I lost a subscriber after my last entry.
Nothing dramatic. Nobody sent me an angry email. No doors were slammed on the way out.
One less subscriber.
When you're still early in this thing, it's pretty easy to notice when that number drops.
And for a second I wondered what made them leave.
Was it something I said?
Did my economic despair and all those numbers bore them right out the door?
Maybe they just got tired of seeing my name pop up in their inbox.
Who knows.
But then a better question crossed my mind:
If I knew exactly why they left, would it change what I write next?
Because there’s a difference between listening to criticism and being controlled by approval.
But I know why I started writing this newsletter.
It wasn’t to figure out what would keep the most people subscribed.
I felt pulled to write.
About my faith.
About the things I’m reading.
About what I see happening around us.
About the things that sit with me long enough that I feel like I need to put them into words.
And lately I’ve had this growing feeling that maybe this is a small part of something bigger than I can see right now.
But if I start deciding what I should say based entirely on what keeps everyone comfortable, eventually I’m not writing from conviction anymore.
I’m writing for retention.
A few mornings later, during my usual time in the Word, I found myself in John 6.
John 6 is one of those chapters most of us know before we even open it.
Five loaves.
Two fish.
Thousands fed.
One of Yahusha’s most recognizable miracles.
But there’s more to John 6 than the miracle most of us remember.
Thousands came for the bread. But the story doesn’t end after everyone is fed.
Everybody Wanted the Bread
John 6 begins with a crowd.
A huge one.
Thousands of people are following Yahusha, and when they need food, He takes five barley loaves and two fish and feeds them. (John 6:1–13)
Everyone eats.
Everyone is filled.
There’s food left over.
And the people are amazed.
They become so convinced by what they’ve witnessed that they want to take Yahusha and make Him king. (John 6:14–15)
If we were measuring the moment by attention, momentum and audience growth, things were going pretty well.
The crowd wanted more.
But Yahusha withdrew.
The next day, they went looking for Him again.
And when they finally found Him, Yahusha said something that exposed what was underneath all that enthusiasm:
“You are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.”
They wanted the bread.
They liked what He had given them.
But Yahusha wasn't interested in building a following around keeping everybody full.
He wanted them to understand Who had given them the bread.
But what Yahusha said next wasn’t what the crowd came for.
The Bread Wasn’t the Point
Yahusha tells them:
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
The same crowd that had just eaten until they were full was now being told that the bread they were chasing wasn't the point.
He was.
Yahusha tells them He came down from heaven.
The crowd begins to complain.
They knew His family. They knew Him as the son of Joseph. So how could He possibly say He came down from heaven? (John 6:41–42)
But Yahusha doesn't soften what He's saying.
He goes further.
He tells them that He is the living bread and that anyone who eats of this bread will live forever. (John 6:51)
Then He says something that would have been incredibly difficult for the people standing there to hear:
“Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”
And that's where the reaction changes.
These weren't just people standing on the outside criticizing Him.
John tells us that many of His own disciples heard this and said:
“This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?”
The bread had been easy to receive.
The teaching wasn't.
When the Crowd Leaves
Then comes John 6:66:
“From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.”
Many of them left.
The same chapter that begins with thousands following Yahusha ends with people deciding they can’t follow Him anymore.
And He lets them go.
He doesn’t chase after them.
He doesn’t soften what He said to make it easier to accept.
He doesn’t change the message because the crowd is getting smaller.
Instead, He turns to the twelve and asks:
“You do not want to leave too, do you?”
And He’s asking the twelve—the disciples whose names we all know from reading the Gospels. Even they were given the choice to walk away.
Because Yahusha wasn’t measuring the truth of what He said by how many people stayed to hear it.
And Peter answers, addressing Him as Adonai (Lord):
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
Peter doesn’t pretend to understand everything that had just been said.
He comes back to Who said it.
And that’s where John 6 brought me right back to the question I started with:
If I knew exactly why someone left, would it change what I write next?
And the answer has to be no.
Not because everything I write is right.
This newsletter isn’t Scripture, and I’m certainly not comparing myself to Yahusha.
But John 6 reminded me of something I don’t want to forget:
The reaction to a message doesn’t determine whether the message needed to be said.
People agreeing with me doesn’t automatically make me right.
And someone walking away doesn’t automatically make me wrong.
But I can’t let the fear of losing people decide what makes it onto the page.
Because I didn’t start Compounding Thoughts to figure out what people wanted to hear.
And I don’t want to slowly turn it into that either.
I’m not here to tickle ears with something satisfying every week just to keep a number moving in the right direction.
If something is placed heavily enough on my spirit that I feel I need to share it, then I have to be willing to put it into words.
Not because I expect everyone to agree with it, but because I would rather answer for what I said than for what I was too afraid to say.
Because whatever this becomes, I want it to come from a place of conviction—not approval.
I said earlier that lately I’ve had this growing feeling that maybe this is a small part of something bigger than I can see right now.
I still don’t know what that looks like.
But I know I don’t want to miss it because I was too busy trying to keep everybody in the crowd.
Maybe that feeling that I’m a small part of something bigger eventually makes sense.
For now, I don’t need to know.
I just need to keep showing up, keep spending time in the Word, and keep writing when there’s something on my spirit that I believe needs to be said.
Five loaves and two fish were never much to look at either.
What matters is being willing to bring what you have and trusting Elohiym with what comes from it.
Because if I ever start changing the message just to keep the crowd around, I’ve forgotten why I started writing in the first place.
Until next time,
Javier
Compounding Thoughts