Sustained

Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work." -John 4.34

The disciples return, the woman leaves. The woman goes to tell people about Jesus, and the disciples try to feed Jesus the food they have bought. Jesus then tells them that His food is to do the will of God. I can imagine that the disciples got a little frustrated at this point. Their in Samaria, a place that as Jews, they don't want to be. Who knows what they went through to buy food from a Samaritan market, because Jews and Samaritans didn't get along. Now Jesus isn't going to eat what they brought, and instead tells them that His food is in obedience to the Father.

Jesus is not saying that He didn't need to eat, but that His sustenance is found in accomplishing the work of God. He is sustained through the hardships and difficulties because He is focused on the mission. The reason Jesus went through Samaria, sat at a well in the heat, and talked to a Samaritan woman, was because it was part of God's work. The reason that Jesus would touch lepers, dine with tax collectors, and the cross, was because it was part of the mission.

Life is full of hardships. Every mission faces challenges. It is easy to give up and just scrap everything, but then the mission fails. The driving force, the thing that sustains us, must be the fulfillment of the mission. For Christ, obedience to God was the thing that drove Him on; it sustained Him as food would. Christ had work to do from God, and that kept Him going, kept Him focused. And because of this, the mission was accomplished.

TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!