CypressSaint

Artos Zoes (AR-tos Zo-ASE)
Bread of Life

John 6:48-51 NLT
I tell you the truth, anyone who belives has eternal life. Yes, I am the Bread of Life! Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, but they all died. Anyone who eats the bread from Heaven, however, will never die. I am the Living Bread that came down from Heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever; and this bread, which I will offer so the world may live, is my flesh.

I grew up going to church and hearing about the “blood of Jesus,” but I never really understood what made it so precious. So I recently started praying to God to show me and I started reading up on it and studying it. Really though, it’s not something you can comprehend by studying. Jesus’ blood is the most pure, holy, powerful thing this world has ever and will ever know. There isn’t really a possible way to explain, the only way to understand is to feel it.
A baby’s blood typically comes from his father; if the mother has a blood disease the baby doesn’t typically get it because it get its blood from its father. So Jesus had the blood of God pulsing through His veins. It was this perfect blood that was shed for us on the cross, and it is this perfect blood that is being offered to us to wash our souls and make us pure.
Often when I hear the word ‘pure’ I think of a timid type of innocence, but that is not at all what Jesus’ blood is. It’s a powerful, mighty type of pure. It cures diseases, vanquishes demons, opens eyes, heals hearts, soothes souls, and completely covers the people that accept it.
I didn’t understand communion until I understood the blood of Jesus. I didn’t understand a lot of things, because I didn’t know I had the most powerful substance covering my sin. Like my pastor once said, “If you wanna have a good service, first sing about the blood of Jesus.” And I agree with this completely. If I want to have a good day, I first sing about the blood of Jesus. Because wherever the blood of Jesus is, you can know that that’s where Satan and his evil won’t be.
But there is more than just the blood of Jesus, there is also the body; the bread. Jesus talks about feeding off of His flesh to have eternal life. At first I didn’t quite understand what it meant to feed off of Jesus. But once I started thinking about it, I realized that as humans we feed off of a lot of things. We feed off of music, movies, the people we’re around…etc. But the only thing we can feed off of that will keep us truly satisfied is Jesus. We can feed off of the junk food of the world, but nothing compares to feeding off of Jesus.
This week ask Artos Zoes, Bread of Life, to show you what it really means to feed off of Him, and ask Him to show you other things you’ve been feeding off of that don’t truly satisfy like He does.
Thanks for reading!!
~~~CypressSaint~~~

©copyright 2011 All Rights Reserved

Proverbs 6:6:
“Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and become wise!” NLT

Ants. They’re tiny. Their strength is amazing. They can carry things that are even heavier than they are.

That’s about all you need to know. Ants are strong, and we need to be like them. I’m not talking about physical strength, that’s important but not as important as spiritual strength (1 Timothy 4:8a “Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better”). I’m speaking of ants and how we should be like them, not with our strength, but our spirit. Think of how ants are; heavy objects are loaded on top of them, yet they keep on moving in whichever direction they had intended on. If something gets in their way, they simply go around it. What is it they have that we don’t? They have perseverance and faith. They never give up, even if their pathway is blocked with something solid and completely imovable, or even though it sometimes feels as though the weight of the sky has been placed upon their backs.

So let us no longer be called lazybones! We must all get to work, for it takes several ants to build an ant house, and several billion times several billion ant houses to cover the earth. Live out the role you were designed for, and accomplish the tasks you were made to accomplish. Find which direction is best, and continue that way, even if you have to move around huge, solid objects that try to block your path. And most of all, carry on, even when the biggest of burdens is place upon you. For if you do this, you will be able to hear the creator of all things tell you this, “Well done my good and faithful servant, you traveled on and on, with determination, faith, and perseverance, even when the path seemed to never end. You have accomplished your duty, and carried burdens upon your very back that far exceeded your own weight.”

1 Peter 1:18
For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom He paid was not mere gold or silver.

I once had a friend, who was depressed at the time, ask me, “Have you ever been so sad that you begin to crave the sadness?” I told her I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I sort of did without really realizing it. I now definitely know. But she had it all mixed up. It’s not the pain of sadness that causes you to long for sadness. Rather, it’s when everything seems to be perfect that you begin to feel sorrow. You can have everything you’ve ever wanted, but you’ll still want more. It’s because if you focus on earthly things then you’ll never have joy. Your (false) joy causes sorrow, not your sorrow causes joy. The only way to find true joy is through God. And I don’t mean that you need to have God too, but that you need to have God only. It’s only when you can surrender everything to God that your emptiness can be filled.

One speaker put it like this: It’s like asking God to fill your cup. He can’t do that until you pour all the dirty water out.

God paid the ultimate price for us, so how dare us ask of Him even more. You can’t expect God to come to you. You have to come to Him, come to Him and leave everything behind. That’s when you’ll find true contentment.
1 Timothy 6: 6-8: Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth. After all, we brought nothing with us when we came into this world, and we can’t take anything with us when we leave it. So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.

Let me leave with this to think about: If there’s something you feel you couldn’t surrender for the Lord, then that means you probably should. Often, the sorrow people feel is called ‘emptiness’ but it should be called ‘too full for God.’ Because God can’t fill you up until you empty yourself out.

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