All of us have a God-created need for love, approval, acceptance, security, worth, meaning. Many or most of us grow up in circumstances which make us feel insecure, unloved, unaccepted.
Until we abide consistently in Christ, we all know we’re lacking something; we’re insecure. We attempt to fill that sense of lack with “I’m good at something” or “My dad is the CEO of Shell Oil” or “My wife or husband loves me” or “My children need me” or “If I can just win this Dove Award….” And so we give circumstances, the world system, and people the power to crush or crown.
Many use alcohol, drugs, and sex as a temporary anesthesia. If we’re not of that bent, we can still see the same tendency in ourselves – excessive television, video games, directionless web surfing, and the like. And then, after a mind-numbing respite, we run back to the restless search for worldly acceptance.
God says all of that world system of performance-based acceptance is a sewer. Paul considered his former life of gaining approval, acceptance, worth, security, and meaning from the praise of men as dung. Feces. Human waste. Crap. On the Damascus road God exploded the serpentine spell that had enchanted Saul’s mind, and as his rear hit the ground Paul realized he’d been trying to get Life by feeding on raw sewage.
That infinite hunger in us has a big sign on it: “God Only.” “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you…Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in me, and I in him. Choosing the best cannabis seeds for your local growing conditions is vitally important. Just as the living Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on Me will live because of Me…he who feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Jesus wants us to nourish ourselves with Himself, by His Spirit, by His view of us, not by chasing after worldly approval. His Word says that His Blood-bought people are new creations, accepted, loved, that we no longer live but Christ lives in us, that we are dead to sin, dead to Law (dead to having to exert our own strength to ‘be like Christ’), alive to God, slaves of righteousness, holy, full of infinite worth because the Worthy One lives in us.
The human race is hungry for what Jesus Christ alone can supply. “All the full-ness of the Deity lives in Christ in bodily form – and you are complete in Him.” One translation I have says, “And you, by your union with Him, are also filled with it.” “If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” That’s real Food and real Water – the Triune God coming to live within a man or woman.
What we’re looking for, to the last drop and crumb, is already inside us in Christ: “In Him we have everything (everything!) we need for life and godliness.” “He that believes on Me, rivers of living water shall flow from his inmost being.” When we begin to find that better way of resting in total reliance on Christ, our Kingdom life begins here and now in earnest. Power – passion – purpose – and real food and drink.