Plants Reaching Out Toward the Light.]

Now, when you desire to be good, when you desire to live like Christ,
you desire to know more concerning Him; and when you desire to read
God's Word, and to learn of that which is holy and good and right, then
you have this spiritual hunger. That is the kind of hunger of which
Jesus was speaking in this chapter. The presence of Jesus in the soul
and the knowledge of Him that is given in the Bible is the best kind of
food for our spiritual nature. This was the kind of spiritual food upon
which Joseph fed when he lived in the midst of idolatrous Egypt. It was
upon these spiritual truths that David and Daniel and Paul and Luther
fed daily, and this nourished their spiritual natures. I trust you all
have this hunger for the bread of life. Jesus said, "Blessed are they
which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled."

Did you ever see a plant growing at the window in a crock and observe
how it bends or reaches out toward the light? If you turn the crock
around so that the plant bends inward toward the room, after a day or
two you go to the plant and it will have changed its direction, and
instead of bending into the room, it will be bending out toward the
window. Now this plant feeds on the light from the sun, and on that
account it reaches out toward the sun. So if you hunger after that which
is good, you will reach out after God, just as the plant reaches out
after the sun.

This kind of bread which I hold in my hand costs something. Flour costs
several dollars a barrel, and bread from five to ten cents a loaf. In
times of famine bread has sometimes been sold at many hundreds of
dollars for one single loaf. But the bread of life is free; it costs
nothing. Everybody can have spiritual food for the simple asking for it.
Therefore it is that we go to God in prayer and ask Him for every good
and helpful grace and blessing; that we ask Him for His presence in our
hearts, and to make us good, and to help us to become like Christ.

But there are some who have this hunger after that which is good, but
they do not know about God and about the Lord Jesus Christ. They do not
have any Bibles. Therefore it is my duty and your duty to send them the
bread of everlasting life. It is for this purpose that we give our money
for missions so that missionaries may be sent to them to tell them of
God and His love, and of Jesus Christ the Saviour, and to take them the
Bible.