Earlier this year, I was asked to be on a Christian talk show. As I was waiting, I sat down with the guy who was going on after me. I asked him what his story was, and he replied, “Well, I’m a fairly new Christian, and I’ve just written a book called Seven Lies That Will Ruin Your Life.” (Here’s the link, if you’re curious.)
Until a few years prior, Joshua had been a performer in the adult film industry, even winning a “Performer of the Year” award. But he said he was miserable.
He had gotten into the industry because of a terrible series of events in his own life. When he was younger, he found out his dad was living a double life, complete with an entirely separate family on the other side of town. Joshua felt worthless and unloved. Not long after, he began hearing voices that told him he was nothing more than the bad things he’d done and no one would ever truly love him. So he turned to the porn industry to try and satisfy the hunger deep in his heart. They had a place for him—but they didn’t provide anything close to satisfaction. He spiraled in that world for years.
Until one day, through a friend, God unlocked the chains of his heart and several months later, he came to Christ. He left pornography and was discipled by a few mature believers. By the time I met him, he was traveling the country speaking at men’s conferences and student events, warning them about the dangers of the industry and testifying to the power of the gospel.
I asked if his book was about this transformation. But he said something that floored me:
No, not really. I use my story, obviously, but I don’t want to glorify it. What I did was a symptom of a hungry heart, a heart that every man I’ve ever known possesses. Most people won’t express their hungry hearts the way I did, but all of them have the same hungry heart. My book is more about the bread of life offered to all of us.
I don’t know how to describe this, but even as I was dumbfounded at his story, I couldn’t help but know that I was witnessing the power of the great I AM.
Jesus says in John 6, with complete audacity, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35 ESV). He doesn’t say, “I’ll give you the bread of life” or “I’ll point you to the bread of life.” He says, “I AM the bread of life.”
In this and the surrounding verses, Jesus uses personal pronouns 17 times. Historically, there’s never been anyone that egocentric who had more than a tiny group of lunatics around them. Yet Jesus puts himself at the center of our spiritual lives because God is the great I AM.
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote,
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Jesus puts himself at the center of history. He puts himself at the center of your existential crisis. He either is who he says he is or he isn’t. Jesus says that knowing him is the bread of life our souls are starving for. Either he’s right and we take him up on the offer, or he’s not and we reject the “bread” he says he’s got.
I’m convinced that Jesus was right. Satisfaction for our deepest soul yearnings is in him. Listen, a lot of times Christians say things like, “Be satisfied with Jesus.” Or “Find happiness in Jesus.” But have you ever truly asked what that means? Is it that you’re always humming God-songs and thinking pious thoughts? I don’t think so. Satisfaction in Jesus means we have the absolute assurance that we belong to him and he belongs to us.
The gospel promises we’ve received are true. And that knowledge, that relationship with him, is so valuable that when we’re successful in something, we find ourselves rejoicing more in possessing him than we do in the win. In disappointment, we console ourselves that knowing him is more important than any victory.
If we are satisfied in Jesus, our souls are never truly devastated because we have him. He is more valuable than anything else life could give and more secure than anything death could take away.
The promise of his love and his guiding hand are like food when we find ourselves in a barren wilderness like Israel did. When we’re worried, we find hope in knowing that he is for us and has promised to hear our prayers, to rescue us, and to work all things together for good in our lives.
When we’re in pain, we have this abiding joy that even as our bodies fall apart, we still belong to him, and nothing can ever separate us from that love. And when we look to the future, we’re not afraid, because even though we don’t know what the future holds, we know who holds it—and us.
Fanny Crosby said it this way: “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!” That promise of love, that presence, that assurance of belonging, is the bread that satisfies our hungry souls.
