Day 13- Personal Preference

I have been in Mark for a little while now and I love how it can give me new truth even though I think it’s tapped out for one section. As I was studying Mark 1:7 I got stuck on the word “come”. It is a common word but in this verse has a lot of meaning! The verse is: And this was his message: “After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I struggled with this word because in the Greek it is in the middle voice or the passive deponent. You generally have the active voice (the boy hit the ball) or the passive voice (the ball hit the boy), however this one is different. I had to call John, Jeremiah, and Stephen to help with this but it was good stuff. The middle voice is the noun of the sentence doing something to itself. For instance, I wash myself or I feed myself. So it is a special interest that it taking place. So I began to try and put that into this context and figure out what John the Baptist was talking about, since this was Mark quoting him. I began to think of the knowledge that John the Baptist had of Jesus and the only thing I could think of was when he was in the womb and Elizabeth and Mary were hanging out and John sensed Jesus’ presence and leapt in his mother’s womb. So he had a general sense of Jesus even before birth, but how did he have that kind of knowledge of Jesus. Then it hit me, since John the Baptist was a messenger of, or and extension of, God then he had this knowledge of Jesus from the Father. So when I was thinking of the word come I was thinking that this would tell me the reason that Jesus would come, verse eight tells us some of it, but there was more. It was Jesus submitting to the Father’s will so God the Father led Jesus out to John. But just to be clear on this, it wasn’t a kicking and screaming thing like I used to do when I had to go and do homework. It wasn’t a huge sigh and head tilted back thing where Jesus said “What does he want now?” kind of thing. No this was a total willing thing that Jesus was responding to the Father and His will, not Jesus will. But this also gives the idea of personal preference so Jesus was led by the Father out there, but He also went out there on His own accord. He wanted to do this and chose to do this and by doing so had the Father’s vision because He was responding from before. Then the final part of why Jesus came out there is verse 8 that He will baptize with the Holy Spirit. So it’s almost an order that you can see here, response to the Father will cause you to see the same vision that He has to the point you have a personal preference to what He’s doing. Then once you do respond and have His vision to see what He sees you experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Wow, I want that so badly in my life. I want Him to lead me without me asking stupid questions of how or when or where. I want to follow blindly and completely trust in Him that He will not lead me into anything that will lead to death and destruction. Then after that I want to have the Vision of God to see the potential, the person, the image that He sees in a situation. Then finally I want to be so baptized in the Holy Spirit that it spills out of me to the point I become possessed and obviously His. Father make it so in my life today. I want to have your vision and personal preference and your Spirit so badly I leave my choice behind no matter what that may be.