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Here is a sampling of some of the messages that have made a special impact at CCiPH, and that have been transcribed or written in manuscript. Most weeks in our equipping assembly, at least one man has been asked to prepare a message that will build up believers. Often, the message is taken from the liturgical Gospel reading of the day, or it is a life message that God has been working into the fabric of that man. It is included here to build you up. |
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Feeding on Jesus: the Bread of Life Message from Ben Gregory on August 10, 2003
John 6:35-51 We learned growing up at church that the world was hostile toward Christianity and that we’d better stick together and be prepared to defend ourselves. Years later I’m finding that, while there are people out there who are angry in their unbelief, and while the world may be a bit cynical about the Church (perhaps for good reason), people are remarkably open to discussing spiritual, even Christian things. I have fascinating conversations at work with people who are aware that there’s got to be more to life than what they’re experiencing. I have one friend who has slept with more women than I would’ve thought was physically possible, and his mood is good when he’s in a relationship with one of them, but when he’s alone, he comes apart. And begins again to be interested in spiritual things and to ask me why there’s no peace in his life. Some day he’s going to hear the things I keep telling him. Many of the folk at work drink quantities of alcohol that are way too large to be good for them and do it nearly nightly. Just last week management had to send someone to a coworker’s apartment to try to sober him up so that he could come work his shift. I have other friends there who give me weekly updates on the things that they’ve purchased in pursuit of a happiness that continues to elude them. “There’s always some reason to feel not good enough, and its hard at the end of the day.” There is a universal hunger in us, as human beings, that drives us as strongly as physical hunger does, and people try all kinds of things to satisfy it. From where you and I live, in Jesus, its pretty easy to identify some of those poor substitutes for what they are, but what does it tell us when we look a little closer and notice that the Church isn’t immune to pursuing emptiness either? There are a lot of places not far from where you and I live where church attendance is still believed to be the answer for an empty life. Just make it to all the meetings maybe something helpful will rub off. Or do we still revert back to our old conditioning that reminds us that if we just do enough good stuff we’ll feel good about ourselves and the hunger will go away. If we pray enough, go to enough meetings, participate in enough programs, give enough money, sing enough songs, force the gospel on enough people, read the Bible often enough and long enough and early enough in the morning… I wonder sometimes if it’s possible for the Bible to become an idol? The warning that Jesus gives his audience in the previous chapter is bothersome to me. I’ve lived most of my Christian life convinced that if I’d just read my bible a little more, God would like me more and everything would be okay. But listen to Jesus in John 5: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” The Bible is a tool. If all of my bible reading isn’t bringing me to Jesus, it’s worthless. Jesus looks into the faces of people who are living misguided lives in pursuit of real life and says, “There is a bread that comes from God and it gives real life.” And because they still don’t get it, they ask him for some of that bread. And in verse 35 he finally comes out and tells them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” (6:35) The people Jesus is talking to have tried all of the things that we try to satisfy the hunger--all the physical things, all the relationships, all the emotional games we play with each other. Jesus tells them that there’s more, and that the very thing that he came to do was to take care of the people God had given him. (6:38-39) It may be worth mentioning here that we’re all different—all of us whom God has given to Jesus. He has us all, but we’re not all the same. How does Jesus get these people he’s not going to lose? There are lots of examples just in John’s gospel. The woman at the well he got by taking the time to talk to her (something that no good Jewish man would have stooped to do) and by telling her things about herself and about God that only someone worth believing in would have known. (4:25) Then he got the people that lady told her story to. And they were Samaritans too! Scandalous. (4:39) In chapter one he got two of his disciples, including Andrew, because they had been taught by John the Baptist and were ready for Jesus’ invitation to follow him. (1:40) He got Nathaniel by giving him just enough of a look at what he was about to overcome his skepticism. (1:46-49) He got a government official and his whole household by healing the man’s child without even going to see him. (1:53) How’d he get you? My story is not your story. I haven’t talked to Michael Wigle about this yet, but I hope that some time soon he’ll tell us all his story in this meeting. It’s a great story. We need to hear one another’s stories—and everybody has one. And none of them are the same, because none of us are the same. God deals with each of us differently. But at the heart of all these differences is a hunger and the common experience of finding a bread that gives the kind of life that never ends. And in a little while we’re going to break that bread together again, and remember that it makes us one. Repent: The Key to Healing and Miracles (Mark Scherer, Nov. 2002) Doing Versus Being in the Kingdom (Jay Horn, Aug. 2002) The Kindness of God Leads to Repentance (Ben Gregory, Feb 2003)
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