“I assure you: Anyone who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that anyone may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven…”
John 6:47-51
These words have special significance in my life. I was saved 5 years ago on the soft gray floor of my bedroom after reading these words. It was through these words that the Spirit of God spoke to my spirit and regenerated my heart.
Up until that point I had been living in open, obvious sin, eating the bread of this world and expecting it to provide me with lasting fulfillment. After reading Jesus’ claim that in fact, he was the true and living bread—I knew I was dead wrong. In that moment, I knew that there was so much more to life than physical bread.
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These verses are nestled among a story found in the gospel of John in which a crowd is following Jesus around because of the miraculous works that they saw him performing. One of these miracles included Jesus feeding the entire crowd with only five loaves and two fish. Shortly after this feast, Jesus withdrew from the place they were in. The crowd quickly located Jesus, and when they did, Jesus confronted them. Jesus knew that it was not Jesus himself that they were after, but the good things that he could provide. They were so consumed with the temporary pleasures of the world that they were blind to see the true fulfillment that Jesus was offering them in himself.
I believe that modern Christians wrestle with some of these same issues. We get so wrapped up in expecting God to preserve our own safety, comfort, and success that we forget that Jesus came to the earth in order to save us from the bondage of putting our hope in these worldly things. The physical comforts of this world only prove to be a shadow of the fullness of satisfaction that is found in having a relationship with the One True God.
“Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of God will give you, because God the Father has set His seal of approval on Him.”
John 6:27
The true food that God offers to all people will never perish—that bread is Jesus Christ who came to save the world. When we eat of this bread, Scripture tells us that we will never hunger again. I have found this to be true in my own life. Even in seasons where I seem to regain a taste for the world, my soul knows that the answer to my eternal fulfillment will always lie in the living bread that has come from Heaven. 16 year old me, crumpled up on my bedroom floor shedding tears of joy following the moment of my salvation knew this perfectly well. Since that moment things have never been the same for me. It did not ever matter how far I wandered because my soul knew that the answer to my every ache and longing of life did not lie in worldly pleasures, but in surrendering those desires for the sake of knowing the Creator of my very being. The desires no longer mattered to me. I was willing to suffer the loss of all my desires in order to know Him because He was better than the bread of this world. I traded a life of quick-fixes for a life satisfied by the very Answer of my life.
Wholly Known 