How can I begin to explain to a world that does not want to see Jesus who He is? If I adopt the attitude that it is impossible for me to open blind eyes, I will never even try, but I must do my part to point the way so that the Great Healer can restore sight because that is what He wants. He calls us to tell the world who He is and what He has done for us. Thus, to even know how to begin to explain who the Savior of my entire life is, maybe I should follow His example for explaining Himself. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35, KJV)
That is a pretty outlandish statement, no doubt about it. And, it can be particularly hard to accept if one has no knowledge or understanding of God’s Word. Face it, most of us have very little knowledge of the Bible (sometimes just enough to be dangerous to ourselves and others). BUT, I’m going to use it anyway because Jesus is the best at explaining who He is, so let’s go with His metaphor, whether or not we readily accept and believe it.
I am convinced that all people can be grouped under the umbrella of one adjective: “hungry.” Every single human being on the planet knows what it feels like to be hungry at one time or another. Under that category are two subgroups: those who acknowledge their hunger and those who are convinced that they are not hungry. If one is satisfied within himself and what he can do to meet his own needs, full and content with everything he is doing, he’ll never admit to himself or anyone else that he is hungry. He’s fat and sassy! Life is good, and the world is at his feet and nothing is going to stop him. (I believe that he’s really just as hungry as the rest of us; he just doesn’t acknowledge his hunger because, for the moment, his methods of satisfying his hunger are working. They haven’t turned on him yet. “Yet” is the operative word there . . .)
People who know they are hungry search for food. They have two main choices: they can seek to fill their hunger the way the world fills it, or they can find bread that strengthens them and changes them and satisfies them. The world chases financial success; they pursue human relationships; they fulfill the desires of their flesh with a MULTITUDE of temporary satisfaction, feeding just about every desire there is; they build up their physical bodies, constantly making adjustments in their search for perfection; they continue to consume, consume, consume . . . but eventually, they will all admit that what they are seeking stops satisfying them for any length of time. Just look at American culture today. We are a people blessed with abundance, but we are never satisfied. We constantly seek more, more, more. Bigger and better and better and bigger—always hungry, rarely happy—but we know how to act like we are, talk like we are, convince ourselves that we are, when, in all reality, we are just hungry, hungry people filling our bellies with the wrong sustenance.
However, some people are hungry and know they are hungry but have learned to seek sustenance from the only supply that will never stop meeting their need. These people have found the Bread of Life. These people have found Jesus—or He has found them. When their eyes were opened to see Him, they chose to take Him in, instead of all the empty calories the world has to offer. When this happens to us, Jesus becomes real to us and in us, and we begin the journey of becoming something more than we ever realized we could be. Our entire lives change in a moment—not our circumstances, our lives. We begin on the journey we were meant to be on all along. We experience Jesus’ words: “Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” (Matthew 5:6, KJV)
Once we have met Jesus like this do we stop being hungry and do our lives suddenly become outwardly perfect and pristine and without problems? Unfortunately, no, they do not. As long as we live in this world that has fallen so far from what the Creator intended it to be, we will experience hunger and pain and every other human emotion and desire. But, when Jesus is the sustenance of our lives, we are equipped to overcome the emptiness and ravenous devouring of this world. When we hunger and thirst after righteousness in the midst of a world that satisfies their cravings with rot and decay, we learn to ingest the Bread of Life.
If you have read this and are confused, but you want to know more, I urge you to seek Jesus. He promises that when we seek Him with our entire heart, we shall find Him. You know what the best part of that is? I am pretty sure that somewhere along the path to searching for Him, it’s really Jesus who finds us. He finds us right where we are and rescues us from a life of constant, unfulfilled hunger.
The first thing I encourage you to do is find Jesus in the Word of God—the Bible. Often, we claim it is too hard to understand or it is no longer relevant to our lives or it is a book of mythical stories that were written a long time ago to people who were uneducated and couldn’t think for themselves. Sadly, that is probably why many of us fail to see Jesus. After all, once again from God’s Word: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, KJV) Jesus no longer walks among us in the form of a man—but He left the Word with us. The first place to discover Jesus is in the Word of God. Start reading in the book of “John” in the New Testament. Don’t give up if you don’t understand what you’re reading. Keep reading. Keep seeking. Remember, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” When you seek after Him, and He finds you in your quest, you will experience the first of many meals of the best Bread you’ve ever tasted.
If you are interested in reading more articles of this type or researching what other people have to say about who Jesus is, please follow these links:
http://faithwritersjesuspage.weebly.com/http://www.faithwriters.comI also posted this article in the free reprints section and as a note on my Facebook page.
