Over the last year or so, I have been working on my personal fitness. This pursuit has been spiritual, emotional, relational, and physical. I intentionally try not to say “health” because that implies that at some point I will be “healthy.” That’s a finite game. I don’t want to play that game. I want to play an infinite game of pursuing fitness. I can always be more fit; there is infinite growth there.

As I pursue personal fitness, there is one question that I wrestle with more than any other: “Why do I do what I do?” The answer is elusive.

More often than not, I discover that the reason I do many things is one simple reason: comfort. This pursuit of comfort would have been known as being led by one’s stomach in the past. The stomach was understood to be the seat of desire. This makes sense when you consider a society that was, by and large, existing at a subsistence level. Even the very wealthy would be considered poor by today’s standards.

I avoid pain and discomfort as often as possible. Just the other day, I finished eating my meal. I knew that I was no longer hungry. But I was not ready to stop eating. It was hard to enter into the discomfort and stop. The act of eating is comfortable for me because I can control it.

Jesus has an interesting conversation about the stomach…

When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”

Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”

Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” John 6:25-29

A note: This conversation is actually quite long and spans over 34 verses! To do it justice, I am going to reflect on it in chunks over multiple posts.

The context for this conversation is that the people had just been miraculously fed by Jesus. There were likely 20,000 or more people who were fed with a handful of loaves and fish. They had all they wanted to eat, and afterward, there were twelve baskets of leftovers! These were people who lived life, actually and truly, wondering where their next meal would come from. So, to be able to eat to the full of not just bread but also fish was a remarkable experience.

You can’t blame them for wanting more!

Jesus doesn’t mess around in this conversation. Can you try to picture the interaction in your mind? (We learn at the end of the passage that this interaction took place at the synagogue in Capernaum.) The people drop a “Jesus, when did you arrive?” It almost has the sense of them trying to play it off like they would have come there anyway.

In my head, I see Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother trying to be nonchalant with Robin as he’s trying to walk back his quick, “I love you.”

Jesus isn’t buying it, and he challenges their motives. He knows that they chased him around the lake not for spiritual reasons but because they wanted their bellies filled again. He’s saying, “You’re being led by your stomach.” They want the material good that Jesus provided them, not the spiritual good that is more important.

Jesus wants them to see what is really going on here. That they can have something that is eternal and real. Do you remember his conversation with the woman at the well? It’s the same here, only now it’s food. He is offering them eternal life and doesn’t want them to miss it.

“Do not work for food that spoils.”

This pursuit of the temporal, the immediate, the material will ultimately let you down.

They respond, “Tell us how!”

The answer? Believe in the one that God has sent.

It is remarkable that we chase and chase after the things of this world that are fleeting. We so deeply desire stuff that ultimately spoils. Jesus challenges us to consider the reality that we can rest in him and, in so doing, receive something that never spoils, eternal life.