JESUS SPEAKING
‘Now Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, and when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him, he said, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”
But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” (Mathew 4: 1-4.)
INSPIRED THOUGHTS
After being baptized, Jesus fasted in the wilderness for forty days and forty nights, where he was tempted by Satan. Satan attempted to control him through manipulation. He called in to question Jesus’ deity, and appealed to his bodily desires for food. The Lord replied by quoting scripture, saying “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” There are bodily and spiritual needs; the stomach needs food, but the heart (spirit) needs the word of God.
Recently I have been ministering to a woman who is near spiritual death. She can’t stop doing drugs, yet professes to know God. When asked if she reads the bible daily, she replied, “No.” Strangely, when told that daily bible reading would bring about a transformation in her life, she didn’t seem to get it, or worse she didn’t believe it. When asked what had happened when she was reading the bible daily, she roughly replied, “I read it for a while, and then my life gets better, and then I stop reading it, and I go out and revert back to my old ways.” She has failed to understand the truth of what is revealed in this scripture; that the spirit needs to be fed with the bible daily; not two days a week, or one week out of a month, but daily. The spirit controls the body, and when the sprit is starved, it becomes so weak, the fleshly desires take control. They then are guided by immediate desires for food, for sex, for drugs, etc. The key to regaining control is feeding the spirit with the word of God.
Today, we all need to be feeding ourselves with the word of God. How much time does it take to read a proverb, or to go through a portion of a scripture? Daily, we spend a half an hour or more eating food; does opening the bible for ten minutes and consuming the word of God seem too difficult? Give God’s word a chance in your life. Make it a part of who you are, and you will find a strength to overcome and endure anything that may come your way.
“Lord Heavenly Father, we come before You today, and we ask and pray that You would give us a hunger for Your word. Give us a desire to feed our spirits with Your divine power. Provide for us new insights as we read, that we might be excited with every new truth we uncover. We thank You Lord, we praise You, and we ask and pray all of these things in Jesus Christ’s name.” Amen.
Jesus Speaks 