by Linzy Slayden
Did you know that neon signs can be hazardous to your health? There is one neon sign that is hazardous to mine. It is the one that flashes “hot” in bright red on the window of Krispy Kreme™. If you have ever eaten some really great, hot Krispy Kreme doughnuts oozing with that glaze, you know there are always two problems in that box of doughnuts: (1) one is never enough, and (2) no matter how many you eat, eventually you’ll always want more.
For so very many people, life is just like that. There is a never-ending quest for fulfillment. There are so many people in this world who have found success, but they have not found significance.
This world is filled with people who are desperately trying to find purpose and meaning, fulfillment and significance in their lives. The truth is, when it comes to living and life, most people are not satisfied customers. The great philosopher Henry David Thoreau once said, “The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”
People are hungry and they are hungry for two things primarily. First, they are hungry for security. Second, people also hunger for significance. People want personal significance. They want to know that their lives matter to themselves. They want relational significance. They want to know that their lives matter to others.
Jesus Christ understands our problem. John’s Gospel records seven “I am” statements of Jesus found nowhere else in the Gospels, and the first statement that Jesus made was this one — “I am the bread of life.” (John 6:35). When Jesus spoke these words, bread was the way that most people in that day existed. It was the principle food of life.
Blaise Pascal said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the life of every person that only God can fill.” That God-shaped vacuum can be filled with the Bread of Life.
The world wants to satisfy the body. God wants to satisfy the heart. The world wants to focus on that which is going to die — the body. God wants to focus on that which is going to live forever — the soul.
All the people on earth can be divided into two groups. There are those who have partaken of the Bread of Life and who know the fulfillment and satisfaction that Jesus Christ brings. Then there are others who are still living with emptiness because they are still substituting material for the spiritual and the temporal for the eternal.
Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of the purpose of the BBFI. It is the vehicle whereby churches join to accomplish together what we cannot accomplish alone — training men and women to serve God and sending missionaries around the world with the Bread of Life. As Evangelist D. T. Niles said, “Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”