Even though there may be disagreements about the details of healthy eating, one thing that everyone who eats agrees on is this: in order to be healthy, we need to eat food.
The same can be said of our spiritual health. It also requires food. Jesus even tells us what food we should eat to nourish our spirits.
I know that some of you are assuming that I'm referring to the Word of God. That would be a good assumption.
Others of you might have the Lord's Supper in mind. Another good possibility.
In fact, our spiritual life depends on God's Word and the Lord's Supper as indispensable means through which God gives us His grace. To remove them from our spiritual diet is to starve our soul to (eternal) death.
But in John 4, while the woman at the well is off telling her fellow villagers about this man she met who told her everything she had done in her life, Jesus has a chit-chat with His disciples. They have urged Him to eat some of the food they have purchased. In response He tells them that He has food that they don't know about. They think that someone gave Him some food in their absence. He explains that His food is to do the will of the One who sent Him.
In other words, what nourished Jesus spiritually, what kept Him healthy in His soul, was to obey His Father's will and finish His work.
Jesus then pointed to the mission of reaping the harvest of people in whom the promises of God had been planted. The fields, He explained, were ripe and just waiting to be harvested. People were ready to be gathered into eternal life.
Jesus says His food is to do the will and work of God and links it with the mission of the church. If the will and work of God and the reaping of the mission harvest nourished Jesus, they will also nourish His followers.
Simply put, if you want to be spiritually fed, be in mission.
If you want to be spiritually healthy, be in mission.
If you want to do the will and work of God, be in mission.
No comments:
Post a Comment