Real Food

Are there many feelings better than a full belly?

I don't mean when your stomach is so full that it makes you feel sick. We've all been there before. Actually, we've all been there pretty often. You eat until you feel like you're going to explode, leaving a big mess that you're going to have to order some OxiClean to take care of. That's not a good feeling. But there are times when your stomach is full, and it's just right. You've eaten Sunday lunch with your family, and now you can lay on the couch and watch football until your eyelids droop and you slip into a nice long nap. It's the American dream. To be satisfied after a good meal.

I read a passage from the New Testament yesterday that I think deals with the topic of satisfaction, and it uses the image of food and water. But food and water are only metaphors here. The satisfaction that is addressed goes beyond how you feel after Thanksgiving. It talks about spiritual satisfaction--of being completely content and fulfilled in Christ and in living the life God desires for you to live.

The passage is a popular one. In John 4, Jesus is traveling through Samaria when he stops to take a break near a well. Before long a Samaritan woman comes to the well to draw water, and Jesus engages her in a conversation that reveals this woman's longing for satisfaction and her inability to attain it. The whole thing centers on the metaphor of water. Jesus points out that the water in this well is unable to truly satisfy, because she keep having to come back to draw more. But he promises her living water that satisfied completely. And what is this living water. It's Jesus himself, and the pouring out of his Spirit into a person.

Up to this point, this woman hasn't found that sort of satisfaction, because she's been looking in the wrong places. She's been married five times, and at the time of her encounter with Jesus, she's living with a guy she's not married to. It seems like she keeps trying to find fulfillment in men, but all she really does is leave behind a string of broken relationships. What she really needs is Jesus himself, and the same is true for each of us. We have a habit for trying to find satisfaction in all the wrong places (relationships, jobs, money, status, etc), but all that ends up happening is that we find ourselves saying "I can't get no satisfaction" (sorry...I had to throw that in).

A little later in the chapter, we see a glimpse of what brings Jesus a level of satisfaction. After the Samaritan woman leaves to go tell the rest of the town about Jesus, Jesus' disciples show up and say, "Hey, you'd better eat something." Jesus replies, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about." He goes on to say, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me to finish his work."

Jesus sees his ministry as his food. It's what nourishes and sustains him. It satisfies him.

I think that's a really interesting way to look at ministry. It's more common to think of ministry as something that depletes you. It empties your tank, and you have to find another way to fill yourself up in order to go out there and minister again. And in some ways, that might be true. We see Jesus going off in solitude and praying and resting, and I think these practices were necessary to his ministry. But at the same time, his work is still his food. He was satisfied when he was in the middle of God's will.

You need food to survive. And so too, we need to be engaged God's work for us to be spiritually healthy. Our lives are incomplete when we wast them pursuing all sorts of things that have nothing to do with God's will for us and through us. We need to follow the Spirit's leading just as much as we need to put food in our bodies. The prophet Jeremiah communicates this need when he says, "But if I say, 'I will not mention him or speak any more of his name,' his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot" (Jer. 20:9). Jeremiah had a compulsory need to proclaim God's word, and I think Jesus understood that need.

For us, I think it's important to ask ourselves from time to time about where we are seeking satisfaction. I have to ask, "Am I look for fulfillment in something outside of Christ and his will for me? Do I for some reason think that God is insufficient for me?" Chasing satisfaction in other things never gives us what we need. It's like eating nothing but gummy bears and expecting to be well-nourished. Jesus gives living water. God's work is our food. And the rest is imitation.