From that time, many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him. You do not want to leave too, do you? Jesus? Asked the twelve. Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, John 666 68 a few episodes back, I mentioned my dislike for crackers that have been mauled and mishandled by store workers so that they crumble when I take them out at home after buying them at the store. My reasonable expectation that the crackers not crumble is sometimes unmet, and this is more than a little frustrating. Today I again got a tube of crackers from the pantry opening. The small package is not always as simple as it ought to be, and this being an especially stubborn package, the crackers slipped from my hand and landed on the kitchen floor. If experience is any indication, these crackers had already been damaged at the store, and dropping them myself made the damage even worse. Talk about adding insult to injury. Yes, let's do talk about that for a moment. Today, the incident recorded in John six was the result of Jesus calling out some folks for only pretending to have faith in him rather than actually having the real deal. John then tells us that a lot of those who had been following Jesus up to this point turned around and stopped following him. That's when Jesus turned to the twelve men he'd chosen as apostles and asked, you, don't want to leave too, do you? It's bad enough when anyone turns away, let alone those who claim to be closest to us. When relative strangers don't believe, it hurts. But when those closest to us walk away, well, that's adding insult to injury. To their credit, the twelve apostles said, Lord, if we left you, where would we go? You are the one with words of life. We're not going to get that from anyone else. So, no, we're not going anywhere. I'd settle for a handful of friends like that rather than a hundred of so called friends who bail out at the first sign of trouble, wouldn't you? But more than that, I don't want to be that guy whose mouth says that he honors Jesus, but whose life says otherwise. How about you?

This has been your thought for the day with Steve Burkham, pastor of Community Christian Church in Stockton, California. If you have questions or comments for Pastor Steve, please send them to dailythoughtspodcastmail.com dot. Have a great day, and we hope you'll join us tomorrow as pastor Steve opens God's word to bring us another thought for the day.