Dear Tabernacle Family,
Today I want to share something I’ve been meditating on for close to a year. Given the situation of COVID-19 sweeping across the world, I think this is the right time to discuss it. I want to share with you what the Word of God says about eating. Not the kind of eating that we are used to but the kind of eating that sustains us spiritually.
Psalm 34:8 teaches us that God wants us to “Taste and see that He is good”
What does this mean? How do we taste God?
In Matthew 4:4, Jesus answered Satan after 40 days and nights of fasting in the wilderness, "It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
Jesus teaches us that eating food alone will not keep us alive in this world. We need the Word of God. We need to learn to eat His Word.
Jeremiah puts it like this in Jeremiah 15:16: When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart's delight, for I bear your name, LORD God Almighty.
When we eat of God’s Word, we begin to fill ourselves with His Joy, His Delight. We were created in the Image of God. When we consume His Word, we begin to bear His name and come into the fullness of what He created us to be. In a world where every moment contends for our attention and tries to feed us words of virus, death and economic collapse, we must remember that in him we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17:28a)
Dr. Larry Keefauver shared this quote with me during his recent trip to The Tabernacle, “What you eat is what you dream. You need to feast on the Word that God has for you today.” This has been constantly on my mind in recent weeks since our nation started dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak. I have to make a choice everyday what words I’m going to consume and how what I’m eating is going to affect my life and those around me.
In the midst of everything going on around us, let us seek the Word of God to sustain us and speak the Truth in this season.
With love and hunger,
Pastor Joshua Ogle