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, where Satan tried to tempt and control him through manipulation. He called into question Jesus’ deity, and appealed to his bodily desires for food. The Lord replied by quoting a single scripture, saying “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” There are bodily needs and there are spiritual needs; the stomach requires food, but the heart (spirit) requires the word of God.
Some years ago, I had been ministering to a woman who was almost spiritually dead. She couldn’t stop doing drugs but continued to profess her faith in God. When asked if she was reading the bible every day, she replied, “No.” Oddly enough, when told that daily bible reading would bring about a transformation in her life, she didn’t seem to believe what I was saying. When asked what had occurred when she did practice daily bible reading in the past, she roughly replied, “I would read it for a while, and then my life would get better, and then I’d stop reading it, and I’d go out and revert back to my old ways.” She, like many others had failed to understand the truth of what is revealed in this scripture; that the spirit needs to be fed with the bible every day; 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 weak; permitting the fleshly desires take control. Human beings are then guided by their immediate appetites for food, for sex, for drugs and alcohol, etc. Regaining control simply requires an adequate dose of daily bible reading.
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 scripture? Every day 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 by every new truth we uncover. We love you Father, we praise You, and we thank You; and we ask and pray all of these things, according to Your will, in Jesus Christ’s name. Amen!” God bless all of you.
Jesus Speaks 