Jewels From JohnSample

What Do We Labour For? 

“Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” 

John 4:34 (NKJV)

Picture Jesus that day as he sat down near the well in Samaria; he was tired, thirsty and hungry. In spite of His physical exhaustion, He took time to converse with, and convince the Samaritan woman that He was indeed the Messiah. She in turn brought her entire village to Jesus, and eventually many believed on Him.  

The disciples of Jesus, who had in the meantime gone to buy food for Jesus, were confused when Jesus declined the food that was brought to him, and instead said to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” John 4:32 (NKJV).  Jesus later reiterates in John 4:34 that His food was to do His Father’s will, and to complete the work that He sent Him to do.

A lot of us are caught in the rat race, wherein we push ourselves, and our children to do everything we can, to climb the social ladder, mainly to satisfy our temporal desires. Each of us have two kinds of needs – the one, physical and the other, spiritual. Sadly, however, most are content with gratifying the physical needs, and have literally starved themselves spiritually. When we don’t seek God, read and meditate on His word, pray to Him, search out His will and plan for our lives, bless others, witness to those around, fulfil His purpose for our lives, we are living in the temporal and losing out on the eternal, because the physical man will die one day, but the spiritual man will live on into eternity.

In Matthew Chapter 4, after forty days of fasting, Jesus was really hungry, and when tempted by the devil to turn the stones to bread, He was so confident about the fact that man does not need only physical food, but also the spiritual nurture that God's word provides. He, therefore, quoted to the devil from the book of Deuteronomy which depicted the condition of the people of Israel as they wandered in the desert for forty years:

"So he made you suffer from hunger and then fed you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had seen before.  He did this to teach you that a person cannot live on bread alone but on every word that the Lord speaks.” Deuteronomy 8:3 (GW)