The Divine Mentor by Wayne Cordeiro: Week Eight: Chapter 8: “Fresh Bread”

Hi everyone!

We’re nearing the end of our summer reading program—we only have a few chapters left of Wayne Cordeiro’s book The Divine Mentor—and I hope you’re getting a lot out of it. This is a simple book with a simple message that, if embraced, contains powerful positive implications for our lives. Personally I found this week’s chapter on “Fresh Bread” to be one of the most significant of the entire book.

Jesus expressly stated that He was the bread from heaven (John 6:35), and in the famous Lord’s Prayer, He told us to pray to receive that bread “daily” (Matthew 6:11). In this chapter Pastor Wayne reminded us that bread from heaven needs to be received on a daily basis for two reasons:

1. We are prone to quickly drift without it
2. Fresh bread quickly grows stale

In saying that fresh bread quickly grows stale, Wayne is not suggesting that God’s past work in our lives loses its potency or impact, but he is rightly pointing out that yesterday’s word doesn’t always sustain us today. Just as the manna (bread from heaven) in the wilderness disappeared as the day went on only to be replaced the following morning, so God wants us to live each day based on a fresh encounter with His Word.

When we study the Bible the way Pastor Wayne suggests (using his S.O.A.P. method) we enter the Word instead of just reading the Word. While there is certainly value in merely reading the Bible, it is vastly more powerful to study/journal/meditate in the Bible. It is in this process that the Word truly becomes “bread” that can nourish and sustain our souls.

I want to end this entry by repeating Wayne’s story about how his daily time in the Word became a guard rail that potentially saved his integrity and ministry. After being solicited by a prostitute from a high-end escort service in a plush hotel, Wayne had this experience with the Word:

“Immediately an inner voice interrupted. No one would know. You’re in a strange hotel, in a strange part of the country…and you deserve a break today! It may have been an illusion, but I thought I saw, out the corner of my eye, Joseph running from Potiphar’s wife. And when he passed me, he yelled, ‘You’d better follow me, Cordeiro—and follow me now!’

‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I forgot something in my room.’ And I ran to catch Joseph. When I got to my room, I bolted the door, and to this day I’m so glad I did!

Where do those parameters come from? Where do you get them? From the men and women who’ve been there before you (and who, daily, serve us with fresh bread from the Word of God).”

God bless you all!

Much love,

Chris Jackson