October 17, 2012 … The Bread of Life

Chronological Bible Reading Plan - Day 291

Passage of the Day: Reference of Today’s Chronological Bible Study: John, Chapter 6 To study these chapters, go to this link - 
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Highlight Passage: John 6: 24-40 : [NLT] … {If you had just witnessed Jesus feeding almost 10,000 people with 5 fishes and 2 loaves of bread, would you finally believe that He was Who He said He was – The Son of God? Well, this chapter reveals that many who saw these miracles still had trouble believing in Jesus as The Messiah; but Jesus clearly declared that only those who truly believed in Him, as the Bread of Life, would be with Him in Heaven.} …
  24 When the crowd saw that Jesus wasn’t there, nor his disciples, they got into the boats and went across to Capernaum to look for him. 25 When they arrived and found him, they asked, “Teacher, how did you get here?” 26 Jesus replied, “The truth is, you want to be with me because I fed you, not because you saw the miraculous sign. 27 But you shouldn’t be so concerned about perishable things like food. Spend your energy seeking the eternal life that I, the Son of Man, can give you. For God the Father has sent me for that very purpose.” 28 They replied, “What does God want us to do?” 29 Jesus told them, “This is what God wants you to do: Believe in the one he has sent.” 30 They replied, “You must show us a miraculous sign if you want us to believe in you. What will you do for us? 31 After all, our ancestors ate manna while they journeyed through the wilderness! As the Scriptures say, ‘Moses gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” 32 Jesus said, “I assure you, Moses didn’t give them bread from heaven. My Father did. And now he offers you the true bread from heaven. 33 The true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34 “Sir,” they said, “give us that bread every day of our lives.” 35 Jesus replied, “I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry again. Those who believe in me will never thirst. 36 But you haven’t believed in me even though you have seen me. 37 However, those the Father has given me will come to me, and I will never reject them. 38 For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do what I want. 39 And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them to eternal life at the last day. 40 For it is my Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life—that I should raise them at the last day.” 

My Journal for Today: Once again only one chapter in my chronological read, … today from John 6. And as I do daily, I read, study, and to journal from its contents. and this one is loaded with the Apostle John writing about how he and his fellow inner disciples witnessed two sensational miracles, the feeding of the masses of followers with just a few fishes/loaves and then Jesus walking on water and coming to them in the storm to dispel their fears. But even with these miracles, the people – and even the twelve – had trouble grasping the reality of Whom Jesus really was. And in John 6, we read of Jesus referring to Himself as “The Bread of Life,” whom His followers must feed upon and believe that He truly was/is the Son of God.

Also in this chapter is Jesus’ promise that NO ONE who believes in Him (i.e., really believes, with the trusting, clinging, and desperation belief that is the Greek term “pisteuo” in these passages, which is the same term for “believes” in John 3: 16) will ever be left out of heaven. But even the ones who saw Jesus perform wondrous signs, like those described in John 6, had trouble believing as Jesus said they must.

There is a wonderful story in a book entitled, Sleeping With Bread, where the authors describe a true story of children in an orphanage after WW2. They were children who had been made homeless by the bombings on the streets of London; and they without anything to eat. Well, once the children were placed in an orphanage, the workers discovered that the only way to get the children to sleep at night was to give them a piece of bread so that they would know/feel (i.e., “believe”) that they wouldn’t be without food in the morning; and when they truly “believed” that they would have something to eat in the morning, the children could sleep soundly.

That’s the kind of belief, in Jesus, as the “Bread of Life,” that we must have in receiving Jesus as our Messiah – our Savior.

I’ve had people ask me why I’m so compulsive about being into God’s word every day, taking sometimes several hours every morning to delve into God’s truth and to embed His “bread of life” into my heart (i.e., my very being as a Christian). Well, the reason for my obsessive/compulsive discipline in God’s word is much the same as the fear that required the orphans in London to need bread in their hands to sleep at night. I’ve even given a pseudo-Greek term to my daily pursuit of God’s word. I call my “condition” … ALOGOSPHOBIA, which if you break down the Greek origin of my self-defined obsessiveness, it means “fear of being without God’s word.”

 I know – without a doubt in my mind (i.e., with the level of BELIEF described in the Greek term “pisteuo”) that it was my driving God’s word deeply into my mind/heart which God used to transform me from my former atheist, flesh-pursuing self into a man who is on a quest to be like Jesus. And I have a fear – a “phobia,” if you will – that if I don’t keep pursuing my God through His word, that I might revert back to my former self. And like the children who feared being without the bread, I need to keep digging deeply into God’s word everyday to allow God to reshape me into the LOGOS, the living Word, … i.e., the image of Jesus.

So, I charge you today to study and meditate on John 6 and see where you are described in this chapter; because I believe (yes, in the sense of the “pisteuo” type of belief) that all of us are described in this chapter. We are either those feeding on the “Bread of Life,” in our faith in the Son of God, The Christ, … our Messiah,… or there are those who feed off of self and miss out on being with Jesus in Glory.

Where do you find yourself described in John, Chapter 6?

My Prayer Today: … Lord, I feed from Your Bread of Life even this morning, knowing that my feeding from Your truth will sustain me today and unto eternity. Amen