Y’all.
I have been so struck by something. Here’s the deal. Every morning I go to my college dining hall to eat breakfast. I’ll often go with a fresh omelette, maybe pancakes, or my classic cereal choice. Fruit on the side is a given. (Secret, as anyone in my family could tell you, I REALLY enjoy breakfast foods.) I eat it all up and am just SO satisfied as I head off to my 8am’s. (It’s that morning-person power walk; the sun is rising, the world is new, and I now have delicious food in my belly.) But then the oddest thing happens. Just about 3 hours later, I start to feel an ache. Can it be? Surely not. I couldn’t possibly be hungry again after how nice and full I was this morning. I eat lunch, and—wouldn’t ya know—the same thing happens again that evening! “All right, all right, Caelan,” you’re saying. “Hold the phone. Let me get this straight. You’re well into your second semester at Baylor University and the grand mystery of life that you’ve finally grasped is that you get hungry?” Yes. Yep, yes. Bear with me, I am going somewhere with this. I have indeed known this for a long time. But for some reason it has really stuck out to me this month that I can eat a good meal, feel so completely satisfied, and a mere few hours later feel like my stomach is an excavation site. Then the Lord told me why. And do you know what He said? “I am the Bread of Life.” And it hit me like a soccer ball (that’s more original than a ton of bricks, right?). God created our bodies to have a constant neediness. We have the never-ending task of re-filling what has become empty, of replenishing what has run out. Food is life to our bodies, and without the constant consumption of nutrients, we literally would not survive. This is what Christ is to us. The Lord is the Bread of Life, life to our spirit. He alone can give us full satisfaction and completeness; He is our spiritual nutrition, and we feed on Him— His words, His character, His love, His example, His death and resurrection— to have spiritual LIFE! But in calling Himself the Bread of Life, the Lord hit upon the way that He created our bodies: we repeatedly hunger for physical food. We are not satisfied with one meal, but go back again and again. Is this how we are with Christ? Let’s ask ourselves honestly, because one mountaintop experience with Him is not enough. It will not keep our spirit nourished. One Christian conference is not enough; it may be a powerful experience, but the power is not enough to keep our spirit alive. One fresh revelation from God is not enough. What is He? He is bread! We must go back to Him again and again and again. Daily. Hourly. In His word, in our prayer, in the listening of our heart. When the Lord provided manna for the Israelites in the wilderness, what did He tell them? Gather only enough for one day’s portion. If they gathered for the next day, it went bad. Is one morning of the Word enough? Is one conversation with Him enough? Is one day of intimacy with the Lord enough? No! It is immensely satisfying, but the next day it has molded- and God wants to give Himself to us afresh! Oh, that we would hunger for Christ like we hunger for bread. To eat a good meal when you are hungry is a both a need and a pleasure. We need Christ to speak to us afresh each day; we need to feed on His power and example to overcome sin; we need to feed on His love and peace to live lives of constant thanksgiving and joy; we need to feed on His encouragement and advocacy before the Father to resist temptation. But friends, the Lord is more than this. He is a father who longs to give good gifts to His children! The pleasure is that we get to have fellowship with the Lord. The veil has been torn, the Spirit is within us- and we get to come to him again and again and again. This is the Creator of all life, the Lover of your soul; and He wants to speak to you! Realizing that the Lord as my Father wants to speak afresh to me every day completely changed my relationship with Him in his Word and in prayer. I can come to him every day in full confidence and expectation that he wants to give to me of Himself, and when I come to Him like this, I am filled. Let us hunger for the Lord. Let us not ever be satisfied. When our bodies do not feel hungry, this is a sign of illness, and when our spirit doesn’t hunger for the Lord, it is the same, so let us beg the Lord for that hunger. He is our bread of life. We have to keep coming back. Scriptures- John 6:35, Exodus 16, Matthew 7:11, Matthew 27:51, Ephesians 2:18, Luke 1:53
0 Comments
|
AuthorHey, I'm Caelan! I'm a sophomore at Baylor University and love life and the world God has created for us to explore through learning, the arts, and the outdoors. But most of all, I seek to know HIM. Psalm 34:5 says that those who look to God are radiant. I desire to shine the radiance and glory of the Father, for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. Soli Deo Gloria Archives
November 2019
Categories |