No More Bread,
“In the House Of God”
The priority of God’s presence has been lost in the modern Church. We‘re like bakeries that are open, but have no bread.
And furthermore, we’re not interest in selling bread. We just like the chit-chat that goes on around cold OVENS and EMPTY shelves.
In fact, I wonder, do we even know whether He’s here or not, and if He is here what He’s doing? Where He is going? Or are we just too preoccupied with sweeping out imaginary crumbs from the bakeries with no bread.
On the day Jesus made what we call His triumphant entry into Jerusalem on the back of a little donkey, His path through the city, He probably went past the entrance to the temple of Herod. I believe the reason the Pharisee were upset at the parade in John 12 is because it disturbed their religious service inside the temple.
I can hear them complaining, what is all this noise, don’t you know you guys are disturbing the high priest. We are having a very important service inside. Do you know what we are praying for, we are praying for the Messiah to Come.
And you guys have the audacity to have this noisy parade and disturb us. Who is in charge of this mob anyway?
The Guy in the little Donkey?
They missed the hour of their visitation. He was in town and they didn’t know it. The Messiah passed right by their door while they were inside praying for Him to come.
The problem was, He didn’t come in the manner the expected Him to come, if He had come on a Roxroy or Bentley with Gold horse armed men, then the Pharisee and the Priest would have said, that might be Him.
We can be inside praying for Him to come while He passes by outside.
Worse than that, the insider misses Him while the “outsider” marches with Him!
Open to Ruth 1:1-6. Naomi and her husband and two sons left home and moved to Moab? Because there was famine in Bethlehem.
Consider the literal meaning of the Hebrew name of their Home town: Bethlehem means; the” House of Bread” the reason they left the House of Bread is that there was no bread in the House. It’s simple, why people leave the churches, there is no bread, bread was part of the temple practice as well, and it was proof of His presence.
Numbers 4.7: We find in the Old Testament that bread in the form of show bread was in the holy place. It was call the bread of His presence.
Naomi and her family have something in common with the people who leave or totally avoid our churches today, they left “THAT” place and went somewhere else to try and find bread.
I can tell you why people are flocking the bars, the clubs and the psychics by the millions.
They are just trying to get by; they are just trying to survive, because the church has failed them.
They seen and reported that the spiritual cupboard was bare. There was no presence in the pantry: Just empty shelves and offices full of recipes for bread. But the Oven was cold and dusty.
We have falsely advertised and hyped-up our claims that there is bread in the house.
We talk grandly about where He has been and what He has done, but we can say very little about what He is doing amongst us today.
That isn’t God fault; it is our fault, we have only remnant of what used to be – a residue of the fading glory.
But a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with only an argument.
John 9.25… All I know I was blind, but now I see. If we can lead people into the manifest presence of God, all false theological house of card will tumble down.
Yet we wonder why people hardly bow their heads when they come in our meetings and place of worship.
Where is the fear of God Gone to?
People have come to the House of bread TIME AND TIME again only to find there was simply too much of man and little of God there.
The almighty One is out to restore the sense of His awesome manifest presence in our lives and places of worship.
Over and Over we talk about the Glory covering the earth, but how is it going to flow through the street of our cities if it can’t even flow down the aisles of our churches?
It got to start in “here” It must start at the temple as Ezekiel wrote, saying I saw water coming out from under the threshold of the temple. Ezek 47.1
If God Glory can’t flow through the aisle of the Church, because of seducing spirit and manipulating men, then God will have to turn somewhere else, as He did in Jesus rode past ‘the House Of Bread” (Temple) in Jerusalem on a donkey.
If there is no bread in the House, then I don’t blame the hungry for not going there! I WOULDN’T.
When Bethlehem, the house of bread, s empty, people are forced to look elsewhere for bread of life. The dilemma they face is that the world’s alternative can be deadly. As Naomi was to discover, Moab is a cruel place. Moab will steal your sons from you and bury them before your eyes; Moab will separate you from your spouse. Moab will rob the very vitality of life from you. In the end, all that Naomi had left were two daughters in-laws whom she had know only ten years. With nothing but a gloomy and disastrous future staring her in the face. She told them, “You might as well not hang around me either. I don’t have any more sons to give you.”
But then she had a rumor…
If one of them hears the rumor that there is bread back in the House of Bread, the news will flow like a surge of electricity through a power line at near the speed of light.
The news of Bread will leap Frog from one house hold to another, from one place to another almost instantaneously. You won’t have to worry about advertising on TV or promoting it in usual way of the world.
The hungry will just hear. The news will break. This time is not hype or manipulation; there is really bread back in the House of bread! God is in that church.
When that happens, we won’t be able hold them in our building, no matter how many service we conduct each day. Why? How? All we must do is get the bread back!
We ignore God’s summons while carefully counting our stale crumbs of yesteryear’s bread. Meanwhile millions of people outside our church walls are starving for life. They are sick and overstuffed with our man-made programs for self help and self advancement.
They are starving for Him, not stories about Him. They want the food, but all we have to give them is a tattered menu.
There is another problem God is concerned with, and Jesus revealed it when He rebuked the religious leaders of His days.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisee, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those who are trying to” Matt. 23.13.
It is bad enough when you refuse to go in yourself, but God gets extra agitated when you stand at the door and refuse to let anybody else in either.
Through our ignorance of spiritual matters and lack of Hunger, we have figuratively “STOOD AT THE DOOR” and have barred the lost and hungry from entering in.
Our constant claims of hot bread backed only by stale crumbs on frayed carpets of man’s tradition have left countless generation’s hungry, homeless, and with nowhere else to go but Moab.
Today there is a faint rumor that there is bread in God’s House once again.
This generation, like Ruth (a picture of the unchurched, unsaved), is about to sidle up to Naomi to say, if you heard there is bread there, then I ‘m going with you. Wherever you go, I’ll go. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Ruth. 1.6…
If there is really bread. So tattered was the reputation of Bethlehem (the house of bread) that Orpah didn’t go. How many like her “don’t go” because the history of hype from the church exhausts their energy? They can make the trip.
Do you know what will instantly integrate someone directly into the fabric of a local church? It will happen the moment they taste the bread of His presence in that place.
When Ruth heard that there was bread back in Bethlehem, she rose from her sorrow to go the house of bread.
The signs are still up. We still take people into our churches and show them the ovens where we used to baked bread. The ovens are still in the place and everything is there, but all you can find is crumbs from last year’s visitation.
I am tired of reading about God’s visitations of yearteryear. I want God to break out somewhere in my lifetime so that in the future, my children can say, “I WAS THERE.” I know; it’s true.” God has no grandchildren. Each generation must experience His presence.
Recitation was never meant to take the place of Visitation.
Most of us, on the other hand, come to our minister and say, “Oh Pastor, would you, could you, pray for me and bless me? If nothing happens, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well I’ll go eat or I’ll go relax, or I’m going to go home and placate the inner man with fleshy food and entertainment.”
To be honest, I’m hoping that God grips men and women in His church and cause them to become so obsessed with the bread of His presence that they will not stop. Once that happens, they don’t want just a bless me touch, they will want Him to show up in the place no matter how much it cost or how uncomfortable it may feel.
We need to understand that what we have, where we are, and what we are doing is small compared to what He wants to do amongst and through us.
Young Samuel was a prophet in (I Samuel.3.1) generations of transition much like what we have today. The Bibles tells us that early in Samuel’s life … The words of God were precious in those days; there was no open vision. One night Eli the old high Priest went to bed, and by that point of his life his eyesight had grown so poor that he could barely see anything.
Part of our problem in the historical Church is that our eyesight has grown dim and we can’t see like we should. We’ve become satisfied with church proceeding in the dim, “normal and status quo” mode. We just keep going through the motions, shuffling from dusty room to dusty room as if God was still speaking to us, but when He does really speak, we think people are dreaming. When He really does appear, dim eyes can‘t see Him. When He really does move, we are so reluctant to accept it for fear of we will bump into something unfamiliar.
It frustrates us when God “moves the furniture” on us. We tell young Samuel among us, Go back to sleep. Just keep doing things the way I’ve taught you. Samuel its okay. It has always been like this.
No, it hasn’t always been that way, am not happy with it been that way, I just want more.
The lamp of God was flickering low and just about to go out, but that didn’t disturb Eli. He live in a permanent state of semi – darkness.
I believe God is about to release the spirit of the breaker to come and literally break the heavens open so that everybody can eat and feed at God’s table. But before the heaven can open, the fountain of the deep must be broken.
It’s time for some church, somewhere, to forget about trying to be a “politically correct church” and break open the heavens that manna might fall and start feeding the spiritually hungry of the city of Abuja.
It’s time we punch a hole in the heaven and break in hungry travail so the Glory of God can begin to shine down the aisle.
No matter what you need or feel you lack in your life – what you really need is Him, and the way to get Him is to get hungry. I pray that God will give you the impartation of hunger because that will qualify you for His promise of His fullness.
Jesus said: Blessed are they which hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. Matt 5.6
If we can get hungry, then He can make us Holy. Then He can put the pieces of our broken lives back together.
But our hunger is the key. So when you find yourself digging for crumbs in the carpet at the house of bread, you should be praying, Lord stir up a firestorm of hunger in me.
