The Bread of Life
How can I begin to explain to a world that does not want to see Jesus who He is? If I adopt the attitude that it is impossible for me to open blind eyes, I will never even try, but I must do my part to point the way so that the Great Healer can restore sight because that is what He wants. He calls us to tell the world who He is and what He has done for us. Thus, to even know how to begin to explain who the Savior of my entire life is, maybe I should follow His example for explaining Himself. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35, KJV)
That is a pretty outlandish statement, no doubt about it. And, it can be particularly hard to accept if one has no knowledge or understanding of God’s Word. Face it, most of us have very little knowledge of the Bible (sometimes just enough to be dangerous to ourselves and others). BUT, I’m going to use it anyway because Jesus is the best at explaining who He is, so let’s go with His metaphor, whether or not we readily accept and believe it.
I am convinced that all people can be grouped under the umbrella of one adjective: “hungry.” Every single human being on the planet knows what it feels like to be hungry at one time or another. Under that category are two subgroups: those who acknowledge their hunger and those who are convinced that they are not hungry. If one is satisfied within himself and what he can do to meet his own needs, full and content with everything he is doing, he’ll never admit to himself or anyone else that he is hungry. He’s fat and sassy! Life is good, and the world is at his feet and nothing is going to stop him. (I’m convinced that he’s really just as hungry as the rest of us; he just doesn’t acknowledge his hunger because, for the moment,
his methods of satisfying his hunger are working. They haven’t turned on him yet. “Yet” is the operative word there . . .)
People who know they are hungry search for food. They have two main choices: they can seek to fill their hunger the way the world fills it, or they can find bread that strengthens them and changes them and satisfies them. The world chases financial success; they pursue human relationships; they fulfill the desires of their flesh with a MULTITUDE of temporary satisfaction, feeding just about every desire there is; they build up their physical bodies, constantly making adjustments in their search for perfection; they continue to consume, consume, consume . . . but eventually, they will all admit that what they are seeking stops satisfying them for any length of time. Just look at American culture today. We are a people blessed with abundance, but we are never satisfied. We constantly seek more, more, more. Bigger and better and better and bigger—always hungry, rarely happy—but we know how to act like we are, talk like we are, convince ourselves that we are, when, in all reality, we are just hungry, hungry people filling our bellies with the wrong sustenance.
However, some people are hungry and know they are hungry but have learned to seek sustenance from the only supply that will never stop meeting their need. These people have found the Bread of Life. These people have found Jesus—or He has found them. When their eyes were opened to see Him, they chose to take Him in, instead of all the empty calories the world has to offer. When this happens to us, Jesus becomes real to us and in us, and we begin the journey of becoming something more than we ever realized we could be. Our entire lives change in a moment—not our circumstances, our lives. We begin on the journey we were meant to be on all along. We experience Jesus’ words: “Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6, KJV)
Once we have met Jesus like this do we stop being hungry and do our lives suddenly become outwardly perfect and pristine and without problems? Unfortunately, no, they do not. As long as we live in this world that has fallen so far from what the Creator intended it to be, we will experience hunger and pain and every other human emotion and desire. But, when Jesus is the sustenance of our lives, we are equipped to overcome the emptiness and ravenous devouring of this world. When we hunger and thirst after righteousness in the midst of a world that satisfies their cravings with rot and decay, we learn to ingest the Bread of Life.
If you have read this and are confused, but you want to know more, I urge you to seek Jesus. He promises that when we seek Him with our entire heart, we shall find Him. You know what the best part of that is? I am pretty sure that somewhere along the path to searching for Him, it’s really Jesus who finds us. He finds us right where we are and rescues us from a life of constant, unfulfilled hunger.
The first thing I encourage you to do is find Jesus in the Word of God—the Bible. Often, we claim it is too hard to understand or it is no longer relevant to our lives or it is a book of mythical stories that were written a long time ago to people who were uneducated and couldn’t think for themselves. Sadly, that is probably why many of us fail to see Jesus. After all, once again from God’s Word: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, KJV) Jesus no longer walks among us in the form of a man—but He left the Word with us. The first place to discover Jesus is in the Word of God. Start reading in the book of “John” in the New Testament. Don’t give up if you don’t understand what you’re reading. Keep reading. Keep seeking. Remember, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” When you seek after Him, and He finds you in your quest, you will experience the first of many meals of the best Bread you’ve ever tasted.
If you are interested in reading more articles of this type or researching what other people have to say about who Jesus is, please follow these links:
http://faithwritersjesuspage.weebly.com/
http://www.faithwriters.com
That is a pretty outlandish statement, no doubt about it. And, it can be particularly hard to accept if one has no knowledge or understanding of God’s Word. Face it, most of us have very little knowledge of the Bible (sometimes just enough to be dangerous to ourselves and others). BUT, I’m going to use it anyway because Jesus is the best at explaining who He is, so let’s go with His metaphor, whether or not we readily accept and believe it.
I am convinced that all people can be grouped under the umbrella of one adjective: “hungry.” Every single human being on the planet knows what it feels like to be hungry at one time or another. Under that category are two subgroups: those who acknowledge their hunger and those who are convinced that they are not hungry. If one is satisfied within himself and what he can do to meet his own needs, full and content with everything he is doing, he’ll never admit to himself or anyone else that he is hungry. He’s fat and sassy! Life is good, and the world is at his feet and nothing is going to stop him. (I’m convinced that he’s really just as hungry as the rest of us; he just doesn’t acknowledge his hunger because, for the moment,
his methods of satisfying his hunger are working. They haven’t turned on him yet. “Yet” is the operative word there . . .)
People who know they are hungry search for food. They have two main choices: they can seek to fill their hunger the way the world fills it, or they can find bread that strengthens them and changes them and satisfies them. The world chases financial success; they pursue human relationships; they fulfill the desires of their flesh with a MULTITUDE of temporary satisfaction, feeding just about every desire there is; they build up their physical bodies, constantly making adjustments in their search for perfection; they continue to consume, consume, consume . . . but eventually, they will all admit that what they are seeking stops satisfying them for any length of time. Just look at American culture today. We are a people blessed with abundance, but we are never satisfied. We constantly seek more, more, more. Bigger and better and better and bigger—always hungry, rarely happy—but we know how to act like we are, talk like we are, convince ourselves that we are, when, in all reality, we are just hungry, hungry people filling our bellies with the wrong sustenance.
However, some people are hungry and know they are hungry but have learned to seek sustenance from the only supply that will never stop meeting their need. These people have found the Bread of Life. These people have found Jesus—or He has found them. When their eyes were opened to see Him, they chose to take Him in, instead of all the empty calories the world has to offer. When this happens to us, Jesus becomes real to us and in us, and we begin the journey of becoming something more than we ever realized we could be. Our entire lives change in a moment—not our circumstances, our lives. We begin on the journey we were meant to be on all along. We experience Jesus’ words: “Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6, KJV)
Once we have met Jesus like this do we stop being hungry and do our lives suddenly become outwardly perfect and pristine and without problems? Unfortunately, no, they do not. As long as we live in this world that has fallen so far from what the Creator intended it to be, we will experience hunger and pain and every other human emotion and desire. But, when Jesus is the sustenance of our lives, we are equipped to overcome the emptiness and ravenous devouring of this world. When we hunger and thirst after righteousness in the midst of a world that satisfies their cravings with rot and decay, we learn to ingest the Bread of Life.
If you have read this and are confused, but you want to know more, I urge you to seek Jesus. He promises that when we seek Him with our entire heart, we shall find Him. You know what the best part of that is? I am pretty sure that somewhere along the path to searching for Him, it’s really Jesus who finds us. He finds us right where we are and rescues us from a life of constant, unfulfilled hunger.
The first thing I encourage you to do is find Jesus in the Word of God—the Bible. Often, we claim it is too hard to understand or it is no longer relevant to our lives or it is a book of mythical stories that were written a long time ago to people who were uneducated and couldn’t think for themselves. Sadly, that is probably why many of us fail to see Jesus. After all, once again from God’s Word: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, KJV) Jesus no longer walks among us in the form of a man—but He left the Word with us. The first place to discover Jesus is in the Word of God. Start reading in the book of “John” in the New Testament. Don’t give up if you don’t understand what you’re reading. Keep reading. Keep seeking. Remember, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” When you seek after Him, and He finds you in your quest, you will experience the first of many meals of the best Bread you’ve ever tasted.
If you are interested in reading more articles of this type or researching what other people have to say about who Jesus is, please follow these links:
http://faithwritersjesuspage.weebly.com/
http://www.faithwriters.com
Unbreakable Bonds
Recently, the Lord has brought to my attention something that I believe is a beautiful and precious truth. Our families are a gift, a blessed gift, straight from Heaven. He uses the dynamics and the blessing of the family unit to teach us about His love and faithfulness to us. I’m praising the Lord this morning for my family—specifically chosen by God to be the garden in which He first begins His workings in us. And you know what? I believe that is true—even in today’s time when our families are attacked every time we turn around.
From my parents, I have learned what it is to be treasured. From as early as I can remember, they taught me that I was special because I was their daughter. I was one of my daddy’s girls, complete with all the rewards and expectations that went with it. It was a given in our household that we were young ladies, our Daddy’s precious daughters, and he believed that we were the most beautiful and talented daughters ever born because we were his. We were his prize—his proof to the world that there is beauty and goodness in life. He fiercely protected our virtue for as long as we would allow him, and even until we were teenagers, we would squabble for a place at his feet or in his lap at the end of the day. He always made room for every one of us. He still does. He still does. Though time and circumstance and our own adult journeys have sometimes led us away from our Daddy’s lap, every one of us knows, that if he could, he would still make room for us there. And, he would right every wrong for us if it was in his power to do so. We have grown up and have had to learn to depend upon the lap of our Heavenly Father more and more, but we know how to do it because Daddy taught us, first, the sweet peace of nestling against him. Thank you, Daddy, and thank you, Father in Heaven, for giving me such a man for a daddy.
From my mother, I have learned constancy and unwavering devotion. I have learned sacrifice and persistence and confidence. I have learned how to be a woman who will fiercely fight to protect her brood. I have learned how to think of others before myself and to trust the Lord with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul. I have been taught to do what is right, regardless of what anyone else does. I have also learned that there is nothing I can do to change what she sees in me. I can safely admit my fault to her, and she will help me face those faults, but move forward, confident that there is a beauty to be found, even on the other side of a mistake. I have learned what it is to be a woman of excellence, and I have learned that no matter how old I am, there will still be some hurts in my life that only Mama can comfort—some days when I go back to that place in my mind where the little girl stands and wails, “I want my Mama!” And she is there; nothing can erase the years she has proven that. She is a living shadow of the constancy of God. Thank you, Mama, for teaching me how to be a woman and how to be a mother. Thank you, Father in Heaven, for giving me such a mother from which to learn!
From my sisters, I have learned the blessing of companionship and a shared heritage. We have mingled laughter and tears across the space of time and memory. We have fought against each other, and then turned around to ferociously devour anyone who dared hurt one of us. My sisters are reflections of pieces of me. In this race of life, they have challenged me to keep up with them, but they have also given me permission to lag behind, promising that they will slow down and bolster me whenever I need it. They never allow me to give up because I’m whiny . . . they know the difference between true exhaustion and a wrong attitude. They are there; they are always there. It is impossible for our bonds to be severed—to do that would be like cutting off one of my arms. Some might say that that is an unhealthy view of the family dynamic; I would challenge those who say that to read all they can about how God designed the church to function—all they can about our being one body with individual members. The Word of God speaks its own truth to all who have ears to hear it, and I am certain that the family He placed me in was the first way He began to teach me about who He is and who I am in His body. So, thank you, my sisters, for always “having my back,” and for being who you are--a treasured blessing in my life, a part of myself. And, thank you, Father in Heaven, for the sisters you gave me!
Perhaps if I begin to write about all I have learned about the Lord from my sons, there wouldn’t be enough words or space, but I will make an attempt, nonetheless. Thank you, God, for teaching me about how great and how wide and how deep is your perfect love by giving me four sons to love—two birthed from my womb and two birthed from my heart. Perhaps many of the best qualities in me were sparked and fired by my relationships with those boys. More than anything else, those relationships have forced me to grow up . . . and I am convinced that everything you equip me to do will spring forth out of the family bonds You have created. Because I have loved the boys with a fierce desire to do everything I can to guide them, to provide for them, to protect them, to encourage them, I have learned of Your desire for all of Your children. I have learned most recently about letting go—about how hard it is to let them walk away as young men, responsible for their own choices in life. Because I have seen the cost of bad choices, sometimes my desire to protect them rages through me, and they see not my love, but something else. To let them go is one of the most difficult things I have ever done, but it is also proof of my belief in the Perfect Father. My love is limited by my own flesh, but Yours is perfect and constant and pure, and Your love never fails. Before they were entrusted to me, they belonged to their Father in Heaven, and He is capable of much more than I. So, thank you, my sons, for teaching me about the pure and perfect Love of our Heavenly Father, and thank you, Lord, for using such precious young men to constantly teach me a valuable truth.
I have learned from every family relationship I have ever had—even the broken ones. From the broken one, I have learned of the supreme FAITHFULNESS of a God who will never leave me nor forsake me. I have learned what it is to exist under the watch care of the perfect Provider, the perfect Companion . . .the perfect and matchless Love of a Savior who promises beauty from ashes and hope and healing in the midst of the carnage of the world. I have learned what it means to trust Him for everything, and it is a blessing to know that I don’t even have to try to earn it. There is no way to earn that kind of Love, and He has never once asked me to. He has only opened wide His capable arms and said, “Come home, come home, come home . . .This place with me is the center of every good place in every family I create. Come home, come home, come home.” What a family! What a place! Thank you, Jesus, that your death, burial, and resurrection forever purchased such a place for me! What works You have done, none on earth can destroy!
From my parents, I have learned what it is to be treasured. From as early as I can remember, they taught me that I was special because I was their daughter. I was one of my daddy’s girls, complete with all the rewards and expectations that went with it. It was a given in our household that we were young ladies, our Daddy’s precious daughters, and he believed that we were the most beautiful and talented daughters ever born because we were his. We were his prize—his proof to the world that there is beauty and goodness in life. He fiercely protected our virtue for as long as we would allow him, and even until we were teenagers, we would squabble for a place at his feet or in his lap at the end of the day. He always made room for every one of us. He still does. He still does. Though time and circumstance and our own adult journeys have sometimes led us away from our Daddy’s lap, every one of us knows, that if he could, he would still make room for us there. And, he would right every wrong for us if it was in his power to do so. We have grown up and have had to learn to depend upon the lap of our Heavenly Father more and more, but we know how to do it because Daddy taught us, first, the sweet peace of nestling against him. Thank you, Daddy, and thank you, Father in Heaven, for giving me such a man for a daddy.
From my mother, I have learned constancy and unwavering devotion. I have learned sacrifice and persistence and confidence. I have learned how to be a woman who will fiercely fight to protect her brood. I have learned how to think of others before myself and to trust the Lord with all my heart and all my mind and all my soul. I have been taught to do what is right, regardless of what anyone else does. I have also learned that there is nothing I can do to change what she sees in me. I can safely admit my fault to her, and she will help me face those faults, but move forward, confident that there is a beauty to be found, even on the other side of a mistake. I have learned what it is to be a woman of excellence, and I have learned that no matter how old I am, there will still be some hurts in my life that only Mama can comfort—some days when I go back to that place in my mind where the little girl stands and wails, “I want my Mama!” And she is there; nothing can erase the years she has proven that. She is a living shadow of the constancy of God. Thank you, Mama, for teaching me how to be a woman and how to be a mother. Thank you, Father in Heaven, for giving me such a mother from which to learn!
From my sisters, I have learned the blessing of companionship and a shared heritage. We have mingled laughter and tears across the space of time and memory. We have fought against each other, and then turned around to ferociously devour anyone who dared hurt one of us. My sisters are reflections of pieces of me. In this race of life, they have challenged me to keep up with them, but they have also given me permission to lag behind, promising that they will slow down and bolster me whenever I need it. They never allow me to give up because I’m whiny . . . they know the difference between true exhaustion and a wrong attitude. They are there; they are always there. It is impossible for our bonds to be severed—to do that would be like cutting off one of my arms. Some might say that that is an unhealthy view of the family dynamic; I would challenge those who say that to read all they can about how God designed the church to function—all they can about our being one body with individual members. The Word of God speaks its own truth to all who have ears to hear it, and I am certain that the family He placed me in was the first way He began to teach me about who He is and who I am in His body. So, thank you, my sisters, for always “having my back,” and for being who you are--a treasured blessing in my life, a part of myself. And, thank you, Father in Heaven, for the sisters you gave me!
Perhaps if I begin to write about all I have learned about the Lord from my sons, there wouldn’t be enough words or space, but I will make an attempt, nonetheless. Thank you, God, for teaching me about how great and how wide and how deep is your perfect love by giving me four sons to love—two birthed from my womb and two birthed from my heart. Perhaps many of the best qualities in me were sparked and fired by my relationships with those boys. More than anything else, those relationships have forced me to grow up . . . and I am convinced that everything you equip me to do will spring forth out of the family bonds You have created. Because I have loved the boys with a fierce desire to do everything I can to guide them, to provide for them, to protect them, to encourage them, I have learned of Your desire for all of Your children. I have learned most recently about letting go—about how hard it is to let them walk away as young men, responsible for their own choices in life. Because I have seen the cost of bad choices, sometimes my desire to protect them rages through me, and they see not my love, but something else. To let them go is one of the most difficult things I have ever done, but it is also proof of my belief in the Perfect Father. My love is limited by my own flesh, but Yours is perfect and constant and pure, and Your love never fails. Before they were entrusted to me, they belonged to their Father in Heaven, and He is capable of much more than I. So, thank you, my sons, for teaching me about the pure and perfect Love of our Heavenly Father, and thank you, Lord, for using such precious young men to constantly teach me a valuable truth.
I have learned from every family relationship I have ever had—even the broken ones. From the broken one, I have learned of the supreme FAITHFULNESS of a God who will never leave me nor forsake me. I have learned what it is to exist under the watch care of the perfect Provider, the perfect Companion . . .the perfect and matchless Love of a Savior who promises beauty from ashes and hope and healing in the midst of the carnage of the world. I have learned what it means to trust Him for everything, and it is a blessing to know that I don’t even have to try to earn it. There is no way to earn that kind of Love, and He has never once asked me to. He has only opened wide His capable arms and said, “Come home, come home, come home . . .This place with me is the center of every good place in every family I create. Come home, come home, come home.” What a family! What a place! Thank you, Jesus, that your death, burial, and resurrection forever purchased such a place for me! What works You have done, none on earth can destroy!