Craving the Bread of Life

As a new stay-at-home mom with a newborn to care for, I find myself constantly battling against chronic tunnel vision. It’s easy to get so focused on caring for and bonding with my son that I forget about important things like doing the laundry (never mind folding it), responding to important emails, or even eating meals. 

This tunnel vision impacts my spiritual life as well. During the long days and nights of caring for our son, I might sporadically toss up a few quick prayers for strength, energy, or patience when we’re having a rough day, but I neglect to devote time and energy to seeking God in prayer and asking Him to change my heart in areas where I’m struggling with sin. I’m so focused on trying to make it through the day and balance my priorities as a homemaker that I mostly seek God with immediate needs and rarely with a desire for sanctification or worship of the Father.

You don’t have to be a stay-at-home mom (or any kind of mom at all) to feel the same way. Job stress, a hectic schedule, health problems, or even the monotony of the daily grind can cause us to lose sight of the transformative work that Christ has done, and is continuing to do, in our lives through the Holy Spirit. We have been given abundant, eternal life because of the Cross, and yet we plod along, day to day. We seek God for what he can do to make our lives easier now and forget the value of what he has already done.

“I am the bread of life.” (John 6:35, 48)

Today, we’re continuing our study of the the “I Am” statements of Jesus in John, meditating on Jesus’ as our “Bread of Life,” as he describes himself in chapter 6 of this gospel. Like us, the crowds of people Jesus was teaching were so focused on what Jesus could do to improve their daily lives that they couldn’t comprehend the eternal, priceless value of the Gospel.

This teaching took place just after Jesus had miraculously fed the five thousand (6:1-14). The Jewish crowds who had witnessed this miracle were stirred up into a frenzy. They planned to declare Jesus their king, which likely would’ve led to all-out war with the Romans authorities who occupied the land at the time. Jesus and his disciples had evaded the mob and then split up. The disciples started across the Sea of Galilee in a boat first and Jesus followed them, walking on water in the middle of a storm to meet them near the middle. After recovering from their initial shock and fear, the disciples gladly took Jesus into the boat, then found that they had suddenly reached land on the other shore. 

The crowd continued to pursue them, however; they caught up with Jesus the next day and began to question him: 

22 On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. 23 Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. 24 So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.

25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” 

Jesus didn’t even acknowledge their question, but scolded them for materialistic motivations they had for following him:

26 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. 

Instead of recognizing the spiritual significance of the miracle of the bread and fish, the people who had been there were looking for more free food! They were so focused on their stomachs, they couldn’t see how Jesus’ miracle revealed his divine identity. 

Jesus continued admonishing them, saying:

27 Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” 

He encouraged them not to focus their earthly efforts on obtaining literal food (which will eventually rot and can only sustain a person for a short time), but to seek eternal “food” from the Son of Man, Jesus. This is not to say that they were to stop working entirely or stop using their earnings to buy bread. Instead, Jesus is encouraging them to their focus from acquiring material security and put their hope in God's eternal provision in Christ.

Once again, the crowd misunderstood what Jesus had said:

28 Then they said to him, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” 29 Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”

The people mistook Jesus’ reference to “work” to mean that they needed to please God with works in order to earn this eternal sustenance. Jesus corrected them, stating that the “work of God” is to believe in the One he sent: Christ. God offers us the treasure of everlasting life which he freely gives to those who simply believe in the Son and receive the forgiveness of sins that he offers. We will still have to work to put food on the table and a roof over our heads, but our hope and security will be in God's provision, not the labor of our hands.

Finally, the crowd caught on to the fact that Jesus was telling them to believe in him as the one sent from God. Apparently, however, they had been underwhelmed by the feeding of the five thousand, because they immediate demanded more miracles as further "proof" before they would believe in him:

30 So they said to him, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? 31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 

The Jews pointed out that miraculous food was nothing new to their people, whose ancestors had eaten manna from Heaven during their wanderings in the wilderness. They challenged Jesus to produce a greater miracle, since feeding a crowd of people for one meal on a single day seemed small compared to an entire nation being fed for 40 years.

Jesus responded:

32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

Jesus reminded them that the manna their ancestors ate in the wilderness was from God, not from Moses, and that the manna in the wilderness was a sign to point them to the true bread that God would give them from heaven. That true bread came in the form of a person: “he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” (Spoiler alert: it's Jesus.)

Of course, the Jews were still thinking with their stomachs, so they thought he was talking about the kind of food that sustains the physical body. Instead, Jesus was offering himself as the eternal nourishment they needed for their bodies and souls:

35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. 

Jesus taught them that belief in God’s Son leads to eternal life (v. 40), and that the bread he would give to the world was his very flesh: his body, broken on the cross for the sins of the world (v. 50-51). To believe in Jesus and receive his sacrifice on our behalf is to partake of Jesus' flesh and blood and be filled with life and with the Spirit:

55 For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. 56 Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. 

Because of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives (Christ abiding in us), believers have the opportunity to learn more of God and continue to be sanctified: remade into the image of Christ, God's perfect son. We abide in Christ, filled with the peace and security of our salvation and God's provision for our every need. 

When we get stuck living day to day, putting our hope in the fragile security of material plenty, we pass over the abundance God freely offers us. We choose trinkets over treasures. We fail to partake of the hope and security we have been freely given through Christ's death for our sins. We don't crave the Bread of Life.

So how do we break free? Fasting? Service? Meditation on God's Word? How do we change our focus and transform our desires so that we pursue the Bread of Life above all else?

The short answer is: we don't. We simply can't pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and change our hearts by sheer force of will. All the spiritual disciplines in the world will not transform our desires or grow us in godliness if we don't begin by asking the Father to do that work in us. God, through the Holy Spirit, is the one who does this good work in us (Philippians 1:6). The Holy Spirit transforms our sinful desires into godly ones, producing spiritual fruit in our lives (Galatians 5:16-24). Then, and only then, will we be set free from our worldly tunnel vision and begin to desire and seek Jesus, the Bread of Life.

Father, we are too easily distracted by the fleeting security this world offers us. Our hearts desire possessions and status more than they desire you, and we fail to abide in your provision. Holy Spirit, change our desires. Transform our hearts to truly believe in and treasure your Son and the truth of the Gospel. Teach us to abide in you and to trust in Christ as our source of life. Amen.

---

Respond

Do you struggle to desire the Bread of Life? In what areas are you putting your hope in your resources instead of in God?

God Remembers Us

It was the day before Thanksgiving, November 23rd. I’d just finished a workout and was about to head for the shower when my phone rang. All at once, my plans for the day (and Thanksgiving, and the weekend, and the next several weeks…) went out the window. Our adoption agency was calling to tell me that our baby boy (you know, the one due in mid-December) was coming today. 

My husband and I were suddenly plunged into the chaos of trying to catch a flight to the other side of the country on the busiest travel day of the year. We were excited to finally meet our little boy and his amazing birth mom, but there was so much to arrange and plan in such a short period of time. Birth mom and baby were both having some worrisome symptoms, so our little boy was delivered via emergency c-section before we could even leave the house for the airport. We saw the first picture of him right before we got on our flight; he was covered in tubes and wires because he’d come too early, We were happy, but worried, and more than a little overwhelmed.

The first picture we saw of our boy.

We met our son and his birth mama on Thanksgiving morning. The days and weeks that followed were full. We loved on our son’s birth mama and spent hours and hours sitting by his bed in the NICU as he gained the strength he needed to be discharged. Stuck in a strange city all the way across the country, God’s provision was evident. Frustrations were plentiful, but God mercifully provided for our physical, financial, emotional, and spiritual needs as we waited for our little boy to grow strong enough to leave the hospital, and then for permission from the government to travel home with him. After exactly three weeks, we finally made it home to Oregon with our son.

Looking back over the past few months and years, I am amazed at how God orchestrated our journey to parenthood to be one big story about how He never forgot us.

All along the way, as Jason and I dealt with infertility and then with the ups and downs of the adoption process, I struggled to hope in God. It was hard to believe that He was hearing my prayers to be a mom when the nursery was still empty. Sometimes, it seemed like He’d just forgotten. 

But, through more than four years of foiled plans and uncertainty, I’ve learned to look for evidence of God's grace in the small things, and trust that unanswered prayers don't mean that God has forgotten about me. God does not forget His people in their distress. So many stories from His Word testify to this:

• He remembered** Noah in the flood and caused the flood waters to subside (Genesis 8:1).

• He remembered Abraham, and saved his cousin, Lot, during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:29).

• He remembered Rachel (Genesis 30:22) and Hannah (1 Samuel 1:19) and allowed both women to conceive in spite of their barrenness.

• He remembered his people, Israel, and saved them from their enslavement in Egypt (Exodus 2:23-25).

That passage from Exodus 2 is a particularly poignant description of how God loves his people in their suffering, as he responds to the cries of His people during their enslavement in Egypt:

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
Exodus 2:23-25

Isn’t that beautiful? God heard them. He remembered his promises to them. He saw them. He knew their suffering.

God heard our prayers for a child and saw our grief through infertility and the long adoption process.  He was working behind the scenes for our good and His glory. He knew our pain. He always remembered us. 

That’s how we settled on our son’s name: Zachariah, “God has remembered.” To remind ourselves, and to testify to everyone, that God never forgets His people in their distress.

We are overjoyed by the abundant blessing of being Zachariah’s parents. He is a sweet reminder of God’s constant faithfulness.

**Being omnipotent and all, God can hardly forget anything. So, don't be confused when the Bible talks about God remembering something or someone. God doesn't remember like when I finally figure out where I put my missing cell phone; He remembers, never having forgotten in the first place!

---

Respond

Have you ever felt forgotten by God? Where do you find reminders that God always remembers you?

Spiritual Gifts: Session 3

GBC Women’s Ministry Night 11/28

Review & Colossians 3:12-17

Over the last few months, we’ve learned a lot about the spiritual gifts that God has given us. We learned that all believers have been created by God to serve a unique and essential function in God’s Kingdom, beginning with the local church. This is, first and foremost, to bring glory to God. It also serves to unify and strengthen the church and spread the Gospel to unbelievers. The Gifts of the Spirit are all equally valuable because they all meet the various needs of the Church and because they all find their source in God through the Holy Spirit. Though our roles within the Church are different, we are united in our goal: glorifying God and making Christ known in the world. The fact that we are gifted differently is by God’s design. In His infinite wisdom, God saw fit to uniquely equip each and every woman here to serve him in the specific ways he has called her to do so. Each of us will glorify God the most when we fulfill the particular role he has given us in the Body of Christ as we serve Him in our homes, our workplaces, our local church, and in the community. We should rejoice when we see another believer’s gifts serving the Body well, without jealousy or a spirit of competition.

We also learned that the lists of spiritual gifts found in Romans and I Corinthians aren’t really exhaustive. The lists of spiritual gifts found in the Bible are all slightly different, with a little overlap. This seems to suggest that the lists are meant to representative many of the ways the indwelling of the Holy Spirit may play out in the life of every believer as they serve Christ. The labels are less important that the work of the Holy Spirit in and through you as you serve God by serving His people.

Last month, we saw in 1 Corinthians 13 how spiritual gifts are worthless if they are not applied in love. Without love, our words are just noise, and our generosity is worthless. Love must be a part of every expression of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. God is most glorified when believers teach with patience and kindness, lead without envy or boastfulness, and share wisdom without arrogance or rudeness. They will give generously without insisting on their own way, show mercy without being irritable or resentful, and share knowledge truthfully, without deception. In faith, they will bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. It’s a high standard that we may feel hopeless to attain, but Christ’s example of perfect, holy love gives us life and teaches us how to truly love one another. 1 John says this:

9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.

19 We love because he first loved us.

Jesus is the embodiment of God’s love for us. We were once hopelessly caught up in sin, but now have eternal life through Christ. This is not because we loved God, but because He loved us first. The Holy Spirit dwells inside us, and our sanctification and spiritual gifts are a sign of our present and future redemption. We glorify God when we use our spiritual gifts to love and serve other people. When we do that, we reveal God’s love to a hurting world by showing them Jesus. This love is not of ourselves, but is an overflow of the love God first poured on us through Christ.

So, what do we do now? How do we take the knowledge we’ve gained about spiritual gifts and apply it as we serve the church? I think we begin by letting go of discontentment and unrealistic expectations and surrender our gifts to God:

About two years ago, I was feeling confused and discouraged about where and how God wanted me to serve Him with my gifts. I had a passionate desire to serve God in my home by having and raising children, but God had consistently answered that prayer with “not yet.” Even now, though we’re hopefully just a few weeks away from the end of that waiting, the “not yet” continues! So, I’ve been left to wrestle with how to serve God when the season of life I’m in feels a lot like limbo, where I’m tempted to just wait for the next phase of life to begin so I can “really” serve God the way I think I’m “supposed to.” God really had to work on my heart and teach me to surrender my hopes and expectations so that I could see the work He wanted to do through me here and now, not just in an idealized future.

Don’t wait for the “stars to align” or for all obstacles to disappear before you surrender your spiritual gifts to God and allow Him to use them. There are lots of ministries at GBC faithful sisters with all kinds of spiritual gifts are need to serve the body. If you feel like there isn’t a ministry that quite fits with your gifts, or you see an unmet need, or if you just have a great idea for a service opportunity, God might just be prompting you to step up and lead! Grab a like-minded sister in Christ whose spiritual gifts complement yours and ask God for wisdom in how to proceed.

Tonight, as we consider how God is calling us to use the unique gifts he’s given us, let’s listen to Paul’s exhortation for godly living in the body of christ, found in Colossians 3:12-17:

12 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

As we break up into groups, let’s ask God to show us how to use our gifts to serve Him. Let’s seriously consider how we can individually and collective use our gifts so that Gresham Bible will be a church filled with women who are characterized by compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Who bear with their fellow believers, even when it’s hard, and forgive them readily, because of God’s example of forgiveness. Women who are are united in love and ruled by the peace of Christ. Whose hearts and minds are filled to the brim with God’s word so that the overflow of it teaches and encourages others in wisdom. Women who joyfully sing praises to God, thanking Him for his goodness as they surrender every word and action to Christ.

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the gifts you have given us. We ask you to create this kind of Colossians 3 culture among the women of Gresham Bible Church. Teach us to use our gifts to serve others in love and humility, and thereby honor and glorify You. Please bless our conversations this evening. Make them edifying and uplifting to those who hear them, and glorifying to your name. Amen.