The Bread Of Life

We have been spending the last four weeks talking about the rest Jesus

offers us and how to obtain it.

We spoke about rest, the promise of rest that God offers us, the power

that God has over all our problems, and situations, and discussed the

truth about the healing powers of God. Today I want to discuss believing.

To set the stage lets turn to a couple of portions of scripture.

John 4:31b-34, "The disciples were begging Jesus, 'Teacher, have something

to eat!' But He answered, 'I have food to eat that you know nothing

about.' So the disciples started asking among them selves, 'could

somebody have brought Him food?' 'My food,' Jesus said to them, 'is to

obey the will of the one who sent me and to finish the work he gave me to

do."

John 6:51-58, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If you

eat this bread, you will live forever. The bread that I will give you is

my flesh, which I give so that the world may live. This started an angry

argument among them. 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' they

asked. Jesus said to them, 'I am telling you the truth: if you do not eat

the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you will not have life in

yourselves.' Those who eat my flesh and drink My blood have eternal life

and I will raise them to life on the last day. For my flesh is the real

food; my blood is the real drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my

blood live in me and I live in them. The living Father sent me, and

because of Him I live also. In the same way whoever eats me will live

because of me. This then, is the bread that came down from heaven; it is

not like the bread that your ancestors ate, but then later died. Those

who eat this bread will live forever."

Listen to this statistic: Knowledge is exploding at such a rate--more than

2000 pages a minute--that even

Einstein couldn't keep up. In fact, if you read 24 hours a day, from age

21 to 70, and retained all you read, you would be one and a half million

years behind when you finished (Campus Life , Feb. 19??).

An amazing statistic. Now tell me when do you suppose this

information was compiled? Would it surprise you if I told you that these

statistics did not even take into account the internet. They don't even

take into account the personal computer. And, why not? It's because the

statistics are from 1979.

It's crucial that we don't gorge ourselves on all the information that is

screaming down towards us on the information super highway, but what we do

need to learn is what will sustain us for the days to come.

The Prophets from of old proclaimed: They will all be taught by God. The

question is; Are we listening?

Today we are talking about believing and the "Bread of Life," what it is,

how it can sustain us and give us rest.

We all know what it means to eat. The body cannot maintain itself

independently; it depends on the fuel that we put in it. Without food and

without nutritious food; what happens? Our body grows weak, sick and may

eventually die.

Why is it that we know and understand that the body can't survive without

being fed; yet, we never even consider the fact that in order to have a

healthy spirit we need to feed our spirit? To feed and sustain our

spiritual, we need food from a spiritual source; we must eat heavenly

food.

· And Jesus say's that the spiritual food is the will of God.

What is spiritual food?

If Jesus Christ were to meet you physically, face to face, what would you

want to ask Him?

I have asked that of many people and the most common answer I receive is,

"I'd want to know what the Lord would want me to do."

God definitely has a will or a plan for you and me. If you look through

any bible concordance and look up "the will of God" and "God's will" in

the New Testament; you will find that it falls into three categories.

1. God's Moral Will, which is the "do's" and "don'ts," the "Thou shalt do

this, thou shalt not do that." And we find out that these do's and don'ts

are not to keep us from having fun, but rather to keep us from getting

harmed. God's moral will helps us enjoy life to it's fullest.

2. The Principles God's Word. Principles are more like equations. This

is where God says, "If you do this, you can expect that to happen. A good