If you have followed our blog for any time or have heard us talk about our new book (more information on that here), you have read our heart’s desire. We want women who are feeling insecure in their spiritual journey to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God wants them to be seated at His glorious table where they can feast with Him and pass His plate of invitation to others. Not only does God want that, He’s made the way for it! But what do we actually mean when we say “feasting with God”? With Him, feasting has a few meanings.
First, and probably what we think of most, is physical feasting. For years now, I have anticipated a nearly daily question from my husband. “Hey, honey, have you thought about what we’ll have for supper tonight?” I chuckle with him each time he asks that question (usually every day just before lunch!) because it has become such a rhythm for us. To be honest, there was a time when his daily inquisition really bothered me. Didn’t he trust me to provide a meal for him? But can I blame him? Whether by messages on television, social media, the radio, or even print ads, we are constantly encouraged to feed ourselves. And by feeding, I mean that we ask ourselves,
“What physical food can I put in my mouth to tickle my tastebuds, slide down to my stomach, and nourish my physical body? And perhaps more deeply, “How is it going to satisfy my cravings?”
If we really consider this action of eating supper, we realize that our interest in the menu isn’t flippant. Physical food is essential to the well-being of our bodies and minds. If you’re anything like me, the adverse effects of no food become clear from the first hunger pang. Fatigue, fuzzy thinking, lethargy. An overall inability to get up and go. But, I wonder if we are neglecting to ask (maybe didn’t even know that we should) some more important questions. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves, “What sustenance am I going to put into my soul?”
And that brings us to another, arguably more important, form of feasting. God invites us to feast with our heart and soul. I have been pondering that thought a little more deeply since hearing words of wisdom from Dwight, the character from The Office television show. Ok, it really wasn’t Dwight. In actuality, I heard Dwight’s creator, actor Rainn Wilson, say this:
The reason spirituality is important is because it is reality. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Now there is some food for thought (no pun intended). Let’s consider his statements again. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. Rather, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. For me, these are points worth pondering, especially when I think about Jesus and some of His statements in the Bible. I particularly recall the time right after Jesus’s baptism and how he moved immediately into 40 days of fasting and praying in the wilderness. I don’t think I would have been living, let alone functioning, after 40 days without food. But Jesus, pushed through being physically famished to defend himself against Satan’s temptations in that wilderness. In fact, when Satan suggested Jesus use His godly powers to feed Himself by turning stones into bread, Jesus said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ (Matthew 4:4 ESV)
There is so much power packed into that phrase, “every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The first book of the Bible, Genesis, tells us that God spoke the world into existence. We exist because God declared it. Even the Bible itself proceeds from God’s mouth. The apostle Paul’s second letter to Timothy tells us that All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. God equips us through His word by giving us truth to chew on, digest, and live by. This makes Matthew 4:4 much clearer. We need more than just physical food to survive. We need food for our souls.
Feasting with God also includes one more attribute. He doesn’t want us to feast alone. Biblical historians say that when we read the word “supper” in the Bible, we are to understand it as taking in the principal meal of the day – often especially in company. Armed with that understanding, we can see Jesus’s Last Supper with His disciples in greater depth and beauty. As God declared our spiritual and physical being and equipped us for every good work by His word, Jesus used a meal of physical food to declare the truth of His role as Savior.
During that Last Supper, Jesus told the disciples that we must eat His flesh and drink His blood. Jesus explains that it is not physical bread that the world needs, but spiritual bread. Jesus three times identifies Himself as that spiritual bread. And twice He emphasizes faith (a spiritual action) as the key to salvation: “My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life”; and “Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life”. In other words, God has made a way for us to be securely seated at His table, and He gives us great food to feast upon.
As he spoke to His disciples over that meal, Jesus also compared and contrasted Himself to the manna that Israel had eaten in the time of Moses: “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die.” (John 6:49, 50). [1]
Like Jesus instructed His disciples to sit with Him at the Last Supper, God invites us to sit with Him at His table. And as God rained down manna from heaven for the ancient Israelites to feast daily, Jesus came down from heaven to serve as our Bread of Life to feast with now and forever. He called His disciples to pass the plate of that truth, and He wants us to do the same. And when you consider what He has done, don’t you get excited to share it?
— Linda R. Maynard © June 3, 2024
[1] https://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-eat-flesh-drink-blood.html
