The Children's Bread

Matthew 15:26

Jesus responded, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to dogs." 

I have a confession to make you guys. I like bread. Scratch that, I LOVE BREAD! 

Matter of fact, I'm addicted to bread. Bread is life! Bread gives me life! 

One of the main reasons I like dining in some restaurants is because they give you bread before your meals. 

There was this restaurant I went to a few times some odd years back called Heaven on Seven. A schnazzy joint located in downtown Chicago attached to an AMC theater, with New Orleans vibes and a menu with attributed southern delicacies. This place is where they would actually put honey in their butter and bring it out to you with slices of warm baguettes. When I tell you the spirit of the Lord would come upon me every time I visited that place! Look here! That little combination blessed my soul. 

Because, I love bread! 

Circa 2009 out with some good people celebrating a friend's birthday at the Cheesecake Factory and eating bread. 

Circa 1987 caught RED HANDED, eating bread.  

You guys got the hint? Haha! 

Yes, I just love bread.

So last week, I sparked a modest discussion about the dynamics of shame.

I basically wanted to do two things with that post, motivate you to develop or cultivate within your hearts some compassion for people who are suffering from some level of shame whether you know them or not. And two; prep anyone who has been handicapped by shame, for a release. 

Shame is not of God. The people who need to know this are not the people who are actually in shame but the people who make it impossible for others to be loosed from this thing. Ultimately, keeping the shameful stuck in the dark waiting to exhale! 

That's ok though, the light is coming to take back everything the darkness stole. 

(I got that from one of Ariana Grande's song. Don't judge me!)

There's this phrase that the saints would say and I've actually mouthed a few times in my walk, "Deliverance is the children's bread." 

I stopped saying it though as of recently because I no longer wanted to view it as a cute catch phrase. I instead, scoured the bible to substantiate it. 

Where did this phrase come from? What does it even mean? 

In order to answer these questions I went to the place where the phrase is presumably a derivative of; Matthew 15:26. 

I've found that in order to be a candidate for deliverance one must be bound by something and in need of being set free and this is not to be confused with God's healing. 

Where God's healing is directed towards a physical or mental infirmity, deliverance is directed towards some kind of emotional or spiritual bondage. Healing can be associated with the physically afflicted and mentally lame. Deliverance is for the emotionally enslaved or spiritually handicapped.

Does that make sense?

Every time Jesus showed up as a healer in the bible, He reversed the effects of someone's illness. Every time Jesus showed up as a deliverer in the bible, He evicted the spirit that had the person bound. 

Let's consider the account of the Syrophoenician woman's daughter in Matthew 15:26. Jesus wasn't going to heal her daughter at all. She'd made a fuss and agitated the disciples. They told him, "Hey can you handle that and send her on her way?" Jesus responded, "I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel only." He was really telling them He was on a strict assignment and didn't want to deviate. 

This is when He told the woman that it wasn't right to give the children's bread to dogs. 

Such harsh response to a woman who was just seeking help for her child right? Let me tell you why Jesus responded this way, because I was confused too. If we go back a few verses in the chapter, you find a discourse between He and the disciples on the topic of what defiles a man. A conversation might I add, that was sparked after one of their many encounters with the opps. (The petty Pharisees) 

The disciples didn't quite understand the parable Jesus shared with them so He had to break it down. He told them that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body. But the things that come out of a person's mouth come from the heart, and these defile the person. Then He told them, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts--murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a man, but eating with unwashed hands does not defile him.” (Matthew 15:19-21)

Fast forward back to the encounter with the Syrophenician woman. Jesus' reaction to her was not even really directed to her but a set up for the disciples to be reiterated. And her response, "Yes it is, Lord. Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table," was the icing on the cake. Because she emphasized some special considerations here. One, that dogs (non-Jews) could still receive the leftovers of something meant for the children (the Jews) if in fact they humbled themselves and accepted the Giver of the leftovers as their provider. 

Two, what came out of her mouth despite the fact that she was a Gentile with unclean hands reflected what was actually in her heart.
She was a believer!

Ah! 

So of course Jesus, honored her request!
Her faith was real and she wasn't even a Jew!

Back to the concepts of healing and deliverance. The texts says the woman told Jesus that her daughter was being tormented by a demon and that once she made such a great expression of faith, her daughter was immediately HEALED!

Now the only way any unclean spirit can torment somebody is by way of a heart wound, some kind of a soul fracture, or a literal hole in the soul, all of which needs to be closed up and HEALED. 

Once a person is healed of a thing the gateway that gives access to a hellish tormentor is closed thus sparking deliverance. Healing and deliverance are co-partners and are not to be sold separately. This past Sunday at church we learned the significance of water and wine. Pointing out the birth of Jesus' ministry at the wedding feast when he used water to turn it into wine and the appearance of water and wine at the climax of the gospels when Jesus was pierced in the side. 

My friends, I've come to tell you that healing and deliverance is a part of that equivalence. 

If we're going to say deliverance is the children's bread then we need to include healing as well because you can't have one without the other! Deliverance isn't a stand alone action. Nor is healing. If deliverance is the children's bread then healing is the butter mixed with honey! 

Anybody want to catch that? It's free.99! 

One must be healed first in order to be delivered. 

And no one can say they are delivered from a thing if they haven't first been healed of their original wounds. 

It is possible for a person to believe they are healed because they no longer feel any pain. An absence of pain does not suggest healing especially if they did not engage in some form of deliverance afterwards. An unhealed wound and an undelivered soul shows up in one's actions, behaviors, methods to cope, and triggers. 

The root of ones ailment or affliction, has to be dealt with and its cause must be severed at the root or risk witnessing symptoms that mock the wounded and mimic the weapons that caused the wound. 

I have another confession to make. This one isn't humorous though, You may want to brace yourselves. 

I used to watch porn until I was about 24 years old. I knew it was wrong but I would watch it so that I could get in the mood to masturbate which would sedate my depression. I'd been suffering from depression since I was about 11 or 12. I'd been masturbating since I was 6. I'd been tormented by evil spirits since I was 4. I was seeing vivid flashbacks of being sexually violated since as long as I could remember. 

Do you guys see the root?

I was in denial for a very long time that anything ever happened to me. This denial showed itself in my habits that I used to continue to pretend that nothing ever happened to me.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I forced myself to square up with these issues. I was tired of running. Tired of pretending like I was okay. I wanted to BE OK! 

When I stopped watching porn, my self gratification got worse. I stopped self gratifying when I was 28 and my depression and evil torments got worse. 

I had to physically separate from some people who were literally contributing to my wounds and the evil torments stopped. 

I begin to aggressively apply the word to my emotions and mental sphere which allowed me to unbraid deep rooted dysfunctions aiding my depression. 

Doing this freed up energy and an appetite to understand my entire makeup as a believer, the infrastructure of my gifts, and the warfare assigned to my call. I did all of this as I deliberately pursued Jesus and remained planted in the house of God. 

I managed to perform a lot of healing and deliverance on myself. But I don't believe everyone has that same strength or will power. Nothing is wrong with that.

Just like someone can go cold turkey and wean themselves from an addiction of some sorts while others have to be admitted to a detox facility, the same is true for people who need to be healed and delivered from other issues especially depression. 

I highly encourage therapy. I've been to therapy before. This go around I didn't seek counsel because I knew exactly what was wrong and how I wanted to deal with it. 

I'd just been running from it and self medicating for a long time.

Anyway, if you are struggling with something that's making you feel defeated and helpless, 

I urge you to seek Christian therapy! 

You can love Jesus and seek therapy too. You never know if that therapist that you fail to visit is God's way of administering the antidote to your issue. 

Get some professional help asap! 

Ok, despite coming into contact with the fierce temptation to give up and back out, I couldn't. I felt like I'd already passed my quit threshold and if I were to give up the fight, I'd be stuck in this agonizing state forever. The thought of remaining unhealed and bound scared me more than the process to get healed and get out! 

At the end of the day, the children's bread is available to everyone not just some people! The children's bread encompasses healing AND deliverance not healing OR deliverance. 

God is serious about the condition of your entire being. 

Even if it's a chronic illness. There's a root to everything!

 I honestly believe that in this hour, Jesus is very much willing to honor the requests of every man and woman in need of His empathic presence to reverse their afflictions of whatever kind. 

Humility will have to replace denial and deception in order to fully acknowledge that He is indeed, greater than anything.