Why are you following him?

Today my reading took me to John 6. In this chapter is John's story of Jesus feeding a multitude. After dinner is served and the people disperse Jesus sends the disciples off in a boat to the other side of the sea of Galilee while he goes to the mountain to pray. During the night he walks across the sea to the disciple's boat and they find themselves at the "other side." The next day this is the story that John unfolds,.

Joh 6:24 So when the crowd realized he was gone and wasn't coming back, they piled into the Tiberias boats and headed for Capernaum, looking for Jesus.
Joh 6:25 When they found him back across the sea, they said, "Rabbi, when did you get here?"
Joh 6:26 Jesus answered, "You've come looking for me not because you saw God in my actions but because I fed you, filled your stomachs--and for free.
Joh 6:27 "Don't waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides. He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last."

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So as I read I'm thinking....."why am I following the Lord? Do I follow him for what he gives me or because of who he is?" It's often true of me that I follow him for the wrong reasons....for what I can get from him rather than to get to know him. It's easy to forget that to know him is better than bread! To know him is to know the very one who made me. Why do I so often seek his hands (what he can do for me) and not his face (who he is)? Why do I so often ask for things from him and not ask to know him better? Why am I, like these people in John's gospel, often following him for what I can get when I am literally in the very presence of the creator of the universe....and I'm focused on my stomach! What a foolish man I am.

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I love Jesus' words, they convict me of my own wrong focus, "Don't waste your energy striving for perishable food like that. Work for the food that sticks with you, food that nourishes your lasting life, food the Son of Man provides."

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And that food is him. Later in John the Lord invites his followers to feed on him, not literally mind you, but to let him, and a relationship with him, satisfy your hungers. And yet we seem content with bread.....how much we miss.....how little we see of all that God wants to give us. He wants to provide our bread of course, but more than that he wants to give us his very life...the life that will satisfy our hungers forever.

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So, why are you following him? What are you looking for?