Eat His Flesh and Drink His Blood and be Satisfied


35 "I am the bread of life," Jesus told them. "No one who comes to Me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in Me will ever be thirsty again..... 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is My flesh." 52 At that, the Jews argued among themselves, "How can this man give us His flesh to eat?" 53 So Jesus said to them, "I assure you: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life in yourselves. 54 Anyone who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day, 55 because My flesh is real food and My blood is real drink. 56 The one who eats My flesh and drinks My blood lives in Me, and I in him.  John 6:35, 51-56
As another day comes to a close; as another sunset passes; as another sunrise comes there is a cry within the human heart that continues to scream for satisfaction.  Humanity at large is so utterly discontent, unsettled, with a brewing frustration that continues to boil from the deep recesses of the heart.  People are on the search for meaning; for fulfillment.... and people are doing anything to dull that pain; to distract and disconnect themselves from the true state of their own hearts.  Many people have become experts at numbing this pain; many people have become so efficient at deceiving themselves that they are actually enjoying their miserable existence.  The reality is that they are just distracted and numb with a toxic Novocain of this present evil age.  We as humans don't know what to do with ourselves and so we find anything to fill the silence so that we wont have to deal with what surfaces in the stillness.  We are cowards, the moment that silence comes upon us for even a moment we run..... we run to a TV, a smartphone, another person, food, drink, a hobby, work...etc.  What would happen if we actually stayed in the silence?  What would happen?  What beast would we have to fight in that unknown darkness?

Beloved, in the stillness, in the quiet, a voice that has been screaming all along will begin to be heard.  We have been so used to shoving our fingers in our ears and saying la la la just so we don't have to listen to this voice.  If we are all honest we are all deeply acquainted with this voice, but its a painful conversation that we don't really want to have.  So who's voice is this?  I bet your thinking its the voice of our Beloved... the voice of Jesus.... Well, I am sure that Jesus would like to have our ear as well, but I am referring to the voice of our own souls.  And this voice is screaming for Living water, for the only Bread that truly satisfies.  Our souls are starving, and just as a famished desperate soul it cries out for nourishment.  And here is where we are faced with our greatest dilemma.  We don't know how to drink of this Living Water and we don't know how to eat this Bread of Life (John 6).  Like co-dependent children we have only been spoon fed by our spiritual parents and become like 12 year old children who have never taken the spoon and fork to our own mouths.  We have no idea how to prepare a meal, we are so used to showing up in a ministry line not lifting a finger to eat and having mom and dad place the bottle in our mouths.... oh it makes them feel so good to be wanted and needed..... to bad their own identity issues of needing to be needed are creating 30 year olds who don't know how to wipe the excess milk from their chin.

So what happens when mom and day are suddenly not around and we have to become like a college boy on his own for the first time who has never stepped foot into a kitchen?  How are we to navigate that kitchen?  How are we to eat anything of value without first going through the pain of preparing the meal.  It takes time to chop the veggies, marinate the meat, pre-heat the oven, mix the ingredients, let the yeast rise the dough.  What are we to do?

Well, I tell you what we do.  We do what almost all modern western Christian do... We say "I'm going to the drive up window". Then we get in the car and go to McDonald's and get a double quarter pounder with cheese .... whatever it takes to get full. We do this with no thought that what is going into the body is actually toxic.  So day after day, night after night we go to the drive up window and let the quick fix silence our hunger.

Beloved the screaming voice from within is crying out for the nutrients that only come from the Bread of Life Himself.  But preparation to eat this bread is costly.  The priest who was to go beyond the veil to partake of the showbread had a rigorous protocol he had to adhere to if He wanted to survive eating that bread.  Christ will not be approached in a haphazard, irreverent way... for He is Holy.

Beloved, our greatest dilemma is that we have a buffet table of the Bread of Life laid out before us just beyond the veil but we don't want to take the time to wash our hands and change our garments so that we can go into the Father's house take our seat at the table and Eat of the Bread of Presence.  Eating at this table is not for the impatient or for the profane.  This is the table of His sufferings, of His wounds bearing Blood and His body broken and shattered.... for this is the Lord's supper.

You see this Bread... the body broken, and this drink, the blood poured out doesn't seem to excite the senses.  This food and drink is repulsive to the natural man its horrible in taste at first like John it is bitter in the stomach (Rev 10).  Its nutrients are in the veiled love of this passion embodied in the incarnation.  However, just outside in the outer court the church offers a false grace message of carnal pleasures as a quick fix meal that explodes with flavor but injects poison and death into the system. This worldly meat offers to fill us..... but with what?  It will distract from the pain of hunger but without getting any nutrients. This is a cycle of destruction and the multitudes even in the church are on this path.

Beloved the screaming voice of our soul was made for only one perfectly satisfying Man who we are invited to eat of His flesh and drink of His blood. But instead we run away from Calvary to some quick fix self help preacher to drown out that voice within..... whatever will cause us to be comfortable again.... it seems our itching ears just want comfort.  Our souls are screaming, dying from mal-nourishment but we just keep telling it to shut up and we shove another Twinkie of compromise down to dull the pain.  But without being truly fed the body is starting to die.... many are on this path.... hunger pains are starting to shut down and the body is eating itself from within on a slow demise to the death.

Its time to cry for Help!  Its time to call 911 ..... Amos 9:11, its time to rush a generation to the emergency room.... the prayer room, its time to learn the way of eating of the divine Bread. We must teach them to feast upon His blessed Passion.  There is no other way.  However, this process of taking our gluttonus souls away from feasting on this world is going to be beyond painful.  When we stop ingesting the toxins that we are so addicted to the first thing we are going to have to face head on is the screaming hunger pains demanding real food and real drink. We are going to have to come to realize just how anemic we really are..... but we are going to have to endure these hunger pains.

But one thing is certain the one that learns how to come to Jesus in His sufferings and eat from His blessed wounds will never ever be hungry again, and will never ever be thirsty again.  This Living Bread and Water will causes a satisfaction and a joy so bountiful that we will never again sit and eat from the table of demons.  We will never ever hear the screams of un-satisfaction, of frustration, of frantically running to and fro looking for fulfillment.  We will finally and totally be full, filled with the very fullness of God (Eph 3:19).

So are you willing to stay in the longing until you learn how to eat?  Are you willing to starve yourself from all the pleasures of this life even legitimate ones to let Christ be your true food and drink?  What if you didn't feast upon the media, and the news, and the praise of man, and the appetites of this age?  What if you only feasted upon Christ?  What if you only ate of His flesh and drank of His Blood?  What if He was the only thing you chewed upon; dwelt upon, dreamt about, lingered upon?  What if you fell down constantly and embraced His bleeding broken body.  What if you let His blood drip down to cover you?  What if you just kept staring at this cross, this Love, this Passion, this Christ?

If you did then you would truly feast and you would never miss the little morsels from the table of this fallen broken age.  Will someone wake up from the stupor of the masses and become a witness of the superior pleasure of knowing Christ Crucified?