Issue 534
Have you noticed that satisfaction has a habit of expiring? One day you are satisfied with your work but then it changes.
You can be satisfied with your income but then find you are not. No matter where you look in your life you can discover that previous satisfaction no longer applies.
This can make you wonder whether satisfaction could contain a certain amount of illusion. Then you use the word “disillusioned” to describe the process when the illusions don’t work anymore.
Of course if you feel currently satisfied and someone comes along and challenges you, this can generate some resentment. No one likes to be disturbed.
So it’s quite a challenge when someone arrives and claims to be able to satisfy you in every way, on a permanent basis. You will either find it hard to believe or hard to receive, depending on your current satisfaction and disillusionment ratios.
The Son of Man presented himself as utterly satisfied in every way on a permanent basis. This was his inner and outer of reality.
I’m going to suggest to you that everything you call satisfying relates to one or several of four categories. A satisfied body, a satisfied mind, a satisfied heart and a satisfied soul (or spirit). All of your lists could fit under these headings.
Your body satisfaction will include food, drink, shelter, appetites and desires. Your mental satisfaction might include your beliefs, values and ideas. Your heart will embrace your feelings and a sense of well-being and your soul relates to matters of meaning in relationships.
Work satisfaction will connect with several of these as will your relationships, family and friends.
So right now how satisfied are you? You will have some sense in every area of your life and as you add them up you can estimate your life satisfaction.
So when the Son of Man says, “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never go hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” it’s quite an offer. But here’s the surprise. He is not only announcing that he is satisfied, he is not only offering permanent satisfaction; he is defining satisfaction for you.
Using imagery of bread, hunger and thirst he spells it out.
So now you can not only ask am I satisfied, but is my satisfaction the same as his? He gives us clear clues as to what that means.
The first one is that he spells out the source. “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”
Now you have it. True satisfaction (holistic, permanent, all embracing) comes down (not up or sideways).
According to the Son of Man it comes from heaven. So you can now reexamine your body satisfaction, mind satisfaction, heart satisfaction and soul satisfaction and ask ‘does it come down from heaven?’
Once you ask this question it will not be so much that everything changes, but it will change the way you see everything as you will see next time.
Work well.
Geoff Shattock
BIBLE SECTION
John 6:35-51
35 Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. 36 But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. 37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. 38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. 39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. 40 For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.”
41 At this the Jews there began to grumble about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” 42 They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
43 “Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. 44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. 46 No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father. 47 Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.”
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Work well
Geoff Shattock
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