When once a hunger had been born in me for God’s presence then, naturally, I sought to be fed. The revelation of our own spiritual bankruptcy, whether by food shortage or some sort of crisis, is the catalyst for the formation of a hunger for God. When we are able to see our spiritual bankruptcy it is then that we can truly seek God in the way He should be sought. Not as a means to an end, or to fulfill an agenda of our own but by loving Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. It is because we have seen that without Him we are starving and dying, and in the desperation of soul-hunger we begin to seek after the Bread of Life. And that’s what I did. Suddenly the temporal, physical things that used to bring me some degree of satisfaction became empty and vain. I began to crave Jesus and His presence. My prayer time was in the evening, and all day long I would look forward to the evening when I could be with Him again.
Jesus said “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you because God the Father has set His seal on Him.” (John 6:27)
God sees our need of Him. He knows that without Him we are starving. And He knew that man would reject Him in the Garden of Eden, in order to pursue his own way. That is why God prepared a “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Because of His infinite mercy, God had already prepared a way to repair the breach between man and God and to bring us back into fellowship with Him. That way was by sending His only begotten Son, Jesus, to the cross to bear the dreadful curse for our souls. Before He was crucified Jesus said:
“I am the living Bread which came down from Heaven. If any man eat of this Bread, he shall live forever; and the Bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, “Verily, verily I say unto you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoso eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the Last Day. For My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He that eats My flesh and drinks My blood dwells in Me, and I in him. As the living Father has sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eats Me, even he shall live by Me.” (John 6:53-57)
Jesus said this to the very people whom, the day before, had been miraculously fed with the loaves and the fish. He wasn’t referring to cannibalism, He was telling them to look beyond the physical miracle of the multiplied loaves and fish and to see the greater miracle standing before them – God’s own Son. His life was about to be given for them so that they may have life. He was going to be crucified, His body broken and His blood poured out for their sin so that they would no longer have to be separated from God by those very sins. There was no longer any need to starve spiritually. Here was the provision right in front of them. In verses 48 and 58 He says “I am the bread of life…This is the bread that came down from heaven – not as your fathers ate the manna and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever.”
So here is God’s provision for our spiritual starvation right in front of us. It is Christ’s Himself. When we turn away from our sin of independence and pride and put our faith in the Bread of Life then we are filled with His life, by His Holy Spirit.
Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” (John 6:35)
He is the source of our life and He is the sustainer of our life. We need to be full of Him. Nothing else can satisfy, no religious duty or practice, neither anything in this world – only Him. We need to be in His presence regularly, feasting on the Word every day, allowing His Spirit to convict us, speak to us, minister to us and we need fellowship with others who are full of Him too. As David, we need to know how to encourage ourselves in the Lord. We need to know how to feed on Him.
We also need to maintain a hunger for Him. I find that that is more difficult when life is going well. Although I actually still need Him now as much as I did when I suffered the depressive episode, it’s easier for me to forget that need of Him now that I am free of depression. That’s why I need to read the Word because it convicts me, washes me and changes me. I also need to pray regularly because I find that the more time I spend with Him the more time I want to spend with Him and feed on the Bread of Life.
To the Laodiceans, who could not see their own poverty and need of Him, Jesus said, “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”
Yesterday, as I was leaving the fruit shop, I saw an anorexic girl staring at me. She kept right on staring at me even as my gaze met hers and I looked back at her. It was rather disconcerting to be so openly stared at and I was momentarily caught off-guard. Eventually I smiled at her and she half-smiled back as she turned away. I don’t know why she was staring at me, but I felt God’s heart of compassion for her and she has been on my heart in prayer ever since.
Then last night as I spent time in the Lord’s presence He opened my eyes to see something. As I cried out to Him for my own hunger, I saw that our plight in the West is starvation. Yes, starvation. Here in the West, where we have an amazing variety and abundance of food available to us, we are spiritually-famished skeletons.
“The hand of the Lord came upon me and brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; and it was full of bones. Then He caused me to pass by them all around and behold, there were very many in the open valley and indeed they were very dry.” Ezekiel 37:1, 2
Whilst much of the non-developed world suffers from food shortage, dire poverty and even physical starvation, the malnutrition in the West is of a different kind. We are surrounded by food, by comfort, by fast-moving technology and by science and its benefits. Even the poorest of us are rich compared to most of the world’s population. Yet, in general, we are starved. Starved of life, starved of love, starved of meaning and starved of the presence of God.
What is the reason behind this starvation? I believe part of it has to do with our society turning away from God and increasingly to humanism and its related philosophies. The outcome of this is that our lives have become empty of meaning and purpose.
It’s not surprising.
To accept the premise that human beings are nothing more than the product of primordial slime would logically conclude that we are of no greater intrinsic value than that slime. And a product of primordial slime could have no possible purpose to its existence either. The relatively recent rejection of the age-old belief that we have been wonderfully and purposely made by the hands of a loving Creator, ultimately leads to a meaningless existence, in which our lives become de-valued.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophies of the early 20th century have had a profound impact on the Western world, intellectually, politically and existentially. He (in)famously stated that “God is dead” and saw “nihilism as the outcome of repeated frustrations in the search for meaning. He diagnosed nihilism as a latent presence within the very foundations of European culture, and saw it as a necessary and approaching destiny”. (Source: Wikipedia, Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche). Nihilism “(from the Latin nihil, nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.” (Source: Wikipedia, Nihilism)
A society that rejects God accepts nihilism, and within that society a sense of meaninglessness is experienced individually. As human beings, we have been made in God’s own image and this is the basis of our inherent value. Each of us is valuable because we have been created in His image. There is also a purpose to each human life that God creates and that is to have fellowship with Him and to serve Him. We were created by Him, for Him. We were created to know Him, depend on Him and draw our very life from Him. To deny both the source of our life and the purpose for our life is to both deny the value of humanity and the meaning of life, which creates a vacuum within our very souls.
Actually this is nothing new. In fact it goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden when man chose independence from God rather than dependence on God. From that point humankind has been estranged from God, cut off from our Creator, the true meaning and purpose of our lives obscured by our own defiant, self-willed independence. To be cut off from the Source of life, even while we may have physical breath in our bodies, is to create spiritual deadness and emptiness. However, as nature abhors a vacuum, something must fill that emptiness and there are many ways that we seek to do this – consumerism, chemical substances, religion, food, pleasure-seeking, causes, materialism…just to name a few.
Unfortunately much of the church has not escaped this Western malady and is also starving. It’s all too common to find that worship has been replaced by entertainment; that prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit has been replaced by liturgies and programs; that the presence of God has been replaced by emotional manipulation and that the preaching of the Word has been replaced by motivational, self-help talks. Even as Christians it is possible to turn away from dependence on God, and once again go our own way in self-willed independence, even when what we do is under a “Christian” label. Once we stop relying on the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us, we again cut ourselves off from God, and become starved of His life and His presence. AW Tozer said it like this: “The blight of the Church today is spiritual starvation. People are famishing on rationalism, socialism, sensationalism, on lifeless bonds and bank notes and unwholesome pleasures. “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not?… eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness” (Isaiah 55:1,2) Are you living on the bread of God or starving while in the Father’s house there is bread to spare?”
I think the BIG question is – do we actually recognize that we are starving? We may in fact be completely unaware of it because we are surrounded by food, technology and material goods in abundance. We are rich, in material terms, compared to the rest of the world. We don’t really need God, we depend on ourselves, on science, on man. We believe that independence is the way to go and that we can make it on our own. Like the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3 we “say ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’”. We do not know that we are really “wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked” (verse 17).
In undeveloped countries it is rather different. 25% of the world doesn’t have enough to live on, and 33% are destitute. A person suffering shortages in food, shelter, clothing and medicine is confronted with their own vulnerability every day. Their neediness is well- known by them because it is felt every day through physical hunger, thirst, cold or pain. So whilst much of the world is poorer than us in the West in material terms, I believe they are richer in one important way. They know their need. Once you see your need, of course, it is much easier to turn to God.
I have a friend who moved here from a struggling African nation. She explained to me that back in Africa she had had to get up at 3am every single morning in order to line up for six hours to get a loaf of bread for her family for the day. There were times when she would get to the front of the queue, after lining up for hours, only to find that the last loaf of bread had been sold. They then would need to drive to South Africa – another country – in order to find bread.
She knows what it’s like to need. She has had to cry out to God to provide her family with bread. She has had to depend on Him in a way that I never have had to.
Actually it is no different for us – spiritually we NEED Bread every single day. The difference is that, surrounded by our gadgetry, clothes and hair products, we cannot see that we are in desperate need of bread. Otherwise would we get up at 3am to seek for our Bread for the day? Would we miss out on sleep so we could find the living Bread to feed us and also our families? You see it’s hunger that drives us. It’s not hard to know why my friend would make the sacrifice to line up every day for 6 hours for bread, when both she and her family needed to be fed. I have kids, I understand the driving need to provide for them. But what about the spiritual bread? Is it less important? Would I make a similar sacrifice for the sake of mine and my family’s spiritual nourishment?
Jesus said “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6). We don’t hunger and thirst after righteousness if we don’t know that we are empty. Until we see that we, in the West are poor, wretched and empty, we won’t hunger and thirst for the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
However, once we see our need of Him it is much easier to hunger after God and to learn to depend on Him for our nourishment. But our eyes have to be anointed “with eye salve that we may see” (Revelation 3:18). Unfortunately it usually takes some sort of personal crisis for most of us to turn to God in desperation and to cry out for help. Essentially this is what happened to me. Although I was wonderfully born-again and saved (see Passover), I still hadn’t learnt how to be utterly dependent on God, or to hunger after Him. It took a crisis in my life to actually be able to clearly see that I could no longer depend on myself. I was brought to the point of being unable to trust even my own thoughts, let alone my own self.
The vehicle God that used in my instance was depression.
And yes, I was a Christian, truly born-again and in love with Jesus. (God-willing, I will write about this episode in detail at a later date.) CS Lewis said “Suffering is God’s mega-phone to a world hard of hearing.” And that really was what suffering was to me. My experience caused me to rely on God and to hunger after Him in a way that I never had before – simply because I had no other option.
To be in a place where my own thoughts frightened me, suddenly awakened to me the truth of my own vulnerability, and I clearly saw my need of Him and His ongoing presence in my life. My independence and pride had to be stripped away from me so that I could see I was starving, in order for that hunger to be born in me. Suddenly I saw that I needed Him, not just a doctrinal knowledge of Him, but a hunger for Himself. When I saw how “poor in spirit” I truly was, then “the kingdom of God” (Matthew 5:3) became mine.
“Wherever we turn in the church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle and end of everything to us…. There is nothing good, nothing holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous which He is not to His servants. No one need be poor, because, if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his own property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is the joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We can exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to an end of the sweet things that might be said of Him. Eternity will not be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done, but then, that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we desire nothing more.”
“And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ Yes I said to you in your blood ‘Live!’” Ezekiel 16:6
At my pondering this verse a few years ago, I had something of a vision. Whether it was a vision in the true sense of the word I do not know, but it was very real. Clearly I saw a long, dusty road that stretched out as far as I could see. All along the road there were bodies strewn. They looked barely alive and were half-formed, almost foetus-like. Each form was covered in blood and dirty with dust and grime. If any had clothes, they were torn rags. Along the road Jesus walked. He came and picked me up, for I found that I myself was one of those bloodied and misshapen forms. He took me to His Father’s house where it was light and colourful. There He washed me, dressed my wounds, gave me new clothes to wear and fed me milk. I grew and He held my hands as I learned to walk. Then when I was grown, when I was strong and able to stand, I saw Him standing at the open door of the Father’s house. He looked back at me and said “Come. It is time. Go back to the road. I will lead you there. There are many others who are abandoned and fatherless. They are bleeding and hurt and helpless. Bring them to my Father’s house. As I have loved you, so love them.”
And oh how He loves us. “This is how God demonstrates His love to us: while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) So much so that He left the presence of His Father to come to a world all dusty and darkened by sin. He laid down His own life to seek us out in our helplessness. He picked us up from the dusty road of life, up out of the harsh exposure to the elements and adopted us into the family of God. “To all who believed in his name He gave the right to become children of God.” (John 1:12) His nail-pierced hands gently ministered to our needs; they cleansed us from the dirt and dust which we had accumulated along the road; they poured oil and wine into the wounds which had been inflicted on us and they clothed us in new garments – a robe of righteousness in place of the filthy rags of our own. He nurtured and fed us with the pure milk of the Word to bring us to maturity.
With that vision God had put a call on my life and a fire in my heart. I saw that the story of the Good Samaritan is actually the story of Jesus. While others may pass us by in our need, He never will. While others may find stopping for us too difficult, too inconvenient or too much effort, He stops at nothing to save us, even to the shedding of His own blood. And I saw that He calls us to join Him in this mission. He calls us to do to others as we would have them do for us. The religious leaders who tentatively passed by the robbed and wounded man left on the road could easily be us. For once He has brought us back to the Fathers house, it’s possible to remain there cosy and comfortable forever. We could keep enjoying our salvation and feasting at the banqueting table, becoming fuller and fuller. But for what purpose? I saw that if I allowed myself to remain feasting and comfortable rather than following Him back to the road, eventually I would grow sluggish and fall asleep. I saw that Jesus’ purpose for cleansing me, healing me and clothing me was not merely for my own benefit, but so that ultimately I could join Him in His work.
I believe this is the same call He puts on all of His children’s lives and the same flame that He wants to ignite in all of us.
There is a season in our spiritual infancy when we are tenderly nurtured, fed and protected. Just as at Shabbat, when the father of the house pours wine into the chalice, our Father pours the life of the Son into us, the newly cleansed vessel. The more we allow this vessel to be emptied of the self-life, the more He is able to fill us with Himself. God’s desire is that we should not remain perpetual babes but, like any healthy infant, grow and mature over time. And so the Father, eternally giving, keeps pouring into us. The Shabbat chalice is a picture of what He would do for us if we would let Him. On Shabbat the father of the house does not stop when the chalice is full of wine, he deliberately keeps pouring until the cup overflows. The liquid flows out from the vessel, for in fact, it was never intended to be contained and kept by this vessel – it was always meant to flow out, like rivers of living water. God patiently ministers to us until the time we reach maturity, and then He calls us into His mission of mercy.
And so Jesus bids us “come”, to join Him in His relentless pursuit of the lost. But the Good Shepherd will never force us. He will never cross over into our freewill. He says “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matt 16:24). He simply calls to us and waits for us to weigh up the cost.
Undoubtedly taking up our cross and following Jesus back to the road, is not the easy option. It means the denying of ourselves, the leaving behind of some comfort and convenience. It means going out into the elements again – being burned by harsh heat, soaked in heavy rains or battered in driving wind. It means being confronted with the reality of human existence – the hurt and pain, the blood and dirt. It means getting our hands dirty and our feet calloused. It may mean that we are abused and rejected or even that the chalice of our lives is poured out on that dusty road. There is a real cost and it is worth our prayerful consideration. Yet Jesus, knowing the individual cost to each of us, still beckons us to “Come.”
Anything that is precious is costly, though, and along with this high cost comes an abundant joy when we are one with Him in His work. When the life of the Holy Spirit can truly flow from the Head into the Body, united as they are in will and in purpose, then the result is the absolute reality of His abiding presence with us. Jesus said:
“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full. This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”
You may still be on the road, wounded and abandoned. If that is the case, you can rest assured that there is a Saviour who knows and who is seeking you. Even at this moment He is reaching out His hand to pick you up, if you will let Him.
You may yet be an infant in Christ, newly adopted into His family. If so, I encourage you to keep feeding on the pure milk of the Word and to be continuously filled with His life, through the Holy Spirit, until you reach the measure of the full stature of Christ.
Or you may be already in the Father’s “house”, having been picked up by those nail-pierced hands from the road. If you’ve found the comfort, love and security in becoming a child of God, will you now go on to share this love and comfort with others? Will you heed His call?
May God bless you mightily on this Resurrection Sunday.
This year I have been surprised by the strong sense of anticipation I have felt as Passover has drawn near.
While I have been aware for a long time of the eternal truths that shine forth through the feast of Passover, this time it is different. Recently I have come to see that the story of Passover in a striking way reflects my own story. The external truth of the Passover, to me, has become an inward reality.
My Passover story began about six and a half years ago. I had been a church-going Christian all of my life. I loved God and knew He loved me and had guided me throughout my whole life. I lived my life the best that I could and everything had turned out pretty well. I had married a wonderful man, had a lovely baby girl and was really quite happy with my life and with myself. I had no need for anything more and I certainly was not looking to change myself or my life in any way.
Then one day someone gave me a tape-sermon from a fiery old preacher-man and everything changed.
Mainly I listened to the sermon out of curiosity, with absolutely no clue as to the ramifications it would have on my life forever. By the time that sermon was over I was on my knees on the floor. I was in the presence of God and I was borne down under Holy Ghost conviction. What happened that night changed me forever. I saw myself clearly for the first time in my life. For me, a young woman, satisfied with things as they were currently in my life – to be absolutely confronted with the state of my own heart was devastating. My sins were right in front of my face – the things I had done and shouldn’t have done and the things I should have done and didn’t. Not only that, but I also saw that I had inherited a sin-nature from Adam and that there was nothing that I could do about it.
The only way to explain what I experienced (and words cannot do justice) was a death. I was crushed under the weight of my sin. I wept and wept. I was in mourning. An hour before that my life was good and fine, no major issues, all smooth sailing, and now everything was different, I was different. This was not something that could be dismissed or forgotten. I was utterly undone. For the person I was before this to continue to exist was no longer a possibility. In the light of truth there was no option for me but to repent of my sins and cry out to God for His grace and mercy.
And God came to me in mercy. I knew that Jesus had taken the penalty for my sins upon Himself at the cross. That He had already paid for them there and that I was forgiven. I arose from the floor a changed woman. Out of the ashes of that mourning and death God had raised up something different, something beautiful. It was Life in place of death.
From that moment I was different. In all honesty prior to my meeting God face-to-face, I had been rather hard and cold-hearted, although I didn’t see myself that way at the time. I used to say that “I love animals but hate people”. I saw what people did to each other and I hated them for it. (I didn’t really include myself in that category though, I was pretty ok.) I was capable of feeling compassion towards suffering and needy people of course, but to be actually inconvenienced by going out of my way in order to help them, was an irritation to which I would not, nor could not, subject myself. To actually lay down my life for others was a concept so foreign to me that it simply would never have entered my mind. (My husband can attest to the hardness of heart that used to be mine, to my shame).
But now, because I had been “born-again” I was a new creation. I was now a child of God and was full of Him. I became tender-hearted, as He is. I began to reach out to others, as He does. Although I am obviously not perfect, I can honestly say that the total and complete change in the state of my own heart is the biggest proof to me that there is a God, and that He is in the business of changing hearts. I know what I was before, and I know the difference to what I am now. Of course until God exposed the truth of my heart to me I had no idea.
Going back a little at this point, although I was convicted, forgiven and changed that night, I actually continued to struggle under the weight of my now-revealed sin for quite a few months. Whilst I knew that Christ had died for my sin and that God had forgiven me, I still experienced a heavy weight of guilt and I couldn’t seem to be able to walk in the forgiveness for which I knew Christ had died. Whenever I messed up that just added more weight to the guilt. I even came to think that perhaps I was meant to remain in this state. However, once again, God met me in His mercy. He simply revealed to me one night that my sins past, present and future are “under the blood”. He showed me that no amount of fussing or of feeling guilty changes the fact that I am covered by the blood of the Lamb. He actually showed me that guilt was a waste of time and energy because the blood of a righteous Redeemer is what God sees when He looks at me.
In that moment of time, all the burden of my guilt vanished. Now I knew experientially that I was forgiven, I knew that I was free from guilt! A load lifted from me, never to be experienced again. I now walk in the “glorious liberty by which Christ has made (me) free.” And all because of the blood. I could now truly say, as the old hymn:
“’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved”
God said to the Israelites at the very first Passover:
“Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you…” Exodus 12:13
Just as God’s judgment “passed over” the Israelites because they were covered by the blood of the Passover lamb, I too have been covered by the blood of the Lamb, so that I have escaped God’s judgment for sin. The Bible says:
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal Life”
About 1300 years after the first Passover lamb was sacrificed in order to redeem Israel from slavery in Eqypt, another Lamb was sacrificed in order to redeem humankind from the bondage of sin. This Lamb was slain on Passover too, crucified on the cross. John the Baptist said of Him: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” He was blemish-less, unleavened by sin and He tasted of the “bitter herbs” of suffering. Jesus, the Son of God, chose to come to earth to be the sacrifice for our sins, in order to redeem us. He was the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” and all because “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)
May God bless you with His grace this Passover season!
When once a hunger had been born in me for God’s presence then, naturally, I sought to be fed. The revelation of our own spiritual bankruptcy, whether by food shortage or some sort of crisis, is the catalyst for the formation of a hunger for God. When we are able to see our spiritual bankruptcy it is then that we can truly seek God in the way He should be sought. Not as a means to an end, or to fulfill an agenda of our own but by loving Him with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. It is because we have seen that without Him we are starving and dying, and in the desperation of soul-hunger we begin to seek after the Bread of Life. And that’s what I did. Suddenly the temporal, physical things that used to bring me some degree of satisfaction became empty and vain. I began to crave Jesus and His presence. My prayer time was in the evening, and all day long I would look forward to the evening when I could be with Him again.
He is the source of our life and He is the sustainer of our life. We need to be full of Him. Nothing else can satisfy, no religious duty or practice, neither anything in this world – only Him. We need to be in His presence regularly, feasting on the Word every day, allowing His Spirit to convict us, speak to us, minister to us and we need fellowship with others who are full of Him too. As David, we need to know how to encourage ourselves in the Lord. We need to know how to feed on Him.
Grace and Truth 