Good morning!  I pray you are as excited as I am about traveling this journey together these next 40 days.  I always look forward to those tender moments of sweet fellowship with the Father as we open His Word and are drawn into the deep places of His heart; and as He unlocks those doors of revelation and understanding which allows us greater access to the blessing of His amazing grace when we pray. How great His love is toward us!  I pray this morning that the knowledge and reminder of His faithful and infinite love washes over you and fills you with tremendous peace and joy as we begin our day.  How He delights in our desire to seek Him.

In our reading this morning, in the Gospel of John, we find that the people came seeking Jesus, and He allowed Himself to be found by them.  He even pointed out to them why they were looking for Him:  "...you seek Me...because you ate of the loaves and were filled" (v.26).  Jesus had met their most basic need - food - and they came to Him, wanting more.  Their tummies were grumbling, and Jesus offered them fulfillment "without money and without cost" (Isaiah 55:1).  Jesus, the Bread of Life, was offering them their soul's delight, and all they wanted was for Him to feed their bellies.  They wanted food - a temporary satisfaction, instead of Jesus - who offered eternal satisfaction.  Sadly, not much has changed in 2000 years.  Matthew Henry has said, "Many follow Christ for loaves, and not for love."  We are just as, if not more, worldly and fleshly today, and we are directed and controlled more by our stomach rather than our heart. How tragic it is that we allow the flesh to hold tightly the reigns of our life, rather than releasing the grip and surrendering our lives fully to the One who gave us life - and as believers, has given us eternal life!

Before we become too self-focused here, and get carried away with thinking that this journey is going to be all about us and our flesh, let us loosen the reigns for a moment, and go back to the opening chapter of the Gospel of John, and read one of the most beautiful and mysterious phrases ever uttered:  "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us..." (John 1:14a). Holy, infinite, and eternal God took on all the limitations of our human flesh, and filled it with His unlimited perfection and purity.  God walked among men in human flesh, demonstrating that He alone could satisfy our flesh. He came to fill us - with the only thing that could make us full - Himself.  "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" (6:27).

This morning, as we begin our journey, let us consider our own motivation for seeking Jesus.  He knows our hearts.  He knows what we want, and why we want it.  Deep down I believe we truly want Christ for who He is, and not just for what He can do for us, but so often the flesh just gets in the way, and the busyness and want of the world crowds out that pure pursuit of our Lord.  There is a lot of noise distracting us and keeping us from being still before the Lord; and much of it comes from within us.  My prayer for these next 40 days is that we can settle ourselves in the presence of the Lord, and allow the yearning for the higher spiritual life to rise from within us.  May our cry be heard and answered with the matchless grace of God filling us with His fullness, so that we too can become a channel of His love, power, grace and goodness to the world around us.  Let us ask our heavenly Father to help us fix our eyes on the Word who became flesh, and who crucified that flesh on the cross, so we could obtain complete victory over the flesh and become a fit vessel for the Holy Spirit to dwell. The One who came to fulfill our great need of God, declares that only one thing is needed:  that we believe!  "This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He sent" (John 6:29).

"Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed,
because His compassions fail not.
They are new every morning;
great is Your faithfulness.
'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul,
'Therefore I hope in Him!'
The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
to the soul who seeks Him.
It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD."
(Lamentations 3:22-26)

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At the start of His public ministry, Jesus stood in the synagogue and read from the book of Isaiah, proclaiming with His mouth, and with the demonstration of His life, to all who had ears to hear and eyes to see, the Year of Jubilee.  The reading from the Scriptures that day clearly defined the work He had come to do in the world.  Salvation had come into the world.  Their deliverer had arrived.  He offered release for the captive, and sight for the blind.  Jesus declared a new beginning to all who would believe on Him, and offered a cancellation of all their spiritual debt.  He came in human flesh to crucify the flesh on the cross, and to set mankind free from the bondage of sin and death.  And He accomplished His work in the power of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2). "The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me..." (Luke 4:18a).  

 

The Spirit of the Lord was upon Jesus, and He spoke the Word with authority and power.  The Lord wants us to be so full of His Word that we also will speak and pray with authority and power.  The Holy Spirit has been sent into the world to guide us into all truth, and to help us bear witness to the truth of Christ, so we will lift up Christ alone and present Him undiminished and untainted to a perishing world.  We need to be full of Christ, so that what the world sees when they look at us or hears from us is Christ and Him crucified.   The Holy Spirit has been given as a gift to believers to also help us learn to eat and digest the spiritual food the Lord offers to us.  We are promised that if we "hunger and thirst for righteousness" we will indeed "be filled" (Matthew 5:6).

This afternoon let us take stock of those things in our life that we have been chewing on that offer us no nourishment, and are, in fact, depleting and destroying our physical and spiritual health. Let us take time to repent, and to pray and ask God to empty us of all the artificial, unsatisfying, unholy substitutes that have been blocking us from coming to His table.  Let us ask Him to fill us with the pure, satisfying, holy nourishment of His Word each and every day.  May we take the time to chew on and digest the portions He places on our plate, no matter how difficult some may be to swallow.  "It tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach turned sour" (Revelation 10:10).  May we not miss a single meal at the table of our King.  When we feed on Christ we will have what the world needs, in abundance.  The stronger we are physically and spiritually, the more equipped and enabled we will be to accomplish the work we have been commissioned to do.  Heavenly Father, "fill us with the knowledge of Your will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding that we may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God, strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins" (Colossians 1:9b-14). Amen.

 

"There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse,

and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.

The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him,

the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,

the Spirit of counsel and might,

the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD."

(Isaiah 11:1, 2)