Are you hungry?

The theme of the 6th chapter of John is hunger, food, and Jesus Himself as food.  What was the Father up to through Jesus in this point in His ministry and life?  The miracles, signs, and wonders were not about a show, God was revealing who He was and is.  Jesus in John 6:48 declares, " I am the bread of life" and then invites everyone to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood.  This is clearly not another religion that gives you the rules to follower, when the founder invites you to eat Him.  Jesus often used metaphors and spoke in parables to illustrate a deep spiritual truths.  I was struck by the passage in 2 Peter 1:3-4 where we are told that by receiving the promises of God we will participate in the divine nature and escape the lust in the world.  So could it be that we can eat of Jesus by receiving His revealed promises purchased through His finished work.  In 2 Corinthians 1:20 tells us that all the promises find there "yes" in Christ Jesus and then they are waiting for our "Amen" which means "so be it".   Agreement with heaven means this promise of God will manifest in us through the work of the Holy Spirit what God has said.  How many of us as believers, not only know what the promises of God are but also believe by faith that they will be manifest in us.  There are times when the presence of the Holy Spirit is so thick, the atmosphere of faith is strong, and the hunger of the people of God is present that you come away getting filled by God.  There are other religious environments where the manifest presence of the Spirit is absent and there is not expectation of God but only man; these are not filling but draining.  It is amazing to me the way God seeks to reveal who He is, all the Jews would be familiar with the taking of the Covenant meal but when Jesus said that He was the meal they were disturbed.  The Jewish people of the day saw Jesus through the lens of who they thought he might be, rather than seeing Him through the truth God was revealing.  A tough reality is that we will never see Jesus for who He really is without the revelation by Holy Spirit.  This is why through Jesus 3 year ministry He was constantly revealing who He was and the Father, yet so many misinterpreted who He was or were unwilling to change their paradigm to let Him in.  What promises has the Holy Spirit brought before you through His highlighter pen.  That is one dimension of the Holy Spirit's role to act as a highlighter for the work of Jesus to us.

A Child of Promise,
Bret