Manna from Heaven

 In my quest to figure out what it really means to live your life for the Lord – what it means to live abundantly – the latest question I’ve been pondering is “What does it mean to live by faith?” 

I like to think of myself as a woman of faith, and even if I can’t quite define what that means, I believe that the fact I have a strong, active faith in the Lord as my savior qualifies me for the title.  But I suppose it makes sense that I’m struggling understanding what living by faith looks like when I can’t even define it.  Here’s a quote I appreciated from a book I’m reading, Streams in the Desert:

We must be willing to live by faith, not hoping or desiring to live any other way.  We must be willing to have every light extinguished, to have every star in the heavens blotted out, and to live with nothing encircling us but darkness and danger.  Yes, we must be willing to do all this, if God will only leave within our soul an inner radiance from the pure, bright light that faith has kindled (Thomas C. Upham).

It sounds to me like living a life of faith really doesn’t have much to do with how I feel about the Lord, or whether there’s some super-spiritual connection between the Most High God and myself on a regular basis, though I could be wrong.  It sounds to me like living a life of faith is a choice, or perhaps a series of many choices, to allow God to be our everything (see my previous post for my ponderings on that!).

The people of Israel, for example, had to live by faith when they were sentenced to 40 years of wandering in the desert.  They had to have faith that God could be everything for them and that He would provide for their needs.  Luckily for them, God provided for them regardless of how their faith was doing:

“He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.” (Deuteronomy 8:3)

What can we learn from this?  Let me highlight the last part of that verse for you again, “…man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”  I’m no commentator, but that seems pretty significant.  Living a life of faith, a life of believing that God is who He says He is, and living that life in such a way that your God is proclaimed to the world, requires more than bread (or coffee!).  It requires understanding that bread alone, or any of the enticing things the world has to offer, cannot get you through life.  You might survive okay.  But you cannot live without the words of God.

In light of that, let’s take this little tidbit beyond coffee and out into the real world.  When you wake up in the morning, do you choose to live your life by bread or by the very words of the Lord?  It’s really an easy question, but if you’re not quite sure, then let me restate it: Does the energy and ‘sustenance’ for your life come from bread (the world) or from the Lord and His word?

If you’re living like me, mostly by the bread of the world, then do you even realize that there is another option?  You can choose, daily, to live by the Word of God.  How exactly may look different for everyone, but for me, I have to literally, maybe even audibly ask myself how I’m going to live on a daily basis.  If the answer is by the Word of God, then there better be a steady diet of it in my day.  God has provided for us.  Just as He gave manna to the people of Israel, we are blessed with an abundance of His word at our disposal.  But it doesn’t do anyone any good just sitting on the ground.  We have to eat it.  Have you eaten yours?