Getting Personal: Getting to the Heart of Your Talk
Chapter Six
Following the King for All the Wrong Reasons
Don’t waste your energy striving for perishable food. . . .Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. (John 6:27)
I sat with him in his living room, struck by the things he was saying. It was not that I hadn’t heard this kind of thing before, but he spoke with such strength of feeling. It had come at the end of a day when Josh’s two young children seemed to make an unending chorus of whining demands. His job seemed only to take more and more out of him, and he and his wife weren’t exactly feeling appreciative of one another. He dropped his body down on the couch and stared for a while at the floor. You could almost see Josh steaming.
Then he said, “Why do I do it? What’s it all worth? All the years of Bible study and prayer, all the times I’ve gone to church. . . . I struggle to do what is right, and what do I get? A life that is impossible! People say, ‘Just trust the Lord.’ For what? He doesn’t answer, he doesn’t care. I just blew it! I shouldn’t have gotten married, I should never have had children, I can’t handle this job, and God just sits up there and lets it all happen. So I’m a Christian! What good has it done me? I’m tired, I’m overwhelmed with my responsibilities, and I see no way out. But if I leave all this, I get punished. What’s wrong with this picture?”
I was not the only person to hear Josh talk this way. The same discontent spilled over into his daily communication with his wife and children, in a steady stream of complaints, irritation, impatience, accusation, and sometimes even threats.
I tried to gently respond, but Josh was angry and unwilling to hear me. He hadn’t really been talking to me anyway. I just happened to be in the room. It was a moment of brutal honesty that I just happened to witness. Josh’s angry words revealed a great deal about the true thoughts and desires of his heart. Underneath the neat-looking, everything’s-fine-with-me exterior that people saw at Sunday worship was a man whose heart was at war with God. Josh had followed the King, and it hadn’t turned out the way he had expected.
As we’ve noted from Luke 6, the words we speak come out of our hearts. This means that in some way our talk tends to reveal the true love(s) of our hearts. What was wrong with Josh’s talk was not just the particular words he spoke or the particular tone he used. We wouldn’t solve his communication problem by telling him never to say those words again. To see lasting change in Josh’s speech, the doubt and discontent beneath his words needed to be exposed. We needed to deal with the true love(s) of Josh’s heart. What was going on with Josh? How had his conversation become so displeasing to God and so destructive to the people around him? Why wasn’t his speech all it is supposed to be—loving, kind, encouraging, and seasoned with grace?
The reality revealed by Josh’s words is the focus of this chapter. It is an issue we all must face if our communication is ever going to be what God wants it to be. Be honest and ask yourself, Is there a little of Josh in me? I know there is in me! There have been times when I’ve wondered if it’s worth it. During those times it is easy to grumble and complain your way through the day.
The reality of the Christian struggle Josh experienced is important—and common. It is simply this: Many of us follow the King for all the wrong reasons. It is not enough to be excited with the King. We need to be so for the right reason.
Whose Dream? Which Bread?
If you had to write down your dream for your life, what would you write? What is your “if only,” “if I could just have,” “if God would just give me . . . then I would be happy”? Maybe a better way to ask the question is, What kind of Messiah do you want Jesus to be in your life? Keep your answer in mind as we look at one of the most familiar stories in all of Scripture, found in John 6.
In this story, Jesus takes a little boy’s lunch and by means of his messianic power turns it into a meal for five thousand people with twelve baskets of food left over. Imagine your reaction if you had been there, and consider the impact of this man’s power on your life. The crowd is buzzing, “This is it. This is the prophet, the Messiah. He’s come. Let’s grab him quickly and make him our king! This is what we’ve been waiting for all these years.”
You would think that this is the golden moment for Jesus. Didn’t he come to be this people’s king? Isn’t he the prophet of prophets? Of course he is. But notice what Jesus does. He leaves. He withdraws. He disappears. What is going on? Why does he respond so strangely? The crowd looks all over for Jesus. They want to make him their king, but he doesn’t seem to want anything to do with it. Why? Isn’t this just what he came for?
In John 6:25, Jesus has crossed the Sea of Galilee and the crowd finds him there.
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
So they asked him, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.”
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.” (vv. 25–36)
What is Jesus saying to these people about their desire to make him their king? Is he joyful, encouraged, ready to respond? No, instead of thanking them, he rebukes them. He essentially says, “You’ve missed the whole point.”
In writing his Gospel, John does something very helpful. He doesn’t like to call the miracles that Jesus performed miracles. He likes to call them signs. What does a sign do? It points to something else, the reality you really seek or the place you really want to be. For example, when you take a vacation, you don’t stop at the road sign with your family and say, “We’re here! We’re here! Get the kids and unpack, honey.” No, you follow the sign and drive on until you have reached your actual destination. The sign along the road only points to the reality.
This is what was wrong with these people and their reaction to Christ. They had experienced the miracle, but they didn’t see the sign. The physical blessing of bread was meant to point to a much deeper spiritual reality and, Christ said, “You’re not getting it.” They were concentrating on the miracle of the bread as if it were the ultimate reality. Christ is very pointed in what he says. The terminology he uses when he says, “You’ve had your bellies filled” could literally be translated, “You’ve grazed.” He is saying, “You’ve grazed till you’re full, but you still haven’t gotten it.”
What was behind these people’s pursuit of Christ? What did they really want? I do not believe that they pursued Christ out of a humble submission to his messiahship and a willingness to follow him wherever he would lead. Their pursuit of Christ was born instead out of a love for self and the hope that Christ would be the one who would meet their felt needs. They were excited about following the King—but for all the wrong reasons.
I am afraid that many of us respond to Jesus in the same way. What moves and motivates everything we do is not a submission to God’s will and a burning desire for his glory, but our own set of personal desires and dreams. We are excited about the King because we see him as the most efficient delivery system for those dreams. You can tell what really excites us when we fall into discouragement and grumbling, when he does not deliver the “good” that we want. The lips that once praised now complain, and the lips that once encouraged now accuse. To avoid this we must learn to ask, Whose dream are we really pursuing? Which bread do we really want? Here again this struggle of the heart will shape the communication of our lips.
Physical Bread and Spiritual Deception
This struggle of physical versus spiritual bread is a core struggle of the Christian life. It is a core struggle of human life. In the middle of this struggle is the Deceiver, who would have us believe that life is all about physical bread, that spiritual things are of little consequence. We are bombarded with this message from birth. It is all around us in magazines, newspapers, TV, on billboards, in the mall, and in conversations on the subway or at work. Life is about how much physical bread you have been able to gain, maintain, and enjoy. True happiness is found, we are told, in people, possessions, and positions. And since we “only go around once,” the beer ad tells us that we should do it with all the “gusto” we’ve got.
This struggle over bread is depicted in many biblical passages. It is at the heart of Satan’s temptation of Christ (Matt. 4:1–11). It is tragically played out as Judas sells the Messiah for thirty pieces of silver (Matt. 26:14–15). It is a very potent form of the human tendency to exchange worship and service of the Creator for worship and service of the created thing (Rom. 1:21–25). It is what John warns against when he calls us to forsake the love of the world (1 John 2:13–15), and it is graphically portrayed in Christ’s parable of the rich fool, who builds bigger barns to store his goods, only to die and meet his Maker (Luke 12:13–21). Paul discusses this struggle in terms of living with an eye on eternity, saying that he fixes his eyes “not on what is seen, but on what is unseen” (2 Cor. 4:16–18). Psalm 73 also reveals this struggle as the psalmist envies the affluence and ease of the wicked. The message of the Deceiver is all around us, making this a core spiritual struggle for every human being.
Embedded in the Deceiver’s tempting message are four subtle lies. They seem to offer life, but accepting them leads to death. Each lie is meant to move us away from the very thing for which we were created, a life of love and submission to the Creator. Let’s consider these four subtle but persuasive lies:
1. Physical things are permanent. The Bible tells us so many times in so many ways that the world is passing away. John says, “The world and its desires pass away” (1 John 2:17). Paul tells us that “outwardly we are wasting away” (2 Cor. 4:16). The psalmist says that the lives of the wicked with their abundance are like a dream that quickly passes when one awakes (Ps. 73:18–20). And this is why Christ enjoins us to “provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys” (Luke 12:33).
2. Physical bread is the only bread. Sinners tend to deify the creation and elevate its significance over the One who made it. They tend to forsake the pursuit of the unseen God for the amassing of personal possessions. This is why we are encouraged not to store up treasures on earth but to seek first his kingdom (Matt. 6:19–34). And this is why we are told to live as pilgrims, as tent-dwellers, not giving ourselves over to the accumulation of material things as if they were the only bread that really counts. The person who believes this lie is a fool (Luke 12:20).
3. Human success is defined by the amount of physical bread you possess. Who among us has not envied the rich? Which of us has not dreamed of winning the lottery and living the idyllic life that would follow? Who hasn’t thought at some moment that we would be happier if we only had more money? Who of us isn’t a little moved by the images of money, power, and success that are beamed at us on TV? Who among us doesn’t want to peek through the gates to see how the “other half” lives?
Scripture aims these powerful words to us at such moments: “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matt. 16:26). Christ speaks directly to this lie, saying, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). Jesus defined human success in terms of two fundamental commitments: to love God above all else and to love your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22:37–40). To live this way is to be rich no matter how small your collection of worldly things.
4. Life is found in physical bread. This is the lie of lies—that somehow, some way, life can be found outside of a relationship with God. This was the lie told by the Deceiver in the Garden, and it is the lie told countless times again every day. Feeding on physical bread only leads to more hunger. It is only as you feed on Christ by faith, receiving his life, that you can ever be satisfied. He is the Bread. He is life! All other offers of life outside of Christ lead parched people to drink at dry wells. He is the True Bread. He is the river of life. Follow him and within you will flow rivers of living water (John 4:13–14). Without him you are dead, even though you physically live (Eph. 2:1–10).
It is so easy to buy into the lie that life can be found in human acceptance, possessions, and position. It is so easy to have your life controlled by dreams of success in your career. It is so easy to believe that nothing satisfies like romantic love. It is so easy to fall into pursuing the idol images of Western culture—big suburban house, luxurious car, lavish vacations, etc. When we do this, we quit feeding on Christ. Our devotional life begins to suffer. We pray less, and when we do, we pray more selfishly. We find our schedule doesn’t leave much time for ministry, and we spend more time with our colleagues at work than we do with brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. Functionally, we are feeding on the world’s bread, not on Christ.
Our entire life will be determined by which bread we pursue. There are no more dangerous lies than the ones that lead us away from a loving hope and surrender to the Creator we cannot see, and toward a bondage to an endless, unsatisfying pursuit of what is passing away.
Whose Dream—Christ’s or Yours?
Now consider your own life: your marriage, job, children, friends, home, and church. What do you want of Christ? Whose dream do you bring before him? Is your dream nothing more than your personal definition of paradise? I’m sure every husband and wife has dreamed of the perfect mate. Every parent has dreamed of the perfect child. Every child has dreamed of the perfect mom and dad. Every worker has dreamed of the perfect boss. Every one of us has dreamed of the perfect friend or the perfect church with the perfect pastor. Each of us has dreamed of the perfect house and the perfect financial life where every bill is easily paid. But the question here is this: What is the deepest level of your hunger today? Do you find yourself discontent with the present? Do you struggle with what God has given you today? Peter says important things about what now is all about.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade—kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. (1 Peter 1:3–5)
This sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Peter says, “Don’t you understand what you have? You have been saved by God’s mercy. Your sins have been forgiven. You are part of God’s family. And not only that, but there’s an inheritance waiting for you that won’t spoil, won’t perish, and won’t fade.”
“Yes,” we respond, “this is wonderful!”
But we need to read on. Peter has been talking about the past, and our forgiveness by God’s mercy. And he has been talking about the future, and our coming inheritance. But what about now? What is going on in the present? Let’s pick up where we left off.
. . . who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (vv. 5–9)
What is now about? Living in the present is about something much deeper than getting up in the morning with a smile, much more than a satisfying job, romantic weekends with your wife, encouraging friendships, well-mannered children, a nice house in a good community. It’s more than a pastor who really seems to care about you, and more than a budget that seems to be working.
Peter’s point is that God is willing to compromise things like these to produce something greater, fuller, and deeper in us: genuine faith. This is what God is after in the experiences that make us wonder if he really loves us, if he hears our prayers, experiences that cause us to envy other believers, or maybe even people who don’t know him. Why are those experiences sent our way? Because God is not done with us yet. He is at work giving us the goal of our faith, the salvation of our souls. Rather than grumbling and complaining and doubting the faithfulness of God, we should be able to respond with worship. Instead of “God, why me?” we should be able to say, “God, thank you. I want more of your salvation. Lord, I want all that you can give me. I know you are not done with me yet.” The struggles are not a mistake. They are tokens of redemptive love. Trials should not lead us to doubt the love of the King; they should convince us of it.
In my opinion, in the heart of every sinner is a desire that life would be a resort. You pay your money and you get whatever you want, whenever you want it. Someone explained one of these offers to me. He said, “Twelve stated meals a day.” Twelve! Then he said, “The last meal is at midnight, and at 2:00 A.M. you can order pizza in your room if you want it.” Sounds like fun to me! No one can say no to you! At any moment you can decide to do whatever you want. If God wanted life to be a resort, this is what it would be like.
Recognizing the Signs
Now catch the principle here. The blessings God gives you in your family, job, home, church, friends, and community are meant to do something for you. They are meant to point you to the deeper and fuller blessing of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ in your life. He is life! Abundant life is not your spouse, children, house, car, possessions, job, friends, or church. Abundant life is Jesus Christ! The amazing reality is that he is ours and we are his! This is the bread worth living for. Not the bread of physical blessing, but the spiritual bread, Christ, that his gift of earthly bread represents. Some of us are only excited about Christ because we think he will deliver more physical bread. We fall into spiritual depression when he removes the physical bread so that we would hunger again for the Bread that really satisfies. Can you see beyond the physical bread to see Christ and the glories of his grace? Or do you consume the physical bread without any desire for the spiritual blessings that he gives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?
In John 6, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” Ask yourself this question: Which bread do I hunger for? What kind of bread do I really want to feed on? I’m not saying that physical things are of no consequence or that we should not seek to improve our lives (marriages, jobs, churches, families, etc.), but I think that we can miss the point. We too can see the miracles and miss the sign. We can rejoice over jobs given, friendships restored, homes supplied, and bills paid and fail to hunger for the spiritual blessings that physical provisions represent. We can be like the people who pursued Jesus only to keep their stomachs full. They didn’t really want him as their King. They wanted him to be their Great Waiter, dedicated to keeping them physically satisfied.
Many of us come to Jesus today because we are holding onto our dream and we want Jesus to somehow help us get it. If we are honest, we would have to admit that this is all we really want from him. And if we don’t get it, we are miserably disappointed.
If we are living for earthly bread and see it as our source of life, we are going to be in big trouble when we don’t have it. But if we are living for spiritual bread, for a deeper communion with Jesus Christ, then our lives (with all of their problems) become wonderful places to know and grow in fellowship with the One who is life. We will live out this pursuit of the true Bread in the bedrooms, kitchens, job sites, neighborhoods, and hallways of life. And this will have implications for our communication.
When you have a community of people (family, friends, body of Christ) who are committed to Christ, long to know him better, and want their lives to express praise, worship, and glory to him, their talk will be affected. Their words will encourage and strengthen, and they will experience unity and an intimacy of fellowship that the world doesn’t know. When we let go of our personal dreams and expectations, we can experience the unity of the Spirit we have been given as the children of God.
In contrast, people whose eyes are focused on physical bread will eat one another up. Their talk will be the world of trouble described in James 3, because this bread cannot satisfy. Love for it will cause you to be a parasite on those around you, sucking the blood from them, though they can never, ever, ever, ever give you enough. There’s only one Bread—it’s Jesus. Life is found in feeding on him by faith. There is no other way.
Disillusioned Disciples
Do you remember what happened when Jesus proclaimed that message? Jesus said to the crowd, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). Not only did the crowd forsake him, but many of his disciples left as well (v. 66). They said, “This is a hard teaching” (v. 60). They were right. The hard call of the gospel is that God sent his Son not so that we could realize our agenda, but that we could be part of his.
I encourage you, as a reader, to start here with humble honesty. What does your talk reveal of the true love(s) of your heart? What is the deep inner hunger that you live to satisfy? Is it hunger for Christ? If he is what your heart craves, there are wonderful opportunities to grow in grace and knowledge in the midst of all kinds of difficulty. These experiences, Peter reminds us, are sent our way by a God who remembers us with redemptive love. He is completing the saving work he has begun in us. We will be refined by trial. Life is not a resort, but a bumpy pathway that leads to conformity to Christ. We can face the bumps with genuine joy, knowing that every bump was placed in our path by a loving heavenly Father for our redemptive good.
I once was talking with a lady who had been married for many years. She was married to a person who, very honestly, I would have to say was a bad man. He was angry, controlling, and manipulative. He regularly said and did hurtful things. She, meanwhile, had dreamed of the ultimate husband and had gotten so embittered by the blessing of other women in her church that she said she could no longer go to worship. She felt as if God had forsaken her, so much so that she couldn’t read her Bible or pray.
I wanted her to understand her identity in Christ and the love of the Lord. I wanted her to understand that God is a refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble, so I quoted a few passages to her that spoke of God’s amazing love when, in the middle of a verse, she said, “Stop!” I looked up at her angry face. She said, “Don’t tell me any more that God loves me. I want a husband who loves me!” And she pounded her fist on her chair as she spoke.
I learned something that day. To the degree that you have based your life on something other than the Lord, to that degree God’s love and the hope of the gospel will not comfort you. You will not be comforted because you are hungry for another kind of bread. You long for a king who will give you the bread you crave. That bread might be a relationship, circumstance, or position. It might be human love and respect, the desire for vengeance, or a certain economic state. It literally can be anything in creation! But there are only two types of bread: Christ, the Living Bread, and everything else. We set our hearts either on him or on something else.
I learned something else that day. That angry lady’s words revealed the true love of her heart, her dream, the bread her heart craved. Certainly, she would have said that she was a believer; she would have professed faith in the truths of Scripture. She probably even would have said that she loved the Lord. However, her prayers were not an expression of thanks, but a list of demands in the form of requests. Her words that day revealed that despite her profession of faith, she really sought a king who would do her bidding. She expected God to deliver her dream and she was angry that he hadn’t. She had no eyes to see that through the vehicle of a difficult marriage, her King desired to give her something better. As we look at our own lives and all that we are living for, we need to ask, Whose dream, which bread do we seek?
The question before us is this: What happens to us when we don’t get the dream? Do we wallow in self-pity? Do we lash out, blaming those around us? Do we get swallowed up in envy and covetousness? Do we begin verbalizing doubt of the goodness, faithfulness, and love of God? Do we find it hard to worship, praise, read the Bible, pray, fellowship with other believers, or share the gospel with those who don’t know the Lord?
What do our words tell us? Do they tell us that we are living for earthly bread? God’s goodness, love, power, glory, and call to us do not change in the absence of earthly bread. If he is the object of our hunger, we can have joy even in the middle of suffering. Whose bread are we really seeking? What is revealed by our reactions and words? Perhaps many of us, even though we have not physically forsaken the King, have lost our enthusiasm for his grace and mercy because following him has not led to the fulfillment of our dreams. In our hearts, we too have left him, like the disciples who walked sadly away when he called them to a commitment of faith.
What Happens When the
Dream Is Gone?
An Old Testament prophet (Habakkuk) looked around at the people of God and said, “God, I don’t understand what is going on here. You’ve stood by and allowed your people to be very wicked. Why do you permit this? Why don’t you do something about the sin of your people?” God responded, “I will do something. I will send an evil, violent nation from the north to come down and wipe my people out.”
The prophet could not believe what he was hearing! When he asked God to do something, he had been thinking revival—judgment was not in his catalog! He protested, “God, how can you do this? How can you use a nation more evil than we are to judge us? It doesn’t make any sense!” The prophet debated with God and, in the middle of the debate, God revealed his power and glory to him. Habakkuk ends his book with these precious words:
Though the fig tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign LORD is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to go on the heights. (Hab. 3:17–19)
The prophet has described the total decimation of a farming culture. There is nothing left—no plants, trees, or animals. There is no physical bread. In the face of this, Habakkuk says, “Lord, though everything is gone, yet I will rejoice because you, my Savior and my Lord, my Life and my Strength, are still here!”
If your dream would crumble, if there were nothing left, would you rise in the midst of your tears and say, “I am full of joy, because the Lord is my lord, the Lord is my life, the Lord is my strength, and gloriously, in the midst of all this loss and destruction, I have him”? You can pursue your dream, or you can pursue the Lord’s dream for you. You can ask him to conform you to his image, so that more and more your life and your words would bring him praise. Or you can wish that Christ would conform to the scope and focus of your dream. Whose dream are you seeking?
May God help us to be people who see the sign behind the miracle, who look at earthly blessing and say, “These blessings point me to the deeper, fuller reality of Christ in my life. What I hunger for and what I want my life to be about is fellowship with, love for, and obedience to my Lord Jesus Christ.” My prayer is that both you and I would be people who follow Jesus even when there are no more harvests, no more animals, and no more bread. My prayer is that we would be people who rise up in the morning and say, “I am filled with joy! I am a child of the King. He is my life and I will follow him by faith.”
Your Dreams and Your Talk
As you might expect, the truths of John 6 have important ramifications for the way we think about communication. John 6 points us to the core issue of our words: Our words are shaped by the dream that resides in our hearts. They are determined by the bread we are seeking.
Take a husband and wife, for example. If each is holding on tightly to a personal dream, feeding on earthly bread, they will inevitably experience frustration and disappointment with each other and much conflict as their dreams collide. Their world of talk will surely be a world of trouble. They will find themselves cursing the spouse God gave them and at times may even utter resentful curses at God. Their tongues will only be tamed when their hearts are controlled by the rule of the King, the dream of the King, and the bread of the King.
As sinners we have a tendency to be excited about following the King for all the wrong reasons. This infects our words with the poison of selfishness and saps the life out of our praise to the Lord and our ministry to others. We no longer find joy in being his disciples, and we too will walk sadly away. When our words reveal that we have left a position of hope, trust, and rest in the King to feed on bread that can never, ever satisfy, we need to return to him and pray,
Lord, it is so easy to get caught up in our own desires and dreams. It’s so easy to think of you as little more than the deliverer of those dreams. Too often we get excited like the multitude and lose sight of the spiritual reality behind the gifts you give us.
Lord, we pray that we would not just pursue our own hopes and dreams, but have a hunger and thirst for Jesus Christ, and a desire to know his will in every area of our lives. May we stand before you in love and joyful submission, feeding on you by faith. May we be strong in joy, faith, courage, and obedience even when we aren’t experiencing physical bread. In the midst of trials may we say to you and of you, “Thank you, Lord, for your love. Thank you that you are busy completing your saving work in us.” For this we need your help and we pray that all of this would be for your glory. Amen.
Getting Personal:
Getting to the Heart of Your Talk
How can we tell what is really ruling our hearts? Ask yourself these questions:
1. What happens to my prayers and my talk about God when I don’t get what I want?
2. How do I speak to others when they seem to stand in the way of my dream?
3. What happens to my talk when circumstances are difficult and unpleasant?
4. What happens to my talk when I see others blessed while I struggle?
5. How much do my prayers focus on the deeper heart changes that God is working within me and the wider concerns of his kingdom work?
6. How much does my talk express a spirit of thankfulness and contentment?
7. Do my words encourage others to put their trust and rest in the Lord?
8. How often is grumbling and complaining a regular part of my everyday conversation?
9. Does my speech evidence gentleness, kindness, and patience?
10. Is my communication infected with demanding, critical, impatient, accusatory, or condemning words?
11. What happens to my talk when others sin against me?
12. What happens when my prayers are not answered as I would expect?
13. As I seek to humbly answer these questions, what dreams of my heart are revealed? What do I do with them?