Reflection

Recent

Persisting stomach-ache disappears

Some time ago Maria stopped me after church. She told me how that day it dawned unto her she had not had a stomach-ache for over a year now. This was after they had been praying for her during a church meeting (the Lord had given a word that people with stomach-aches were being healed).
Not one stomach-ache in a whole year! Nothing special for people who never suffer from it, but Maria added that before, she used to have stomach-aches almost every day for years. She even had been treated for a gastric ulcer and that she often had to get up at night to throw up.

Obedience to God brings unexpected blessing

A while ago Arno felt God put it on his heart to donate to a certain Christian project. Arno obeyed and went to the bank to make the payment. There he saw his his daughter he hadn’t seen in 3 ½ years, she came up to him.

John, the disciple Jesus loves

For me and for many others, this is a stumbling block in the Bible. What to do about it? So Jesus seemed to love one of the disciples more than the others. Some even claim that Jesus had a homosexual relationship with John. But if you really want to understand the core of this verse, you just have to think twice and read carefully what it says. What's important is that it's not Jesus who makes this statement, but John. And nowhere in the Gospels do we read that Jesus says that He prefers one to all others.

So the saying and the conclusion come from John himself. Did he receive a special revelation? As far as I'm concerned, over the years it happened occasionally that someone said: "God is happy with you". It was a statement that I kept in mind because I was used to hearing sometimes "God loves you". But according to me there is a difference between loving someone and being happy with someone.

Recently an elderly lady came up to me after a meeting and said God told her to tell me He is happy with me. Usually I forget such a sentence quite quickly. But this time I began to think about it. I did not have a special revelation, but I did have the Word that clearly states that God loves us and is happy with us. So I decided to just accept that word.

Maybe the same happened to John. Maybe he was so proud that Jesus loved him that he felt the need to make it known, while the other disciples weren't so concerned about telling it. Nobody knows exactly how it went. It seems clear to me that Jesus did not love John more than the others. But one thing is for sure: John knew for sure that he was the disciple Jesus loved.

I just wanted to bring this to your attention and hope you will think about it. I wish you a lot of blessing with it.

Hugo, the disciple Jesus is happy with.