I had a recent conversation with some of my sisters in Christ, we were discussing an upcoming meeting with our women’s ministry team. We are planning more Holy Spirit nights for our women. A statement in that conversation: “…offer space for Him to move…words like reconciliation, forgiveness and nourishment keep coming up for this season.”
I have hung onto the word “nourishment” since. I have pondered the questions: where is my nourishment coming from? Am I satisfied with this method? What am I allowing to pass through my gates for spiritual nourishment? What are my eyes focused on? What have my ears been listening to? What words have flowed from my mouth into another’s? All of these questions circle me back to the word nourishment.
Let’s face it, we could all use more time in the word, more time before the Lord, more time at Jesus’ feet….follow Mary’s lead and leave the dishes for later, but I digress. Jesus’ words were clear; Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Matthew 4:4
Jesus was saying this back to satan when tasked with turning a stone into bread to prove He was the Son of God. Jesus was lead into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit, with the sole purpose of witnessing His reaction to temptation. Satan was tempting Jesus to stumble, but Jesus had quoted scripture instead. This scripture tells me that what we pass through our gates for nourishment matters. Bread, or food, if you will, is not our only source of nourishment or satisfaction.
A short time after this encounter with satan in the wilderness, Jesus began teaching the disciples what we now know as The Beatitudes. “Blessed are the poor (Matthew 5:3), blessed are those that mourn (Matthew 5:4), blessed are the meek (Matthew 5:5) and blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:6)
The rest of verse 6 goes like this: “for they will be filled.” The word righteousness means; acting in accord with divine or moral law: free from guilt or sin. If this is what we hunger and thirst for and we are in the word daily, at Jesus feet more than we are on a soapbox, then we will be filled. We will be satisfied. We will be spiritually nourished. It is times when we stray from those things that cause us to stumble, cause us to bow down to other devices of nourishment, spiritual or physical.
Jesus set the example in the way He conducted himself daily. The way Jesus interacted with His disciples, the way He showed love to the seemingly unlovable, the outcast, the downtrodden. He spent time with the Father daily, He even went away to be alone with Him. We should follow His lead. I pray that when I am at the end of myself and seeking only to be about my Father’s business, that I can say, for here my heart is satisfied.
Carol Frear