Please, read previous post first or none of this will make since. But if you’re too lazy I’ll sum it up for you. Recently, I learned some very good insight on the Palawano mind set in particular and how they value food in the survival situation they call their lives. The words they use to say they are full (no longer in need of food) implies that they are living and have what they need to survive until the next meal whenever that comes. Now that you’re caught up I still encourage you to read the previous post.
As I was processing the epiphany and wondering the lengths of its implications, my mind was drawn to the spiritual implications. I’m sure you are aware of the illustration that Jesus used in the institution of the Lord’s Supper. In Mark 22:19 Jesus took bread and broke it saying, ‘take, eat; this is My body broken for you. A piece of which was given to each disciple signifying that a piece of Himself is given to each one of those that follow Jesus. They took it and ate all of it. And we follow in their example, breaking bread in remembrance of Him. Now anyone who has participated in the Lord’s Supper knows that the small cracker comes nowhere near filling the stomach and more over, you would die of hunger if you didn’t eat anything else until the next time your church did the Lord’s Supper. Obvious, I know, but consider this with me. How often do we take only a small cracker size bit of the Jesus and expect it keep us alive until the next sermon or next time boredom leads to pick up a Bible and to a get fresh spiritual meal. It is no wonder we often find ourselves starving for food of the spiritual sort.
Taking of this spiritual meal, the bread, signifying the character of Jesus, and the wine, the forgiving and atoning blood of Jesus, is to be a daily process. The promise in Lamentations 3:22, 23 says that ‘His mercies are new every morning’ old wine will sour and ferment and old bread will mold and rot away but not these; they are fresh and new every morning. We sing a song that says ‘There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins.’ Indeed there is a fountain springing up from the Author of Love representing the sacrifice given to redeem us. It pours out to all, as a free gift waiting for us to accept it and washes away ‘all our guilty stains.’ In John 6:35 Jesus says ‘I am the bread of life.’ The only source true life is living in a relationship with Jesus Christ. There is no substitute, to have live: is to live with Jesus in our hearts.
At my last job had an accountability partner and each morning we would jokingly asked each other if we had eaten ‘breakfast’ yet. If not we’d stop there and pray together and if time allowed it we opened the Bible together. Now that joking exchange has a new meaning. Just like our temporal hunger our spiritual hunger is a gift from God to keep us alive. If it wasn’t for the sensors and reaction in our body to remind us, like I did with my friend, we might miss out on meal after meal. First we salivate, then the stomach growls, and eventually we suffer fatigue for emaciation, all of these are our body’s trying to send the message to the brain, ‘we need food!’ Similar signs can be seen in a spiritual hunger. When some external stimulus trigger a thought of heavenly things, a beautiful flower, the love a mother to her child, or God’s providence in our lives, I would relate that to salivation, a simple reminder. When our thoughts give way to doubt, and our faith wavers, when we see the result of sin in our lives, this is where our spiritual life is growling, and showing its apparent need. When it seems like the walls of life are closing in, our attitude has given way to anger and pride, and when there seems to be no hope, our spirits are suffering fatigue from spiritual emaciation.
Wherever you are today salivating for a delicious meal, growling within as the last meal has long passed, or maybe it’s been so long you can’t remember the last time you were full. My prayer for us today is that our appetites would lead us to Jesus Christ who says, ‘Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.’ ‘He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.’ Matthew 5: John 6:35
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