Nourished By Obedience

What Did Jesus Do?
Jesus Obeyed

My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.
John 4.34

Most of us will never truly be desperately hungry, at least not for our next meal. Oh, all of us have plenty of appetites, often for things that are downright no good for us, but we hunger for them anyway. And a day hardly passes without a headline about someone undone by their desperate and totally self-indulging appetite for something. A famous golfer comes to mind. Most all of us have something we just cannot get enough of.

ESPN started feeding the sports junky’s cravings years ago, only to be succeeded by networks that cater to those with insatiable hunger for the NFL, or the NBA, or the NHL, or golf, or soccer, or any number of other sports. There are food networks, and shopping channels, and automotive channels all feeding their devotees 24/7. We are all familiar with the dangers of going overboard in feeding our appetites, be they for food, drink, clothes, cars, or even darker cravings. It just isn’t good for any of us to want, much less to have, too much of anything. But Jesus had an appetite we all could do with some more of.

Jesus, the Son of God, couldn’t get enough of the Father. More correctly, Jesus couldn’t do enough for the Father. The Lord literally fed on obedience, on doing the will of God the Father. Most of us grow hungry and weak from overwork. But Jesus was nourished by accomplishing the work of his Father’s kingdom. This is not to say that Jesus didn’t need food; the Lord was fully human, and his body needed the same fuel as ours do. But Christ’s spirit was so sustained by obeying God that he could truly say that he fed off of doing what the Father willed. There was for the Lord the same satisfaction in doing the work of his Father that we might find in a holiday feast.

Do we savor the Word of God more than a char-broiled steak? How does our craving for prayer match up to our craving for the next installment of American Idol? Which is stronger, our hunger to have things, or our hunger to help people? Do we have an appetite for obeying, or for doing our own thing? Do we rise in the morning with an emptiness that can only be filled by accomplishing something for God, and do we lie down at night only satisfied when we have done the will of the Father? That’s what Jesus did.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4