Man Shall Not Live on Bread Alone

"Man shall not live on bread alone."

How important is it to fast?

A David Heart

O Lord,

Though I am weak--You are strong. I don't want to come to you, I don't want to humble myself, I don't want to keep fighting... I want to give up far too often. Yet you love me still. You hold on so passionately--why? Why? Why do you love me? There is a deep yearning in my soul for you--but I keep running away from you. You say that a broken and contrite heart you will not despise.

broken: ruptured; torn; fractured; not functioning properly; out of working order.
contrite: caused by or showing sincere remorse; filled with a sense of guilt and the desire for atonement; penitent

I am always not functioning properly, I'm out of working order--indeed, I am torn. I definitely feel guilt, and believe that I have sincere remorse--yet how long?! How long will I continually have "sincere remorse" yet turn back to my vomit?

Is this what a "David Heart" is?

John Piper said: "What makes a person a Christian is not that he doesn’t get discouraged, and it’s not that he doesn’t sin and feel miserable about it. What makes a person a Christian is the connection that he has with Jesus Christ that shapes how he thinks and feels about his discouragement and his sin and guilt."

Romans 3:25-26: Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as k a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over n former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Jesus, once for all, by his life and death, purchased our forgiveness and provided our righteousness. We can add nothing to the purchase or the provision. We share in the forgiveness and the righteousness by faith alone. But in view of the holiness of God and the evil of sin, it is fitting that we appropriate and apply what he bought for us by prayer and confession every day. --John Piper

.....it is fitting that we appropriate and apply what he bought for us by prayer and confession every day. Amen.

The Story of Sadhu

Told by Corrie Ten Boom

A person who influenced my life in my late teens was a man from India. As a boy he had come to hate Jesus. He knew about God, but the Bible of the Christians was a book which he believed was a gigantic lie. Once he took a Bible and burned it, feeling that with this act, he could publicly declare scorn of what he believe were the untruths it contained. When missionaries passed him he threw mud on them.
But there was a terrible unrest inside of him; he longed to know God. He told this story about himself:
"Although I had believed that I had done a very good deed by burning the Bible, I felt unhappy. After three days, I couldn't bear it any longer. I rose early in the morning and prayed that if God really existed, He would reveal himself to me. I wanted to know if there was an existence after death, if there was a heaven. The only way I could know it for sure was to die. So I decided to die.
"I planned to throw myself in front of a train which passed by our house. Then suddenly something unusual happened. The room was filled with a beautiful glow and I saw a man. I though it might be Buddha, or some other holy man. Then I heard a voice.
"How long will you deny Me? I died for you; I have given my life for you."
"Then I saw his hands--the pierced hands of Jesus Christ. This was the Christ I had imagined as a great man who once lived in Palestine, but who died and disappeared. And yet now stood before me...alive! I saw his face looking at me with love.
"Three days before, I had burned a Bible, and yet he was not angry. I was suddenly changed...I saw him as Christ, the living One, the Savior of the world. I fell on my knees and knew a wonderful peace, which I had never found anywhere before. That was the happiness I had been seeking for such a long time."
That weekend as I listened to Sadhu, I was amazed but disturbed. He told of the visions he had seen--of how he really saw Jesus--at a time when he didn't believe. We had all read about the Apostle Paul's experiences on the road to Damascus, but here was a man who claimed to have had this experience himself.
One boy ventured to ask the question we all wanted to know. "Please, sir, how did Jesus look?"
He put his hands before his eyes and said, "Oh, his eyes, his eyes...they are so beautiful." Since then I have longed to see Jesus' eyes.