Joseph Prince - The Real Reason You're Unsatisfied
This excerpt is from the sermon, Powerful Keys To Unlocking God's Word, preached on Sep 4, 2022.
Jeremiah 15:16, this is what he says, "Thy word was found, and I ate them". The first thing, your first assignment is not to look at the Word of God and say, "What must I do"? all right? That's a law mentality. The first thing you do with God's Word is you eat it. It's for eating. It's for eating. If you ask the Lord, all right, "Why is it that people are rebellious, people are bound by addictions, people are enslaved to certain habits and they can't break free? Why are people depressed? Why are so many people depressed today"? Right?
You know what the Lord will say? "They're hungry". They are hungry. The very first thing the enemy attacks is always the harvest. The Bible says when Gideon was threshing wheat, he was threshing wheat in the vine press. Now, that's not the usual place that you thresh wheat. Threshing wheat is like studying the Word of God. The Word of God is wheat, right, bread of life. So he's threshing wheat to eat, right? But he was doing it at night to hide from who? The Midianites. The Midianites have come in, and every time there's a harvest, the Jewish people have a harvest, they will come and rob them of their harvest. So they are staying in the mountains, and whenever their harvest is there, they come and rob them of their harvest. So Gideon does it quietly so that he has a secret harvest, and a secret threshing, and a secret reaping, right, that he wants to have secret eating as well. But God called him forth. God calls those who are studying the Word, amen, to feed others.
You know, yesterday I was studying the Word and I was preparing for all of you, and I always see all of you as hungry, okay? You might say, "Pastor Prince, I think I'm hungry for more of the social media. I feel that the more I read, I think I feel better". No, you won't. You will feel empty. You will feel more depressed. You are hungry and you are hungry for true bread. You are hungry, the Bible says in Isaiah, "Why labor for that which does not satisfy," amen? So you are hungry. You're not depressed, you are hungry. You're not actually a rebellious person, amen? You are fighting something because you are hungry. Have you noticed people who are hungry physically can be very bad-tempered? Wives, have you noticed that? Sometimes your husband is not angry with you. He's not angry, he is hungry. Look at your husband, smile, and say, "Amen"? Have you all experienced that or it's just me? It's just me, come on. I see Pastor Lawrence putting up his hand. He's one honest man. There's one honest man. The Lord loves it. The Lord loves honesty, amen? Amen?
So many of you need to repent, amen? So a hungry man can be a very angry man, right? But the anger is not actually his problem. His problem is a deeper problem, he's hungry. So many of you are hungry, but you're not feeding yourself with true bread. So you pass by, you think you need something from the fridge. You open up the fridge. You feel like you need to eat something. You feel hungry. You don't realize that it's spiritual hunger because you've not been feeding on the Word. So you take out something, you eat. Now, after for awhile, you still feel hungry so you eat some more. Wrong thing to do, bro, all right? Not good. You will see some results that will tell you it's not good, amen? Or I watch TV. I think this is good. I watch this drama. I watch this movie. I watch this, all right, it will feed me. For awhile, your mind is stimulated no doubt, all right?
You are stimulated, but after that, you finish everything, you still feel like there's an emptiness. Like, "What is it I really want? I think I need to watch some more," you know? That's not the answer. The next day, you have raccoon eyes, you know, or panda eyes, and things like that because it doesn't feed. So the Bible says in Isaiah, "Why spend your labour for that which does not satisfy"? Now, all these things, eating and all that, or watching, you know, I mean, it all has its place. I'm not knocking them. They are not sins. It's not a sin to eat. I'm just saying, realize that you are hungry. The enemy always attacks your food. Some of David's mighty men became mighty men, they marked themselves as mighty men when they refused to let the enemy take their harvest. They would stand in the middle of a patch of a field of harvest, like lentils, all right, and they will stand there with a sword. And they are outnumbered by the enemies, but the Bible says the sword will clave to their hand, and the sword is a picture of God's Word. And they will fight.
They say, "This is my harvest. You ain't taking it, all right? There's no way. I sow it, all right, I grew it, I watered it, and where were you? You wanna come and take the food? No way. I'm gonna stand here, stand my ground". And the Bible says, "Stand therefore". Stand for your food, amen. Don't let anything rob you of that time that you spend in the Word of God, amen? Whether you are, in the morning, whether you're sitting on the toilet bowl or...like I told you, it's a good time. Some of you, "Oh, you know, I feel so irreverent". No, you are just being religious, because I'd rather you do that than not do that and spend the whole day not in the Word. So if there's a Bible there, Bible everywhere, amen, commercial time, look at the Bible. Spend time in the Word. Even a little piece of it can, like a little crumb, can bring healing. Can I have a good amen?
So here, God says there's food. Not just drink, there is food, all right? By the way, Jeremiah was saying that the first thing you do is eat. And what happens? "Your word was to me the joy. Your words were found, and I ate them". That's your first responsibility. Eat the Word of God. And number two, it becomes the joy and rejoicing of your heart. So eat it until there's a joy and rejoicing springing up. And there's a joy, I'm telling you. It's like that joy heals, by the way. That joy heals your body. The joy of the Lord is my strength. It's not just spiritual strength there. If you read it carefully, it's strength. spirit, soul, and body. So the joy of the Lord. So how do you get the joy of the Lord? Thy words were found. And what did I do? I ate them. When Jesus says, "I am the bread of life," what do you do with bread? You eat it. You don't just admire it or else you will stand up, "I'm the portrait of life," all right?
But He says bread. He says He's the water of life, fountain, amen. He is the bread of life. What do you do with bread? You eat. And because it's called, "I am the bread of life," you receive life. You see, every day we leak life. You know, the things that we do, the things that we watch, the things that we hear causes us to leak life. You know, I thought life is intact. Once you get life, you get life. No, every day you're losing life. Ask the doctors. They will tell you it is shown by death has set in. That means what? When there's no life, that part there's death. So different parts of your body, when you leak life, right, death comes in. They call it aging, they call it whatever, which means what? Reduction of life. But you can receive more life. Jesus says, "I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly". Can I have a good amen?
So praise the Lord. Give Him praise, amen. It's true, amen. He wants you to have this life more abundant. And if you look, there's also food in the land. Remember I shared about the land in the Bible? There's a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil, and honey. In my last sermon, I broke this down to show you the Word of God and how rich it is. "A land wherein you shall eat bread without scarceness, you shall not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you may dig brass," or copper here in the Hebrew, all right? So it's a rich land, amen. It's a rich land. It has different vistas, different facets, and every part of it is a blessing. So sometimes you go, "For the Lord your God brings you," so it's a land that you go into.
So there are times you take a verse, you meditate on it until it gives you its iron and its precious metals, amen? Gold, silver is there as well. The Bible says, "More to be desired is the Word of God than gold," amen? But as you study God's Word, you find that there are times you are eating pomegranate. There are times you are eating figs. God has variety. God is a God of variety, the manifold grace of God. Even grace has manifold. You know, God gave you a tongue. You know, you will never know the different tastes. If God gave you one tongue with one taste, you wouldn't complain. You don't know. You don't know. You only have one taste. Imagine rice, same, all right? You eat beef, it's the same, all right? You have your pickles, it's the same. All the tastes is just one taste. But God gave us a tongue with many tastes. And recently they discovered there's even one more taste called umami hidden somewhere, amen? Umami, all right? I'm sure there's somewhere else. I prophesy to you, if they study some more, there will be another one called udadi. Oh, that one is, oh, Pastor Prince, you are so corny. Amen?
If there's the umami, there must be an udadi somewhere, you know? All right, so there are things that...and they say that our brains, we only use 10% of our brains, right? Amen? Have you met people that you don't even think it's 10%? Don't look at your neighbor now, amen? All right, I mean, scientists tell us that we only use 10% of our brain, so I believe that the other nine-tenths, right, where is it missing? The Bible promises the gifts of the Holy Spirit are exactly nine, amen? It comes when you are filled with the Holy Spirit. It can maximize your mind. So it covers every area and figs is for certain, by the way, do you know figs is very sweet, right? Just to let you know something about figs, figs is very sweet but it does not spike your blood sugar. It does not. In fact, it is said that even people with high blood, you know, sugar and all that, they can actually eat figs, amen. Don't Google it now. Go home and, you know?
And so it's amazing the land, whatever God promised down there is good for the taste as well as for health, amen? If you are a man and you wanna be fruitful, he that have ears to hear, all right, pomegranate is very good for you. That's why it's a lot of seeds. Okay, I'm getting myself ahead already. Okay, that's just free, okay? Just free, amen? Look at the pomegranate and ask yourself why is it full of seeds and all that. I believe it's gonna be helping you. That's all I can say. He that have ears to hear, let him hear, amen? Amen? Ha ha, okay, so that's a promise. Now, that is microscopic. Sometimes when we study the Bible, we study the Bible up close, all right, like a microscope, and sometimes we study the Bible like a telescope.
Here we look at Moses when his last stand on Mount Nebo, just before he passed on to be with the Lord, right? He stand at Mount Nebo and he looks into the promised land in Deuteronomy 34. "Then Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Pisgah". Many of you have been there. Let me see your hands if you've been there in Jordan, where Moses's last stand was. Let me see your hands. Yeah, you are blessed, amen? You saw that view. You are seeing the same view where Moses was. Somewhere there, he stood at Pisgah, Mount Nebo, and then he looked into Israel. So today, of course, it is on the side of Jordan, okay, the country of Jordan. But at one time, it's all one, all right, and they looked down. He looked down into the promised land. And here, it says that, "And the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead so as far as Dan".
So he looked like this, okay? I'm looking at the promised land. This is Jordan. I'm looking at the promised land. So he started like this. He looked at Dan, as far as Dan, then he looked at Naphtali, which is the area of Galilee, the Sea of Galilee, all right? Now, he could have looked straight away up front. You know what's up front? Jericho, the nearest, the city of Jericho, the area of the Jordan valley. But he didn't. He looked far, right? So this is a picture of the overview of the land. Sometimes when you read the Bible, you read the Bible, you don't feel like reading, like, microscopic, or meditating on one verse, all right? You want to just general reading, like you read the book of Ruth. It can be done in one sitting. It's a very romantic book, amen. It's a beautiful story of a young bride. In fact, not only a young bride.
You know, usually a woman who has been married before is not so much, does not stand so much an opportunity as someone who has not been married before, and she's been married before. And in those day and age, when your husband dies before you and all that, they could see you as a person who brings a curse, right? But then she followed her mother-in-law to a land that's foreign to her and end up marrying the most eligible bachelor. And together, they became the great-grandfather of David. And from David came our Lord Jesus. Imagine if they didn't meet. And she doesn't belong there actually. Like the Syrophoenician woman of Tyre, she's a Gentile, but she was included in the genealogy of our Lord Jesus. Isn't that a beautiful story? Amen, you can read it in one sitting, so it's like a panoramic view, amen? A panoramic view. Sometimes you just feel like reading, and what the panoramic view does is that it washes you.
All right, you say, "But Pastor Prince, when I read the Bible, I really don't understand a lot of things". Keep on reading and enjoying it. You know, I tell you this. A lot of people who start reading novels, even children when they start reading books and all that, there are parts they don't understand. But just enjoy what you do understand, all right?
There was a man who was a devout Christian, and he wanted his son to learn about the importance of studying the Bible and reading the Bible. And he told, he was a farmer. He told his son, and they had a stream nearby their farm. He told his son to take a basket, all right, a basket, and go collect some water. The son looked at him kinda strange, right? He was about, the son was about seven, eight years old. And he was trying to impress on his son, 'cause his son told him, "When I read the Bible, I don't understand. I don't understand". So he said, "I tell you what, go get the water".
So the son went, scooped the water, came back. Of course, the water dripped out. I mean, it came out, right, of the rattan basket. Then the son said, "Dad, it's all gone". "Go get some more water". He went and came back again, and the water all left, you know, and nothing left. He said, "Dad, it's useless. You cannot take water in this". "You see, son, how clean that basket is right now even though it cannot hold water. You don't understand the Bible, never mind. Keep on reading, because it washes you".
It washes you. It has a washing, purifying effect. It has a healing effect. Same thing if you are honest. You say, "Well, I don't wanna read anything I don't understand". If you're honest, because we talk about reading as eating God's Word, apply that to your eating. Do you understand every food and its components that you eat every day? Oh yes, over here we have vitamin E in this little bean here. And this chicken rice here, all right, has this. You know, do you go down all that or you just enjoy? When you approach God's Word, have the same approach. Don't try to understand its components and all that. Just enjoy. And many times, God will speak to you directly from something that happened in the past. Are you with me so far? Is this helping you?