The Food and Drink and Breath of Our Lives

When I come here and speak… When I come here and put words on a screen, and feel my fingers move across the keyboard, and as I listen to the sound of the clicking keys, words pouring forth from my hands… I do not wish my words to be some ideas I came up with. I do not wish my words to be some kind of wisdom I have made for myself. I do not want my words to be anything less than God speaking through me and my hands giving His words a visible place to sit. If merely my own words, my own voice, is what is being presented and furthermore might lead people astray, then may God Himself strike me dead.

God is my life, my breath, my being, my reason for existence, the One who is and who was and who is to come. Before Him, I am nothing. I am nothing without Him.

My words are nothing if they do not speak the truth. If my words present a lie, then I ought to be thrown into a pit of fire and die like the sinner that I am. In fact, I deserve death if I have broken one single law of God.

So when I write, when I breathe, when I sing, when I pray, when I live, it ought to be for God and by His strength and according to His will.

The lyrics of a song of worship go like this:

This is the air I breathe

Your holy presence living in me

This is my daily bread

Your very word spoken to me

And I I’m desperate for you

And I I’m I’m lost without you
(Taken from the song “Breathe” by Michael W. Smith)

And I’m in the same boat as the lyricist of that song. Because where could I go that I could find anything worthwhile? Everything else is futile, is worthless, if God is not in it. If it is not God’s will. If God is not in me.

As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, “Everything is meaningless!” Without God, it’s meaningless. Youth, money, achievement, it all turns out for nothing and ends in nothing.

If we are not desperate for God, what are we desperate for that matters? We may be desperate for revival, or for change, or for hope, but to what end? Is not the end God if it really matters? Does not all our searching (if it means a thing) lead to God? And if not, then a Christian ought to rethink his life, ought he not?

But as Jesus quoted to the devil,

‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’
Matthew 4:4b

And as Jesus said to His disciples when they urged Him to eat,

‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
John 4:34b

Even David cried out,

As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?
Psalm 42:1-2

Do you want to know God? The Living God? Do you want to taste His presence like the morning dew, like the essence of love, like the light of morning after the darkest of nights?

In the nighttime, in the darkest places, in the land of shadows, pain, and death, God is there. Do you thirst for Him like nothing else? In the pain do you shake, and cry out, “I want YOU God, I want YOUR embrace, Your loving arms wrapping around me, an embrace so sweet it would feel like death to be away from it!”

There is nowhere worth going besides God. We are lost without Him. He ought to be our life. Paul even said, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, ‘Do you take offense at this?Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.But there are some of you who do not believe.’ (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.)And he said, ‘This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.’ After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.So Jesus said to the twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.’
John 6:61-69

To whom else shall we go? Where could we possibly turn?

You see, Peter realized who Jesus was, and because of that, he recognized that there is NO ONE he could go to that would do him any good. Peter found the only one who is good, and discovered that He has “the words of eternal life.” Jesus even said, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

And Jesus doesn’t say without reason, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6b).

He is THE life. The only life. His Words nourish us, His presence makes us live, His touch is what we long for. To have the God of all creation say, “You are my son,” or, “You are my daughter,” is beyond incredible, beyond jaw-dropping.

Once we have recognized who God is and who we are (but mostly who He is) and where we stand in relationship to Him as humans, then we must also come to the place where we recognize that we’re lost without Him, as the song says.

We must recognize that we should be desperate for Him. That His very Word is our daily bread, and doing His will is our food. That His presence, His living in us, is the breath we breathe.

All glory to God our King. Amen.

All direct verse quotations are taken from the ESV