“By Every Word…From the Mouth of God”
Jesus was famished after his forty days of fasting and he had it in his power to turn stones into bread. It’s hard to imagine that, under the same circumstances, any one of us would not have done what the tempter suggested. Jesus, though, kept the big picture and the larger good in mind; while not denying that people need bread to survive, he affirmed that we need the spiritual sustenance that comes only from God to be truly alive.
Jesus would not trade the eternally good for the temporarily helpful.
Lord God, we cannot deny our physical needs and appetites but forgive us for when we think primarily of them or even only of them.
Develop in us the kind of life that craves spiritual sustenance even more than it craves physical sustenance.
Help us to have the kind of discipline that goes without a physical need for a set time in order to help us become more aware of our spiritual needs and of the resources that you have to meet those needs. Make us aware that, at the end of such a set time of fasting, the temptation to fall back onto a reliance on the same old patterns will be great; give us strength at such times to turn even more fully to you.
Amen.
“The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”’” (Matthew 4:3-4).
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