As If Your Life Depended on It

Sorry for the delay, I've been on vacation!

Announcements:

Lydia and Mark

• Vernon and Nellie's daughter, Lydia, is engaged to be married to Mark Hodge (from Liverpool, England)! They have yet to decide on a date, but are considering one wedding in the US and one in the UK.

Praise Reports:

• Ken's eye continues to improve, praise God!
• Warren and Mary's son Paul is trying to reconcile with his wife! This is worthy of praise as well as constant prayer as they struggle through this.
• Joyce's uncle Bob is doing well and may be out of the hospital soon.

Prayer Requests:

• Please keep Dixie in your prayers.
• Remember Roy and Julie and all that they're going through right now.
• Deborah Kyle has throat cancer and her house just burned down.
• Libby's father died.
• Pray for Keith and his throat cancer.
• One of Julie's patients passed away, pray for the bereaved family.
• Please intercede for our nation and the moral decline of our culture.
• Join Ken in his prayer for a complete recovery.
• Pray for Steve Holland.
• Pray for Rebecca.
• Pray for Nellie.

Cleanup Crew

• Our helpful kitchen cleaners will be the Young Adult Men!

Peace Be With You, originally uploaded by peapodsquadmom

John 6:4 

When Jesus feeds the 5,000 this is the context--Passover is near. This is important because the author of John mentions it, and it was in the minds of everyone gathered there that day. In verse 6 it says that Jesus asked Phillip about bread "to test him." What exactly was He testing? Perhaps he was setting up the feeding as a visual aid: to feed the masses the bread of life (verse 35) it must be broken and distributed, but there is no danger of having too little to go around--he will always be more than enough for us. 

Now let's look at a curious repetition of the same word in John 6:35, 36, 40, 47: believe. Then we see it changed to the word eat in John 6:51, 53. It looks like belief in the Christ is a lot like eating.

We depend on eating and drinking for life; we couldn't survive without them. We build our lives around them, scheduling time for frequent refreshment. But there are many things that we believe in that we don't structure our lives around. Do you believe in terrorists? You probably do, but I'm betting that there aren't too many actions in your typical day that are solely determined by a belief in or fear of terrorists. We often believe in things, but don't treat them like our daily meals: as if our lives depended on them.

Jesus is calling us to more than apathetic "belief" in His lordship. He is calling us to treat Him like our daily bread, like we would die if we didn't order every day around getting more of Him. John 6:56 reminds us that those who ate the first Passover died, but those who eat of our Lord will have eternal life.

Are you tasting Jesus every day? Are you treating Him like the center of your life?