Jesus' favorite food

What is your favorite food?  Are you a sweet eater or a salt lover?  Do you go after a nice steak, or do you prefer chicken or fish?  When your stomach growls, is dessert the first thing on your mind?
There is a familiar story in John 4 that let’s us in on the secret of Jesus’ favorite food.  We all remember the account of the Samaritan woman to whom Jesus spoke on his way through town.
Jesus and his disciples stopped by a well just outside of Sychar.  Jesus was weary, so sat down to rest.  The disciples hurried off to town to get some lunch; no doubt they wanted to get some food and get on through Samaria as quickly as possible.
While the disciples were away, a woman with a sordid past and a sinful present came for a container of water.  Jesus opened her spiritual eyes to who He was and she was gloriously saved.  Just as the disciples returned with lunch, the woman dropped her water jar and raced off to town to tell everyone who would listen, that she had found the Messiah.
Picking up the story in verse 31, we find the disciples urging Jesus to eat something, to which he replied: “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”  The disciples, being so much like me, had their mind centered squarely on earthly things (their growling stomachs).  They were perplexed about His comment and tried to figure out where he got his lunch.
Jesus’ response leads us into a passage of Scripture that is normally reserved for missionary conferences.  He said: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to accomplish His work.”  Then he went on to say; “I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are ripe for harvest.”
This is the key to understanding the heart of God and His purposes in the world.  The “food” that Jesus wanted most was doing the “will” and the “work” of God.  That “will” and “work” were defined by the illustration of the harvest.
Lots of churches have missionary conferences this month; ours does.  Maybe that is why this is on my mind, but I want to offer the challenge of remembering that our reason to be on this earth is to accomplish the work of God.  When we boil that down to its essence, that work is "bringing the nations into the white-hot enjoyment of God's glory," as John Piper put it.  We are here to bring as many people as possible with us into the unequaled delight of a life (now and forever) enjoying the presence of God.
How am I doing at that?  How about you?

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