlasting. He is perfect in His ways and His will is always with your good intended.
And if you believe these truths, there is nothing you can experience that can change them.
This is why you have to know your Bible. This is why your relationship with the Lord has to be deeper than just a connection. This is why you need to talk to Him daily—because life is going to hit you hard, and you have to hold on as tightly as you can to the convictions in your soul.
You’ve got to believe what you believe!
One More Comeback
In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
1 Peter 1:3 (NIV)
Nothing in this life can deny you one more comeback.
I don’t care how confusing this life gets. I don’t care how many walls you proverbially bump up against. I don’t care how busy the enemy has been lately in your life. Every time you get knocked down and somebody inches up beside you to whisper, “Is this the time that you’re going give up?” you can look up with whatever strength you have left and testify: “I don’t know how many more times I have, and I don’t know how my energy is going to stretch, but I know that if God woke me up this morning, then I’ve got at least one more comeback. And because I’ve got one more comeback, I’m going to give it my best.”
You may have heard of Louis Pasteur. He was the pioneer of immunology. He lived at a time when thousands of people were dying each year from rabies. Pasteur had worked for years trying to create a successful vaccine to that disease, and just as he was about to begin experimenting on himself, a nine-year-old boy named Joseph Meister was bitten by a rabid dog. The boy’s mama found Pasteur and pleaded with him to experiment on her son. Pasteur injected Joseph for ten straight days, and as a result, the boy lived.
Decades later, Pasteur selected the words that would be on his tombstone. Of all the things that he could have etched on it—including all his accomplishments, discoveries, accolades, and experience—he instead chose this simple inscription: Joseph Meister lived.
When I read about that story, my soul caught on fire because the message I’m trying to convey to you is that you’ve got one more comeback in you—not because Joseph Meister lived, but because Jesus lived and still lives. His resurrection is the evidence that there is life for you to yet live and work for you to yet accomplish. Because Jesus lives, you’ve got at least one more comeback!
An Unoffendable Faith
“Lord,” she replied, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he told her, “For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter.” She went home and found her child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
Mark 7:28-30 (NIV)
In the region of Tyre and Sidon, a woman made a request of Jesus that He heal her daughter of demon possession. This woman was not a Jew, but was in fact a Greek—a Syrophoenician by birth. His response to her request seems harsh. “First let the children eat all they want,” he told her, “for it is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” In other words, “Jews first, Gentiles later.”
What seemed to be an insulting shut-down by Jesus was actually a test of her faith—and it was a test that she passed. She answered, “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
Jesus was impressed by her unoffendable faith, and He granted her request by immediately setting her daughter free from the demon.
This text is really an invitation to us all to expect from Jesus times when our faith will be tested. There will be times when Jesus will pull on and stretch our faith so that it grows and deepens and becomes stronger.
Life will offend you. Life will dismiss you. Life will disregard you. And if your faith is present but is too temperamental and easily offended to roll with the punches, then it won’t produce healing in the possessed areas of your life. It will not stimulate growth that goes deeper rather than wider.
When your faith is feeble and offendable, you will shout when you succeed, but then be unable to utter the name of Jesus when failure grips your life. You will praise the Lord for great days but then barely talk to Him on bad days. That’s not the kind of faith Jesus wants to see in you.
So the Lord will use life to test you. He is not just looking for the evidence of faith, but He wants to test its capacity and its enduring capabilities. God will test your faith even to the degree that, like the Syrophoenician woman, you can live confused about God’s action without ever doubting God’s character.
This woman was rewarded for staying centered while being stretched. And you will be too if you can pass the test by holding onto your faith in those times when it doesn’t make sense.
An unoffendable faith is what the Lord is trying to develop in us.
