Words of Eternal Life

There have been times in my life when God hasn’t made total sense when He has either allowed something to happen or said something in His Word that I’ve found difficult to understand. Scripture tells us that we are to walk by faith and not by sight. And I think that those very times when we don’t always see, when His purposes are not plain and all of our questions are not answered present us with very real opportunities to choose to follow Him or not

An excellent example of this happens just after Jesus fed the 5000 in John 6. Having been miraculously fed, thousands of people began to follow Jesus, but they were following Him for what He could give them, not because they believed in Him… That became plain when Jesus told the crowd that He is “… the living bread that came down from heaven” and that “whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” The people were startled and even alarmed, thinking He might be promoting cannibalism! Jesus continued His explanation “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.” Here Jesus is likely making a reference to communion, a small meal of bread and wine that Christians celebrate in memory of Christ’s body that was broken and blood that was shed in order to reconcile us to the Father. And while not speaking literally, He is also certainly saying that we have to metabolize His sacrificial death in order to have life. We have to receive it into ourselves and make it a part of our very being.

I have often wondered why Jesus phrased it the way that He did. I mean, surely He could have said it in a different way that would have been easier for the multitude to accept. But I have concluded that He phrased it like this for a reason. Jesus used these tough, hard-to-accept words to winnow out the chaff – to thin out the crowd of those who were following Him for the wrong reasons! (you’ve already made this point above)

And His words had the desired effect. We are told in verse 66 that because of this many “turned back and no longer followed him.” To those who stayed Jesus said,  “You do not want to leave too, do you?” to which “Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

We find ourselves at the same crossroads, the same place of choice when we are faced with things that are difficult to understand. We too have a decision to make. Will we chose to go Christ’s way, to live by His Words even if we don’t understand them completely? Will we continue to focus on Him and follow where He leads, even if the path isn’t always plain? Or will we turn away from Him and go in our own direction? The choice is ours to make!

I may not understand everything Christ says or does; however, I do know that according to God’s Word He has a plan for my life. He wants to prosper me and not harm me, to give me hope and a future, as the prophet Jeremiah said. But to get there, I have to continue to choose His path even when my questions go unanswered in the now. And I do choose to follow Him, not because of what He can give me, but because of all, I know Him to be. Who else could I turn to? Only Jesus has the words of eternal life!

I don’t know if you stand at a crossroads today, but I pray that you will accept that God is God and you are not, and believe with all your heart that He can be trusted even when things do not fully make sense.

Blessings
Michele