Recently I had one of those 24-hour stomach viruses, my digestive system was entirely disabled.  Not only could I not keep anything down, the idea of eating or drinking…impossible.  Even  drinking water was forced.  Needless to say I quickly lost strength, I also lost all interest in reading, writing, working at my job or in spending time with wife and kids, in fact all I could do was sleep.

The next day I knew I was recovering because my appetite returned, I wanted to eat and drink again and with that eating and drinking my physical strength returned and with that strength returned my interest in work, in productivity, in reading, in writing and in spending time with family.

After this stomach virus episode it occurred to me that physical principles can mirror spiritual principles.  Jesus used the metaphor of eating food and drinking water to teach about spiritual life.

Our physical lives, mental lives, and their resulting creativity and productivity are fueled by food and drink and their nourishment.

Life needs nourishment and water to thrive!

“If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you ‘Give Me a drink.’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” – Jesus Christ

Being a follower of Christ is not a religious status we achieve, but it is a restoration of spiritual life, we become alive to Christ (Rom 6:11, 1 Cor 15:22), he literally imparts his own life into his children (1 Peter 3:18).  We who are alive in Christ have spiritual life imparted from above and this life needs nourishment and water like all life.

At one point in the gospels the disciples told Jesus that he needed to eat, Jesus responded that he had food that they knew nothing about (John 4:31-32) a verse or two later Jesus said his food was ‘to do the will of his father and to accomplish his work’ (John 4:34).

Two chapters later Jesus said that we are to eat and drink of himself, I don’t believe this was just a command to take communion, the taking of communion is a reminder (Luke 22:19), a symbol of real eating and the real drinking of Jesus Christ our ‘bread of life’ and our ‘living water’.  Jesus intended for his people to daily “eat and drink” of him.

We eat and drink of the Lord Jesus by doing his will (John 4), by seeking him first every day (Matt 6:31), by gathering around him with others, by sharing his life and by displaying him.

Not regularly eating our real food ‘the bread of life’ and our ‘living water’ Jesus Christ; has a disabling effect on our spiritual lives.  What the stomach virus did to me physically; not eating the bread of life does to us spiritually.

When Christians feel dissatisfied or lonely or depressed or discontent often this is due to not eating and drinking of the Lord Jesus.  Perhaps its time we consider that it is spiritual starvation which is causing our sadness, our loneliness, our lack of joy and inability to thrive spiritually.  We sense deep within that something is lacking, sometimes we try to alleviate our spiritual hunger pains with religious tradition or with dutiful tasks never commanded by the Lord.

Often we don’t know how or have never been taught how to consume the “bread of life” and the “living water” which satisfies daily.  We don’t know how to partake of him.  We don’t know how to draw from the river of living water that is found within his life.   We don’t know how to live by God’s life, instead we try to live for him by our own discipline or brilliance or zeal.

We grow to know him only 2nd hand, or as others speak about him, with all or most of our spiritual “nourishment” dependent on the guy in the pulpit.  IF he knows the Lord and knows how to share him, we get to eat, just a little, about 45 minutes worth.  So we grow to depend on his sermons.  But if he is not feeding Jesus we starve while being religiously entertained.

The truth is, every morning we are to go out and harvest our own “manna” (Exodus 16), and eat our own “bread of life” (John 4:36, John 6:27), we are to drink for ourselves the “living water” (John 4:10) we are to personally seek him first (Matt 6:31) in everything, we all take his yoke upon us (Matt 11:29-30), we make only him Lord, we learn how to live by his life, we do the work of God of believing on him (John 6:29).  We do not live as a Christian by living by our own gifted-greatness and personal discipline.   Jesus is more than enough to sustain us, he satisfies, he nourishes and he energizes us deep within like nothing else.

I know by experience, if we are not eating and drinking on our own we starve spiritually and we begin wilt on the vine (John 15:5-6).  Jesus intended us to feed ourselves, to gather around him, to learn of him, to come to know him and the magnitude of who he is, then we display him and can feed one another, and his lost sheep around us.

Are you eating and drinking of starving and malnourished?

I am writing a book and there is a chapter about Jesus as the ‘bread of life’ that goes with this post.  This book is going to an editor this month.  My goal is to have this published soon thereafter. 

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