Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.
Doing the will of the Father who sent Him and completing His work of redeeming lost people was His true food, sustaining, refreshing and gladdening Him more than physical food or drink. Spoken in real human weariness at the well, faint with hunger and thirst, He was so absorbed in bringing truth to the longing Samaritan soul that He set aside the food the disciples urged on Him, which they mistook for ordinary eating. That doing and finishing was His constant rule of life, with every purpose bowed to God in willing loving obedience that counted no sacrifice or toil too great, giving the example every child of God is to follow. Finishing means lifting the eyes now, for the fields are already white with needy souls close around ready to believe and publish the light. All yoked with Him must therefore make God's will above their own their chief concern and meat and drink, finding cheerful joy and not drudgery in spending themselves to bless and save others.
Setting at Jacob's Well
The words were spoken in real human weariness after a long journey since morning with the noontide sun beating down. He was faint from hunger and thirst, and thirst was sharpened by cool water close by yet inaccessible because the well was deep and He had no rope or water-jar. He waited for someone to come to draw, rested in weariness, and was dependent on a stranger's kindness even for a drink. This was true although He made the ocean and controls the waters of the deep and opened the springs and channels of the earth.
Even in that weariness His work was to seek the key to the outcast Samaritan heart. He came as the King of heaven to ask a service at her hands, asking rather than offering a favor, because trust awakens trust.
The disciples urged Him to eat after the Samaritan woman left her waterpot to tell the city. They mistook His words about spiritual food for ordinary food and thought only of physical food, while He pointed them to the higher spiritual need of doing God's will. He was so absorbed in the joy of the harvest of people receiving truth that He did not attend to the food they offered, for doing the will of the Father who sent Him and completing the work entrusted to Him outweighed bodily hunger and was His deeper nourishment.
He gave precious personal instruction to an individual whose receptive heart He discerned. She listened and accepted Him without any miracles because she believed His word, was glad for the light, and went and published it to her neighbors, and the Samaritans received the light. By contrast the Jews would not recognize Him when He came with majesty and grace in mighty healings and outpouring of the Spirit, because prejudice reigned and even the mightiest miracles before their sight had no effect. His work is discerned where God is working without needing wonderful miracles, by teachable investigation of the Scriptures with hearts emptied of prejudice, bringing ideas to the Scriptures and not Scriptures to ideas. His work also reaches people who have not heard the truth, whose hearts can be more receptive than those of people already given evidence.
Though a Jew, He set at naught Pharisaic customs and national prejudice and mingled freely with the despised Samaritans. He accepted their hospitality, slept under their roofs, ate at their tables food prepared and served by their hands, and taught in their streets with utmost kindness, courtesy and human sympathy. He did not create barriers by constantly thrusting upon people the fact that they were wrong, but drew their hearts by the tie of human sympathy. Likewise He sat as honored guest with publicans in sympathy and social kindliness that recognized human dignity. So His words fell with life-giving power on thirsty souls, new impulses were awakened, men longed to become worthy of His confidence, and outcasts saw the possibility of a new life opened to them.
His words moved the woman to bring her countrymen and many believed after hearing Him, showing that sharing could begin immediately while the disciples overlooked the harvest already around them. His work in Samaria was already evidence that His love and gifts of grace were not limited to one race or nation. It reached people others regarded as unworthy of salvation and helped teach that Gentiles could share in God's promise in Christ through the gospel.
Meaning of Meat and Work
Doing the will of the One who sent Him and finishing His work was His true sustenance, life, purpose and joy. Carrying out that mission sustained and strengthened Him for His work and lifted Him above ordinary bodily needs. His concern for the salvation of perishing people made Him forget physical needs, and bringing truth to a soul longing for it satisfied and refreshed Him more than eating or drinking. Seeing the Samaritan woman respond to His words and receive spiritual life was what so refreshed Him, and ministering truth to a hungry soul was His benevolence at the center of His life. He longed for people to come to Him and live, and for their grateful love to show that spiritual life had begun in them.
Doing the Master's will is like food and drink, the believer's sustaining purpose pursued wholeheartedly and bringing peace of soul. Doing God's work out of love for Him satisfies as food satisfies the hungry and water satisfies the thirsty. Loving God's requirements and being ready to perform known duty are as necessary as food and drink, and the verse's image of meat and drink belongs to a life wholly devoted to Him and to wholehearted service in His cause and work. Those who serve God because they love Him find nourishment in carrying out the work He has given them, and those engaged in ministry receive it as they give evidence of having a message to bear and a work to do. God's workers are to carry out the entrusted work with meekness, having learned in Christ's school His lowliness of heart, laboring in humility and contrition.
Doing the will of God who sends and completing His work is nourishment, and speaking the words God gives to speak is more sustaining than physical meat and drink. That work brings God's sustaining power when standing before the congregation, peace in the heart, freedom from feebleness and pain, a thankful heart full of praise, and eating of heavenly manna. Hungry souls who receive the Word are fed, while the heart is filled with sympathy and love for souls ready to perish. Abiding peace and thankful praise remain, with day-and-night intercession to be given meekness and the gentleness of Christ and to be clothed with His righteousness.
The will is the will of the Father who sent Him, and the work is the Father's work, carried out in dependence on the Father and not according to His own will. That work was the redemption and salvation of lost people, to which He devoted all His powers in order to reach them. It was pursued through persistent labor and self-denial, with every other concern secondary and no place for self-interest in His service. Those who believe in Him are expected to serve that same work by seeking to bring others to Him.
Doing the Heavenly Father's will is the righteous person's sustenance and the natural motive and way of life. A life shaped by love for God and others gladly and willingly does Christ's works. Like Jesus, the truly righteous person serves humbly and without display, without boasting of goodness or religious attainments or drawing attention to goodness.
Christ's Obedient Life
As a Son at the head of humanity He gave an example of what every son should and may be, and the willing, loving obedience with which He did the will of the Father who sent Him and finished the work entrusted to Him counted no sacrifice too great and no toil too hard. That obedience was His purpose and sustaining concern, His nourishment and life, rendered in willingness and freedom after hearing the call. The faithful service He rendered is what God as Father claims and requires from His people and children, who are to serve faithfully and work together with Christ and God.
Doing the will of Him that sent Him and finishing His work was His rule of life kept ever before Him, with every purpose, plan and object bowed to the supreme will and the glory of God ever in view. Even in Gethsemane, His soul enshrouded with darkness facing humiliation, suffering and ignominious death, He still prayed not My will but Thine be done. This stands in contrast to man's determination since aspiring to be as God and falling through Satan's deceiving power to gain an independence opposed to His life and lessons. Love for God made Him find His life and nourishment in doing the Father's will, as one wholly divested of selfishness who loves God supremely and his neighbor as himself. That doing of God's will expresses pure, sanctified love in His lifework, fragrant like sacred perfume filling the whole house, and only such humble love can win souls to Christ, not talk, Pharisaism, self-praise, eloquence, knowledge of truth, outward devotion, or rare talents alone.
His willing submission to the divine will in medical missionary service gave the world an example of self-denial and self-sacrifice for the Father's glory and not His own. That example exposes the shame of human self-preference and self-exaltation. God's people have failed to honor God by following it, and that defect of character must be plainly revealed to them so they are aroused to a sense of their deficiencies and of the work they must do. They must break every yoke, make their prayers practical, do the merciful acts of Christ, put away boasting and falsifying and evil speaking, humble their hearts before God, and in life and character represent Christ by daily living the new life hid with Christ in God.
He labored not for Himself but to serve others, finding purpose in comforting and consoling people and bringing joy and gladness to the sad, burdened and heavy-laden. His tender care and teaching brought hope and strength, relieved human suffering and stirred hope. He made doing the will of the Father who sent Him and completing the work entrusted to Him His consuming purpose, and nothing was allowed to hinder that work. His ministry among people of every social class was directed toward uplifting and ennobling them and sharing the blessings He came to give, His family affection never interfered with that calling, and even amid Israel's sin and rejection He remained faithful to that work and confident in His Father.
His life bore the fruit of perfect obedience to God's Word and will, along with benevolence and meekness, expressed in going about doing good. His example is to be followed in practical life, calling people to imitate His character and serve as a blessing to the world. His example teaches God's ministers to meet people's needs through His method of labor and to depend on the Spirit who dwelt in Him for their knowledge and power.
Harvest Ready in Samaria
The work Jesus called His food included the Samaritan woman carrying what she had heard to her town, so that many believed after hearing Him for themselves. That sharing began at once, while the disciples were still overlooking the harvest already standing around them. His words had moved her to tell others, and the fruit in Samaria proved the work was already succeeding.
Finishing His work means lifting up the eyes now instead of saying there are yet four months to harvest, because the fields are already white to harvest. The needy fields lie close around, with companies like sheep without a shepherd stretching out hands for help and crying to know what they must do to be saved. Followers are therefore called to look for those ready to receive truth close at hand and to press into fields where nothing has been done.
He rejoiced when truth found a place in the Samaritan woman's heart, counting that joy more satisfying than physical eating. Poor, hungry, unlikely souls receive the light and become heralds of truth, while those who have heard many times and refuse it are passed by. For truth is hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed to babes who respond to it.
The harvest image shows fruit ready to be gathered unto eternal life, with wages given so that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together. The disciples would reap where earlier laborers had sown, entering into fruit prepared by faithful work before them. Their coming success, including at Pentecost, was not their own achievement but the fruit of God's work through generations of faithful people.
Living the Verse Today
To live this verse is to be yoked with Christ and make doing God's will the sustaining purpose, chief concern and central purpose of life rather than measuring life by earthly advantage, putting God's will above one's own and putting aside one's own will and way in order to do God's will instead of making own will and way supreme, and using influence as Christ did to draw people to Himself in serving others, for receiving, appropriating and sharing His wisdom and grace is the test of human blessedness.
As His representatives, followers must keep God's will ever before them as their rule of life, with every purpose, plan and object bowed to the supreme will and the glory of God ever in view, committing the keeping of their souls to God and refusing to let own will control because bought with a price. This means wholly yielding the will to God, laying the struggle for independence on God's altar, giving up all self-sufficiency, and welcoming the assistance and counsel God sends by whatever means He gives direction, even as in Gethsemane when enshrouded with darkness facing humiliation, suffering and ignominious death the prayer remained not My will but Thine be done, in contrast to man's determination since aspiring to be as God and falling through deceiving power to gain an independence opposed to that life. The lesson given when the disciples urged eating after the Samaritan woman left her waterpot to tell the city was not for the first disciples only but for all who afterward join Christ in service, that doing God's will satisfies more than physical food. Everyone so yoked must meet every temptation to selfishness by asking what Jesus would do in that place, letting that principle control every action and allowing no thread of self to be woven into life and work.
True servants place their wills on God's side and willingly obey all His commandments without murmuring or faultfinding, finding that obedience pleasing to heaven. Doing the will of God and completing His work is their sustenance and purpose, more sustaining than food and drink, applied to willingness to follow God's direction in carrying out sacred duty.
Sanctified zeal for God's work is like food and drink, making believers powerful and helpful as they receive and live out sacred truth, and it should be steady and marked by holy character. Doing the heavenly Father's will was sustaining purpose amid opposition and trials, the meat and drink of life. For some, missionary work becomes so central that they give themselves to it even beyond their strength.
Doing God's will as meat and drink, delight and nourishment, means living to help and bless and strengthen others, to do all possible good, to brighten lives, to encourage the desponding and make hopeful the discouraged hearts of the sons and daughters of God. It means entering into the situation of those suffering misfortune of circumstances and helping them even by placing oneself in embarrassment, accepting unwanted work no one else will take, coming into places to do work others have left undone, and never refusing a call to a hard place despite weariness. It means putting wife and children second and not letting them become idols that draw away from the work, asking first what the Lord has to do to advance His cause and build up the waste places, carrying weighty disagreeable responsibilities, and helping fellow men with counsel, prayers, influence and words of wisdom to find rock bottom to stand on, following the Lord step by step as He educates and trains to set things in order upon an organized plan. When love to God is joined with pure love to fellow men, doing God's will becomes meat and drink in having every thought and action right and living for the good of others in fulfillment of the purpose of creation, springing from constant prayer to know what God wants done and from ennobling motives that lift character above mere impulse and make fit for immortality and everlasting life.
For those who hold truth in righteousness and are sanctified by it, with souls pervaded by a deep and abiding sense of its value, sacredness and importance, obeying the truth and passing the precious light to others in clear and distinct rays becomes food, sending it with wisdom from God into the highways and byways of life to shine bright amid moral darkness.
The joy set before Christ in doing the will of Him that sent Him and finishing His work belongs to true workers for God, so however trying their labor they do not regard it as drudgery but do cheerful work with glad heart, ready to spend and be spent. Joy in God expressed through Jesus Christ and cooperation with the Lord of glory sweetens all toil, braces the will, and nerves the spirit for whatever may befall. Working with unselfish heart, ennobled by partaking of His sufferings, sharing His sympathies, and cooperating with Him in His labor, helps swell the tide of His joy and brings honor and praise to His exalted name, which is the spirit of all true service.
For those who feed multitudes, true food is doing what God sends and finishing His work by telling them about Christ as the Bread of life and speaking words of eternal life, presenting the Bread of Life and revealing Christ as the giver of eternal life, and showing by example what it means to receive and practice the Word of life. This requires keeping time for prayer and feeding on the Word, keeping the sense of needing the Bread that is life to the soul, so service can be approved as faithful. It is the opposite of giving all strength and energy to business success and commercial work for gain, keeping large food factories running without loss, competing for gain, and making many kinds of food while losing prayer and the Word.
Gospel workers are to keep moving into new fields once converts can safely be left, laboring together with God in the work commissioned, going, settling in new places, and serving others through missionary labor rather than delaying and rather than sleeping. The work is the urgent rescue of souls in needy fields close around, not saying there are four months to harvest but lifting up the eyes now because the fields are white already to harvest, with companies like sheep without a shepherd stretching out hands for help and crying to know what they must do to be saved. Finishing the work requires facilities, machinery, and money to pay Bible workers to go into new districts, with believers humbling themselves, denying self, taking up the cross and following Christ, becoming laborers together with God as human channels through whom divine truth is communicated by the moving of the Holy Spirit, with wages of reaping in gathering fruit unto eternal life that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together. Those engaged in ministry receive nourishment as doing God's work is like food to the hungry and water to the thirsty to those who obey His will out of love, as they give evidence that God has a message for them to bear and a work for them to do, laboring in meekness, humility and contrition, having learned in Christ's school His lowliness of heart.
True Christians follow this example by staying closely connected to God, representing Christ in homes and relationships, and practicing self-denial and self-sacrifice, which helps prevent strife and alienation. They must do God's work now while there is time, laboring for those outside Christ and gladly denying self rather than seeking ease or personal convenience.
Doing the will of the Father who sent Him and completing His work of redeeming lost people was His true food, sustaining, refreshing and gladdening Him more than physical food or drink. Spoken in real human weariness at the well, faint with hunger and thirst, He was so absorbed in bringing truth to the longing Samaritan soul that He set aside the food the disciples urged on Him, which they mistook for ordinary eating. That doing and finishing was His constant rule of life, with every purpose bowed to God in willing loving obedience that counted no sacrifice or toil too great, giving the example every child of God is to follow. Finishing means lifting the eyes now, for the fields are already white with needy souls close around ready to believe and publish the light. All yoked with Him must therefore make God's will above their own their chief concern and meat and drink, finding cheerful joy and not drudgery in spending themselves to bless and save others.
Setting at Jacob's Well
The words were spoken in real human weariness after a long journey since morning with the noontide sun beating down. He was faint from hunger and thirst, and thirst was sharpened by cool water close by yet inaccessible because the well was deep and He had no rope or water-jar. He waited for someone to come to draw, rested in weariness, and was dependent on a stranger's kindness even for a drink. This was true although He made the ocean and controls the waters of the deep and opened the springs and channels of the earth.
Even in that weariness His work was to seek the key to the outcast Samaritan heart. He came as the King of heaven to ask a service at her hands, asking rather than offering a favor, because trust awakens trust.
The disciples urged Him to eat after the Samaritan woman left her waterpot to tell the city. They mistook His words about spiritual food for ordinary food and thought only of physical food, while He pointed them to the higher spiritual need of doing God's will. He was so absorbed in the joy of the harvest of people receiving truth that He did not attend to the food they offered, for doing the will of the Father who sent Him and completing the work entrusted to Him outweighed bodily hunger and was His deeper nourishment.
He gave precious personal instruction to an individual whose receptive heart He discerned. She listened and accepted Him without any miracles because she believed His word, was glad for the light, and went and published it to her neighbors, and the Samaritans received the light. By contrast the Jews would not recognize Him when He came with majesty and grace in mighty healings and outpouring of the Spirit, because prejudice reigned and even the mightiest miracles before their sight had no effect. His work is discerned where God is working without needing wonderful miracles, by teachable investigation of the Scriptures with hearts emptied of prejudice, bringing ideas to the Scriptures and not Scriptures to ideas. His work also reaches people who have not heard the truth, whose hearts can be more receptive than those of people already given evidence.
Though a Jew, He set at naught Pharisaic customs and national prejudice and mingled freely with the despised Samaritans. He accepted their hospitality, slept under their roofs, ate at their tables food prepared and served by their hands, and taught in their streets with utmost kindness, courtesy and human sympathy. He did not create barriers by constantly thrusting upon people the fact that they were wrong, but drew their hearts by the tie of human sympathy. Likewise He sat as honored guest with publicans in sympathy and social kindliness that recognized human dignity. So His words fell with life-giving power on thirsty souls, new impulses were awakened, men longed to become worthy of His confidence, and outcasts saw the possibility of a new life opened to them.
His words moved the woman to bring her countrymen and many believed after hearing Him, showing that sharing could begin immediately while the disciples overlooked the harvest already around them. His work in Samaria was already evidence that His love and gifts of grace were not limited to one race or nation. It reached people others regarded as unworthy of salvation and helped teach that Gentiles could share in God's promise in Christ through the gospel.
Meaning of Meat and Work
Doing the will of the One who sent Him and finishing His work was His true sustenance, life, purpose and joy. Carrying out that mission sustained and strengthened Him for His work and lifted Him above ordinary bodily needs. His concern for the salvation of perishing people made Him forget physical needs, and bringing truth to a soul longing for it satisfied and refreshed Him more than eating or drinking. Seeing the Samaritan woman respond to His words and receive spiritual life was what so refreshed Him, and ministering truth to a hungry soul was His benevolence at the center of His life. He longed for people to come to Him and live, and for their grateful love to show that spiritual life had begun in them.
Doing the Master's will is like food and drink, the believer's sustaining purpose pursued wholeheartedly and bringing peace of soul. Doing God's work out of love for Him satisfies as food satisfies the hungry and water satisfies the thirsty. Loving God's requirements and being ready to perform known duty are as necessary as food and drink, and the verse's image of meat and drink belongs to a life wholly devoted to Him and to wholehearted service in His cause and work. Those who serve God because they love Him find nourishment in carrying out the work He has given them, and those engaged in ministry receive it as they give evidence of having a message to bear and a work to do. God's workers are to carry out the entrusted work with meekness, having learned in Christ's school His lowliness of heart, laboring in humility and contrition.
Doing the will of God who sends and completing His work is nourishment, and speaking the words God gives to speak is more sustaining than physical meat and drink. That work brings God's sustaining power when standing before the congregation, peace in the heart, freedom from feebleness and pain, a thankful heart full of praise, and eating of heavenly manna. Hungry souls who receive the Word are fed, while the heart is filled with sympathy and love for souls ready to perish. Abiding peace and thankful praise remain, with day-and-night intercession to be given meekness and the gentleness of Christ and to be clothed with His righteousness.
The will is the will of the Father who sent Him, and the work is the Father's work, carried out in dependence on the Father and not according to His own will. That work was the redemption and salvation of lost people, to which He devoted all His powers in order to reach them. It was pursued through persistent labor and self-denial, with every other concern secondary and no place for self-interest in His service. Those who believe in Him are expected to serve that same work by seeking to bring others to Him.
Doing the Heavenly Father's will is the righteous person's sustenance and the natural motive and way of life. A life shaped by love for God and others gladly and willingly does Christ's works. Like Jesus, the truly righteous person serves humbly and without display, without boasting of goodness or religious attainments or drawing attention to goodness.
Christ's Obedient Life
As a Son at the head of humanity He gave an example of what every son should and may be, and the willing, loving obedience with which He did the will of the Father who sent Him and finished the work entrusted to Him counted no sacrifice too great and no toil too hard. That obedience was His purpose and sustaining concern, His nourishment and life, rendered in willingness and freedom after hearing the call. The faithful service He rendered is what God as Father claims and requires from His people and children, who are to serve faithfully and work together with Christ and God.
Doing the will of Him that sent Him and finishing His work was His rule of life kept ever before Him, with every purpose, plan and object bowed to the supreme will and the glory of God ever in view. Even in Gethsemane, His soul enshrouded with darkness facing humiliation, suffering and ignominious death, He still prayed not My will but Thine be done. This stands in contrast to man's determination since aspiring to be as God and falling through Satan's deceiving power to gain an independence opposed to His life and lessons. Love for God made Him find His life and nourishment in doing the Father's will, as one wholly divested of selfishness who loves God supremely and his neighbor as himself. That doing of God's will expresses pure, sanctified love in His lifework, fragrant like sacred perfume filling the whole house, and only such humble love can win souls to Christ, not talk, Pharisaism, self-praise, eloquence, knowledge of truth, outward devotion, or rare talents alone.
His willing submission to the divine will in medical missionary service gave the world an example of self-denial and self-sacrifice for the Father's glory and not His own. That example exposes the shame of human self-preference and self-exaltation. God's people have failed to honor God by following it, and that defect of character must be plainly revealed to them so they are aroused to a sense of their deficiencies and of the work they must do. They must break every yoke, make their prayers practical, do the merciful acts of Christ, put away boasting and falsifying and evil speaking, humble their hearts before God, and in life and character represent Christ by daily living the new life hid with Christ in God.
He labored not for Himself but to serve others, finding purpose in comforting and consoling people and bringing joy and gladness to the sad, burdened and heavy-laden. His tender care and teaching brought hope and strength, relieved human suffering and stirred hope. He made doing the will of the Father who sent Him and completing the work entrusted to Him His consuming purpose, and nothing was allowed to hinder that work. His ministry among people of every social class was directed toward uplifting and ennobling them and sharing the blessings He came to give, His family affection never interfered with that calling, and even amid Israel's sin and rejection He remained faithful to that work and confident in His Father.
His life bore the fruit of perfect obedience to God's Word and will, along with benevolence and meekness, expressed in going about doing good. His example is to be followed in practical life, calling people to imitate His character and serve as a blessing to the world. His example teaches God's ministers to meet people's needs through His method of labor and to depend on the Spirit who dwelt in Him for their knowledge and power.
Harvest Ready in Samaria
The work Jesus called His food included the Samaritan woman carrying what she had heard to her town, so that many believed after hearing Him for themselves. That sharing began at once, while the disciples were still overlooking the harvest already standing around them. His words had moved her to tell others, and the fruit in Samaria proved the work was already succeeding.
Finishing His work means lifting up the eyes now instead of saying there are yet four months to harvest, because the fields are already white to harvest. The needy fields lie close around, with companies like sheep without a shepherd stretching out hands for help and crying to know what they must do to be saved. Followers are therefore called to look for those ready to receive truth close at hand and to press into fields where nothing has been done.
He rejoiced when truth found a place in the Samaritan woman's heart, counting that joy more satisfying than physical eating. Poor, hungry, unlikely souls receive the light and become heralds of truth, while those who have heard many times and refuse it are passed by. For truth is hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed to babes who respond to it.
The harvest image shows fruit ready to be gathered unto eternal life, with wages given so that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together. The disciples would reap where earlier laborers had sown, entering into fruit prepared by faithful work before them. Their coming success, including at Pentecost, was not their own achievement but the fruit of God's work through generations of faithful people.
Living the Verse Today
To live this verse is to be yoked with Christ and make doing God's will the sustaining purpose, chief concern and central purpose of life rather than measuring life by earthly advantage, putting God's will above one's own and putting aside one's own will and way in order to do God's will instead of making own will and way supreme, and using influence as Christ did to draw people to Himself in serving others, for receiving, appropriating and sharing His wisdom and grace is the test of human blessedness.
As His representatives, followers must keep God's will ever before them as their rule of life, with every purpose, plan and object bowed to the supreme will and the glory of God ever in view, committing the keeping of their souls to God and refusing to let own will control because bought with a price. This means wholly yielding the will to God, laying the struggle for independence on God's altar, giving up all self-sufficiency, and welcoming the assistance and counsel God sends by whatever means He gives direction, even as in Gethsemane when enshrouded with darkness facing humiliation, suffering and ignominious death the prayer remained not My will but Thine be done, in contrast to man's determination since aspiring to be as God and falling through deceiving power to gain an independence opposed to that life. The lesson given when the disciples urged eating after the Samaritan woman left her waterpot to tell the city was not for the first disciples only but for all who afterward join Christ in service, that doing God's will satisfies more than physical food. Everyone so yoked must meet every temptation to selfishness by asking what Jesus would do in that place, letting that principle control every action and allowing no thread of self to be woven into life and work.
True servants place their wills on God's side and willingly obey all His commandments without murmuring or faultfinding, finding that obedience pleasing to heaven. Doing the will of God and completing His work is their sustenance and purpose, more sustaining than food and drink, applied to willingness to follow God's direction in carrying out sacred duty.
Sanctified zeal for God's work is like food and drink, making believers powerful and helpful as they receive and live out sacred truth, and it should be steady and marked by holy character. Doing the heavenly Father's will was sustaining purpose amid opposition and trials, the meat and drink of life. For some, missionary work becomes so central that they give themselves to it even beyond their strength.
Doing God's will as meat and drink, delight and nourishment, means living to help and bless and strengthen others, to do all possible good, to brighten lives, to encourage the desponding and make hopeful the discouraged hearts of the sons and daughters of God. It means entering into the situation of those suffering misfortune of circumstances and helping them even by placing oneself in embarrassment, accepting unwanted work no one else will take, coming into places to do work others have left undone, and never refusing a call to a hard place despite weariness. It means putting wife and children second and not letting them become idols that draw away from the work, asking first what the Lord has to do to advance His cause and build up the waste places, carrying weighty disagreeable responsibilities, and helping fellow men with counsel, prayers, influence and words of wisdom to find rock bottom to stand on, following the Lord step by step as He educates and trains to set things in order upon an organized plan. When love to God is joined with pure love to fellow men, doing God's will becomes meat and drink in having every thought and action right and living for the good of others in fulfillment of the purpose of creation, springing from constant prayer to know what God wants done and from ennobling motives that lift character above mere impulse and make fit for immortality and everlasting life.
For those who hold truth in righteousness and are sanctified by it, with souls pervaded by a deep and abiding sense of its value, sacredness and importance, obeying the truth and passing the precious light to others in clear and distinct rays becomes food, sending it with wisdom from God into the highways and byways of life to shine bright amid moral darkness.
The joy set before Christ in doing the will of Him that sent Him and finishing His work belongs to true workers for God, so however trying their labor they do not regard it as drudgery but do cheerful work with glad heart, ready to spend and be spent. Joy in God expressed through Jesus Christ and cooperation with the Lord of glory sweetens all toil, braces the will, and nerves the spirit for whatever may befall. Working with unselfish heart, ennobled by partaking of His sufferings, sharing His sympathies, and cooperating with Him in His labor, helps swell the tide of His joy and brings honor and praise to His exalted name, which is the spirit of all true service.
For those who feed multitudes, true food is doing what God sends and finishing His work by telling them about Christ as the Bread of life and speaking words of eternal life, presenting the Bread of Life and revealing Christ as the giver of eternal life, and showing by example what it means to receive and practice the Word of life. This requires keeping time for prayer and feeding on the Word, keeping the sense of needing the Bread that is life to the soul, so service can be approved as faithful. It is the opposite of giving all strength and energy to business success and commercial work for gain, keeping large food factories running without loss, competing for gain, and making many kinds of food while losing prayer and the Word.
Gospel workers are to keep moving into new fields once converts can safely be left, laboring together with God in the work commissioned, going, settling in new places, and serving others through missionary labor rather than delaying and rather than sleeping. The work is the urgent rescue of souls in needy fields close around, not saying there are four months to harvest but lifting up the eyes now because the fields are white already to harvest, with companies like sheep without a shepherd stretching out hands for help and crying to know what they must do to be saved. Finishing the work requires facilities, machinery, and money to pay Bible workers to go into new districts, with believers humbling themselves, denying self, taking up the cross and following Christ, becoming laborers together with God as human channels through whom divine truth is communicated by the moving of the Holy Spirit, with wages of reaping in gathering fruit unto eternal life that both he that sows and he that reaps may rejoice together. Those engaged in ministry receive nourishment as doing God's work is like food to the hungry and water to the thirsty to those who obey His will out of love, as they give evidence that God has a message for them to bear and a work for them to do, laboring in meekness, humility and contrition, having learned in Christ's school His lowliness of heart.
True Christians follow this example by staying closely connected to God, representing Christ in homes and relationships, and practicing self-denial and self-sacrifice, which helps prevent strife and alienation. They must do God's work now while there is time, laboring for those outside Christ and gladly denying self rather than seeking ease or personal convenience.