In this sermon, Pastor Harry Pitts addresses the 514 Grace Church congregation and online viewers, urging them to move beyond merely reading Scripture to truly "eating" it so that their inner spirit is fed. He distinguishes between intellectual study (reading) and experiential nourishment (eating), introducing the Greek term kritikos (the discerner) to explain how the Word examines and feeds believers. Using biblical illustrations—from Deuteronomy’s manna, Ezekiel’s scroll, John 6’s bread of life, and Romans 10’s mouth‑heart dynamic—Pitts shows that true spiritual sustenance requires active, repetitive speaking of a single verse, intentional quiet presence, and obedient action. He outlines a practical “3‑plate” system: (1) a daily verse spoken aloud, (2) ten minutes of undistracted communion with God, and (3) obedience to a specific God‑given task. Throughout, he warns of modern spiritual famine despite abundant resources, calls listeners to recognize their hunger, and concludes with a call to faith, church involvement, and financial support for the ministry.
Chapters
This program is brought to you in part by the friends and partners of 514 Grace Ministries.
Coming up next on the Grace Nation broadcast. I did not eat them. Had the perfect vocabulary, perfect Sermon had the perfect homiletics, hermeneutics, exegesis properly. All of these wonderful theological words.
Fill this room with heaven's ways. Built bold, can't bend. Grace starts strong, grace gonna end. Stand tall, don't fold. Good God, faith richer than gold.
Light step, dark run.
Victory speak, battle won. Speak peace, dry bones bloom. Let heaven fill this room. I don't fear, I believe. Speak his word, watch walls leave. Praise! Strong roots deep, kingdom rhythm in my feet. Authority on me, authority in me, authority through me. Good God, now watch me lead. Grace on me, wait, wait, wait on me.
Say this, this morning. Thank you to every single one of you for showing up to church, for being faithful servants of the Most High God. Thank you guys for being so wonderful and loving and kind. Tracy and I are so grateful that we are, or we get to pastor a wonderful church, 514 Grace Church. And we're not, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're not, um, prideful people. We love the people of God. There's nothing to be prideful about, particularly when God has saved every single one of us. What is man that thou art mindful? How can you become prideful when God has you on his mind? What is man? God asks a question. We are simply servants of the Most High God, every single one of us. I'm a servant leader serving the people of God, and I want to say thank you for being here, for getting out of your beds, for sacrificing, for being here this morning, and those that are serving. And working laboriously to get everything set up properly. Everything. Thank you so much. We're grateful for that. And I'm not going to belabor the point because there is a word from the Lord. Father, I thank you for the word of God, that the word of God come forth with clarity, revelation, and understanding. Spirit of God, speak through me. Teach through me.
And God, as a servant, Lord God, let me both—
let me both share the word of God but also feed at the same time that I teach. Let me also eat as well, Father. Spirit of God, speak through my vocal cords, think through my mind, all of you and none of me. And I pray that the people of God will be impressed with thee, O God, And not me.
And let the word of God settle upon their hearts so that they may know that you and you alone are God, and that, Father, you are the speaker and I'm simply the microphone.
Thank you, God, for using me, little old me. And I thank you, Father God. In Jesus' name I pray, and everyone said amen. Amen. I want to start out this morning teaching from our Kingdom series, a simple message but yet still profound: how to feed your spirit. And I say this with all humility because many people want to know this, and I thought I understood this.
I thought I was Feeding my spirit, but I've spent more years of my life full of religion, empty of God, than I am proud to say. I've read more chapters than I've eaten verses.
Listen to me.
I've led more services than I've sat at his table. I was a youth pastor for a number of years.
Uh, teaching the word of God, not just in church settings, but speaking at different churches, leading groups outside of church. And I'm not telling you this to be dramatic. That's not my intention at all. I'm not saying this to be dramatic.
I'm telling you this because Jeremiah said it before I did. Thy words were found. Listen at what he says. Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and thy words was unto me the joy and rejoicing of thine— of mine heart.
Excuse me, of mine heart.
And for a long stretch of my ministry, I could not have said that sentence To be totally honest with you, I found the words.
I preached the words. I did not eat them. Had the perfect vocabulary, perfect sermon, had the perfect homiletics, hermeneutics, exegesis properly.
All of these.
Wonderful theological words that preachers use and say.
But there is a difference between handling the word and being fed by the word. You have been eating the word, but you've not been feeding. And there's a difference. Reading the Bible renews your mind. Eating the Bible feeds your spirit, and somewhere along the way, the church taught us to read and forget to teach us how to eat. So this morning, I'm not asking you to study the word. That is not my intention. I'm asking you to Let the word study you, because Hebrews tells us the word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And the word that I want to use is the word kritikos, is a Greek word, and What the word means is the word is the discerner, the examiner, and it is not lying on the page waiting for us to figure it out.
It is not. For those of you that are watching, it is not lying on the pages waiting for us to figure it out.
It is sitting up. It is looking back. And it knows where the cracks are in our lives, the cracks in every single one of our lives. The word knows. The word is studying us. Yes, I know that we say that we're called to study the word. No, the word is in fact studying us. Are you listening to me? Because your spirit Is a load-bearing wall, and when it cracks, decoration is all that is left to hide the void. I've decorated enough sanctuaries, including the one inside my own chest right now, to know that paint does not hold up a sealing. Bread does. The word of God does. What Ezekiel tasted when he ate the scroll, he said, it is honey in my mouth. That is what reading your Bible was always supposed to feel like, and if it has not tasted Like that in a while. You're not broken. You're not broken at all. You are hungry. You're hungry for the word of God. And hungry is the right posture for what God is about to do in this room this morning. Eyes have not seen, ears have not heard what the Lord is going to do. To every single one of us and do with every single one of us this morning. The word is lecturing us. The word is studying us. Ah, we just learned the word criticus. It is the word is a discerner. It is an examiner criticus. Ah, you say, Pastor. The word is examining me.
Yes, it is kritikos. K-R-I-T-I-K-O-S.
It is the Greek word for the word discerner, examiner. The word is examining us.
It is a two-edged sword, sharp, but it understands the inner workings Of our hearts.
And I love what Solomon said. He said it like this in Proverbs 18:14. Solomon said, the spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit, who can bear it? Hear that carefully. Your spirit is the thing that carries you. when your body fails. Your spirit is the thing that holds you up when the diagnosis comes, when the marriage trembles, when the job ends, when the child rebels. The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity. But what happens when the spirit itself Is wounded? What happens when the load-bearing wall is the thing that is cracking or is cracked? Solomon does not answer the question.
He just asks the question, who can bear?
Because he knows when the spirit is wounded and unfed, nothing else can hold you. Your theology cannot hold you. Your gifting cannot hold you. Your platform cannot hold you. Your marriage cannot hold you because all of these things were designed to rest on the wall, not to replace it. Hear me, body of Christ, those that are watching. You must feed. We've taught people in the body of Christ to read but not to feed, and this is why so many of us are tired in a way that sleep does not fix it. We are not body tired. Listen to me, we are not body tired. The personality, the part of you The world sees, and there is the inner man, the spirit, that part of you that God breathed out and breathed into dust. The spirit, the part of you that will outlive your physical body. And Paul says these two are different Schedules. They are on 2 different schedules. 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 16, Paul says, though our outward man— listen to this— he said, though our outward man perish, yet the inner man is renewed day by day. The outer man is going down. He is diminishing. He is aging. I know that many of us don't like the word wrinkle, but he is aging. That is not a tragedy, not at all. There's nothing wrong with aging. That is the design. But the inner man, the inner man is supposed to be going up day by day. Renewed is the word that Paul uses. strengthened, getting fuller while the outer gets thinner.
Did you listen to that?
Getting fuller. This spirit man, the inner man that Paul is talking about is getting fuller. He is gaining strength, muscle, but the outer man, the flesh man, that part of you that makes up your chemistry makeup, That part of you that is human in this element is getting thinner. And here is the diagnosis I want you to receive this morning without flinching.
Listen to me.
For many of us, both men are going down at the same time.
Both men are going down at the same time.
Or women. Going down at the same time.
The outer is perishing, Pastor Keith. Minister Tracy, Minister Ophelia, body of Christ, Mother Mary, the, uh, the outer man is perishing. Are you listening to me, Brother Christian? The outer man is perishing.
Yes.
That is on schedule, but the inner man is perishing too, and that was never the plan.
The inner man was supposed to be the one thing in you that gets stronger as everything else gets weaker. The reason the inner man is not getting stronger is because the inner man is not being Fed. Now let me show you where the food comes from, because we need to be precise and absolute. I cannot go down a rabbit trail just to try to sound theologically sound. We cannot afford to waste any more time because we're living in a time where there is not a shortage of the word of God. It's not a shortage of the word of God. Amos chapter 8, verse 11 says that God—
ah, there's no shortage of the word of God, but there is a shortage of the hearing of the word of God. We, we have so much distraction. We have TikTok prophets, we have TikTok pastors, we have TikTok evangelists.
We have— everybody's ticking and talking.
Ah, but, but God has called us, those of us who, who hear his voice, to feed on his word because we need to be precise.
We cannot just say feed your spirit and leave the room guessing what that I can't say that. I can't do that. That would be terrible pastoring. Turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 3. This is Moses preaching his last sermon. He is an old man. He is about to die. He will not cross the Jordan with them, and he is standing in front of a generation that was born in the wilderness, kids who grew up eating manna every morning of their lives and never knew anything else. And Moses wants them to understand what just happened to them. He wants them to understand what those 40 years were actually about. Listen to what he says. Listen to me, 514 Grace Church, and those that are watching us online that are members of 514 Grace Church, our eChurch. Listen, listen to me. And he humbled thee and suffered thee to hunger and fed thee with manna which thou knewest not. Neither did thy fathers know, that he might make thee know that man doeth not live by bread alone, but by every word.
Every word.
Every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doeth man live. I want to slow down.
I want, I want you to slow down with me on this verse.
Slow down with me because there are 4 movements inside of this verse, and if you miss any one of them, you will miss what God was doing for 40 years. Movement 1, he humbled thee. The Hebrew word there is the word anah, A-N-A-H, anah. It means to bring low, to bend down, to make small. God brought Israel low on purpose. That was not an accident of the wilderness, that was the assignment of the wilderness. They came out of Egypt with their Chest puffed out, having just watched the Red Sea swallow the strongest army on planet Earth. And the first thing God did was bring them low, because you cannot teach a proud people. You can only teach an humble people. Movement number 2. And suffered thee to hunger. God allowed the hunger.
He did not cause every pang of it, but he permitted it to be so.
He did not rush to fill their stomach the moment they grumbled. Listen to me, body of Christ.
He let them feel the emptiness of this hunger.
And here is what you have to hear.
Ah.
The hunger was not a failure of God's provision. The, the hunger was part of the provision. The empty stomach was the first Half of the lesson. The full stomach without the empty stomach would have taught them nothing. Movement number 3. And fed thee with manna which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know. Now the bread comes, but notice how Moses describes it. Listen how Moses describes it. It is so wonderful. He does not say God Listen to what Moses is saying. He says God fed them with something they did not recognize, something their fathers had never seen. The Hebrew people had a name for it. They called it manhu, M-A-N-H-U, which literally means, I don't know, What is it in the English language? They named their food, what is it, because they had no category for it. They called it manhu, which literally means what is it. They named their food, what is it, because they didn't know it. It was not bread from a field. It was not bread from a bakery. It was bread from a place they could not point to. They showed up every morning except the Sabbath in an amount that was exactly enough for one day and would rot if you tried to hoard it. That is not just food.
That is a sign from God.
That is a parable you can eat. Yes, every single morning for 40 years, 6 days a week, they had to bend down and pick up something they could not explain and put it in their mouths and trust that that it would feed them. And the next morning they had to do it again, and the morning after that, for 14,000 mornings they had to do this. 14,000 mornings they had to do this. God was teaching them something with their teeth that they could not learn with their ears. I need to say that again. God was teaching something to them with their teeth that they could not hear with their ears. Movement number 4, that he might make thee know that man doeth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doeth Here is the lesson. Here is what the whole 40 years was for. The word know in the sentence is the Hebrew word yada. It does not mean to know about something. It means to know by experience, experiential. What is experiential? Sometimes learning a lesson comes through suffering. This is why Jesus came, because he had to learn the empathy and understand the creation. So he himself lived in human flesh. He had to learn through experience to know the way of A husband knows his wife to know by tasting. You can read about manna in a book and not yada it and not experience it. You have to eat it for 40 years to yada it. Y-A-D-A.
A, to experience it.
And the lesson is this: man does not live by bread alone. There is a bread beyond bread. There is a food that doest not come from a field or a bakery or a grocery store or a Publix or a Sam and Roscoe's.
I know, oh, I, I mentioned these folks' name, they may need You need to send me— Okay, I'm just joking.
There is a sustenance that comes from the mouth of God himself. Every word that proceeds out of his mouth, and that sustenance is what man actually lives on. Bread keeps your body alive. The word keeps the real—
let me say that again.
The word keeps the real you alive. And here is what I need you to feel this morning, body of Christ. Hear me, 514 Grace Church, and those of you that are watching me online in our eChurch, those of you that are watching us from different platforms, Hear me. This word will change your life. Bread keeps your body alive. The word keeps the real you alive. And here is what I need you to feel with me this morning. You cannot learn that lesson on a full stomach. You can read it, you can underline it, you can memorize it, but you cannot yada it. You cannot experience it until something in you gets hungry enough to find out whether it is true. Most of us in this room this morning have never been physically hungry. We have grocery delivery. We have abundance. We have more food than any generation in human history. And yet we are tired. We are restless. We are scrolling for something we cannot name. We are full and empty at the same time. That is the condition I confessed at the beginning of this message. this lesson. Full of religion and empty and void, devoid of God. Full of religion. I'm here to tell you that hunger you feel, that food does not fix, that hunger is not your enemy, that hunger is the same hunger God put in the wilderness. It is the hunger that asks the question your full stomach was never going to ask. It is the hunger that makes you ready to receive the bread you did not know you needed.
It is that hunger that makes you thrive for the bread The glory, the kabod, the glory, the heavy weight of the glory of God. It is that hunger that makes you hungry for the divine, the God who loves every single one of us. It is the hunger that your inner man needs feeding. God is not punishing you with the emptiness. No, that is not what God is doing. He is preparing you for the meal. Now, I want to take you to a well in Samaria. If you would travel with me, give me a creative license to paint this picture. To paint this Monet from John chapter 4. Jesus is tired.
The text says so plainly, Jesus therefore being wearied with this journey. John chapter 4, he said, Jesus being weary with this journey sat thus on the well.
He is hungry. He is thirsty.
He is human.
The disciples have gone into town to buy groceries, to get a Happy Meal, to get lunch. I can only imagine Peter getting there and said, I wanna supersize this 'cause I'm hungry and the Savior is hungry.
And while they're gone, a woman comes to the well at noon. She is not at the well at sunrise with the other women. She is at the well at noon alone because she has been through 5 husbands and is living with the 6th, with the 6th husband presently. And the other women of the town will not draw water with her anymore.
Probably because some of the— let me stop. Some of the men there That she married was probably their ex.
So she comes when nobody else will be there, and Jesus is sitting on the edge of that well waiting for her. And I'm going to skip past the conversation this morning because you already know it. He offers her living water. She receives it. She runs back into town and tells everyone, come and see a man which told me all things I ever did. But while she is running, the disciples come back with food. They come back with food, and here is where I want you to slow down with me. Verse 31. In the meanwhile, his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat.
That is the kind of sentence that many of us get stuck at.
Jesus does a karate chop, and it blows my mind when I read They are not scolding him.
They're not scolding him. They're not scolding Jesus.
They love him. They adore him. They've watched him walk all morning. They know he is tired. They went and got him a Happy Meal because they want him to be happy. Peter even supersized the Happy Meal and said, we want the master to be really happy. Peter supersizes it and he says, master, eat. And Jesus says in verse 32, now this blows my mind. He says, I have meat to eat that you know not of. And I want you to picture the disciples' faces. They just, walked back through Samaria with groceries. They know exactly what he had to eat because they brought it, and he is telling them he has a meal that they do not know about. So they do not— so they do what any of us would do. In verse 33, Therefore said the disciples one to another, hath any man brought Him to food to eat. Now I'm sure they are looking at each other and somebody had to—
they're saying to each other, somebody had to sneak him a sandwich. Who brought him food while we were gone?
That is what they are thinking. Some Samaritan woman with with a bad reputation came by and gave him bread while we were gone. They are not being faithless. They're being literal. They're operating in the only category that they have for food. And Jesus says in verse 34, and I want you to write this down. This one on the inside of your chest. Write this one on inside of your chest. Listen at what Jesus says. He says, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me and to finish His work." The Greek word for meat there is the word broma. You spell it B R O M A. Broma. It does not mean What does that mean?
It doesn't mean a snack.
Stay with me. I know you hear the baby right now, but it's okay. Just stay with me. It means that the word broma means a full meal, the thing that fills you, the thing that satisfies you. And Jesus is saying, my full meal, the thing that satisfies me, the thing that fed me while you were gone Was doing what the Father sent me to do. Sitting at this well, waiting for this woman, speaking the words the Father gave me to speak. That was the meal, disciples. He had just had a 30-minute conversation with a broken woman and he came out of it Fool.
Let that, let that stick with you one moment.
I need you to lean in. He just had this 30-minute conversation with this woman, getting her in alignment with his Father, and then finds out— we find out that this was the meal all along, doing the will of the Father. He had just spoke to her and hear me carefully. There's a way to be fed that has nothing to do with what you have on your plate, beloved. There's a meal that comes through your hands when you do what God told— when you do what God told you to do. There's a fullness that arrives On the other side of obedience that no restaurant can serve you. The disciples brought Jesus lunch. The Father had already fed him before they even arrived. And this is where most of us, most of us are missing meals, not because the food is not there, but because— The Father has already fed you. because we have only one category for food.
One category for food is all we have.
We think feeding is what happens when we sit down with a Bible and a cup of coffee in the mornings.
And I'm not giving anyone a hard time. I'm just, I'm just a messenger.
I'm just a postman delivering the message, delivering the mail. And that can be feeding, but it is not the only feeding.
Sometimes the feeding is the phone call you have been avoiding.
Sometimes the feeding is the forgiveness you've been postponing. Sometimes the feeding is the obedience you've been negotiating with for 6 months. Obedience is not the price you pay for the meal.
Obedience is the meal.
Now follow me to John chapter 6. The day before this chapter opens, Jesus fed 5,000 men plus women and children with 5 loaves and 2 fish. They ate until they were full.
Are you listening to me, church?
They picked up 12 baskets of leftovers. And the next morning when Jesus crosses the lake, that same crowd comes looking for him. Are you listening to me?
Those who are watching us on the West Coast and the East Coast, and those that are watching us in Canada, and those that are watching us in South Africa and Pakistan and Mogadishu, those that are watching us globally, listen to me.
Those that are following us, those that are subscribing, listen to me. And Jesus knows why they are there. Verse 26, ye seek me not because you saw the miracles, but because you did eat of loaves and were filled. That is one of the hardest sentences to me in the Gospels for someone to say. He is telling a crowd of 5,000 people that they are following him for the wrong reason. They're not following him because they recognize who he is. Ah, they are following him because he fed their stomachs yesterday and they want him to feed their stomachs again today. And rather than soften it, Jesus presses in, in verse 35. I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth in me shall never thirst, is what he says. I am the bread. Not, I will give you bread. Not, I have bread for you. I am the bread. I am the bread. The food you are looking for is a person, and that person is me, the Christos, the Christ, the Son of the living God, the one that says, first seek ye the kingdom of heaven.
And this righteousness, he says, me, I'm the meal. This is what he's saying. Me, says, I'm the meal. Yes, he was bold enough to say that.
I'm the bread. The crowd cannot handle it. They start to murmur. And instead of backing off, Jesus goes further.
Verse 53.
Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
What?
That is the most offensive sentence Jesus ever spoke in public. The Jewish people had laws against eating blood. They had laws against eating human flesh. And Jesus stands forthrightly in front of a crowd of thousands and says, unless ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, You have no life. You have no part in me. Verse 66, from that time, listen to this, verse 66, from that time, many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him. He lost the crowd. Most of the people who had been following him walked away that day.
before his 12 could walk away too, Jesus said one of the most beautiful human things you could say. Jesus said one sentence that unlocked the whole thing for me, and this is the hinge.
If you miss this verse, you will misread the entire chapter.
And John chapter 6, verse 63. It is the Spirit that quickeneth. The flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.
There it is. The words are the flesh. The words are how you eat him. When Jesus said, eat my flesh, he was not asking for cannibalism.
No, that is not what he meant.
And he was not only talking about communion, though communion is part of it. He was saying, ingest my words. The words I speak to you are not information. The words I speak to you are spirit, and spirit feeds spirit. Let me say that again. Spirit feeds spirit. Feeds spirit. This is why the church can be full of Bible readers and Bible thumpers and empty of fed people, because we've been treating the words of Jesus as information, information instead of as flesh. We've been studying the menu instead of eating the meal. Information goes through your mind. The mind is part of the outer man. The outer man, Paul says, is perishing. You can fill a perishing thing with information for the rest of your life, and the inner man, the part of you that is supposed to be renewed day by day, will starve to death. The words Jesus— the words of Jesus are spirit. They are Not data. They are bread. And until you start eating them as bread, you will keep walking out of John 6 with the crowd, wondering why Jesus is so hard to follow. Now I want you to see what eating the word actually looks like in the body of a man.
Ezekiel chapter 2 and 3.
Ezekiel is a priest in exile. He is sitting by a river in Babylon, far from the temple he was trained to serve in, and the heavens open over him. He sees the glory of God. He falls on his face, and out of the throne, a hand reaches toward him with a scroll. Chapter 2, verse 9. And when I looked, this is what it says, and when I looked, I beheld, and hand was sent unto me, and lo, a roll of a book was therein. The scroll is unrolled in front of him, and the text says it was written on both sides, which was unusual.
Hmm.
It's unusual. Scrolls were normally written on one side only, and what was written there was lamentations and mourning and woe, the hardest possible word to deliver, the kind of a word a young prophet would want to refuse. And God says to Ezekiel, Chapter 3, verse 1. Son of man, son of man, eat that thou findest. Eat this roll and go speak unto the house of Israel. Eat first, speak second.
Do you see the order?
Ezekiel is not allowed to preach the scroll until he has eaten the scroll.
Let me say that again.
Ezekiel is not allowed to preach the scroll until he has eaten the scroll. The word has to go in before the word can come out. And Ezekiel obeys. Verse 2, so I opened my mouth and he caused me to eat that roll. Verse 3, and he said unto me, son of man, cause thy belly to eat and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. Then did I eat it, and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.
Honey in his mouth.
A scroll full of lamentation, mourning, and woe. The hardest word a prophet ever had to carry. And when he ate it, it tasted like honey.
Interesting.
This is the testimony I want you to hear this morning. When the word goes into you the way it was designed to go in, even the hard words taste sweet because it is not the content of the word that determines the sweetness. It is the source of the word. It came from the hand of God, and anything that comes directly from the hand of God, eaten directly into the belly of a man, Tastes like honey. That is what reading your Bible was always supposed to feel like. If your Bible reading has not tasted like honey in a long time, the problem is not the Bible, beloved. The problem is not even you. The problem is that nobody ever taught you how to eat. They taught you how to read. They taught you how to study. They taught you how to underline, how to memorize. They did not teach you how to put the scroll in your mouth and chew it until it tasted like honey. And here's what God told Ezekiel right after he ate. Verse number 4. Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel and speak with my words unto them. You can only speak his words after you have been— after you have eaten his words. Whatever God has called you to say to your spouse, to your children, to your coworker, to your church members, pastors, to your congregations, to your city as a prophet of God. It has to be eaten before it can be spoken. This is why we have people that are prophelying and not truly prophesying. Be careful, be careful when you say, thus said the Lord, and God did not say. There are no shortcuts to this. You cannot borrow somebody else's meal, someone else's revelation, when you've not eaten it, when you've not ingested it, and then you preach it as if it were your own. You have to eat the scroll yourself.
I thank God for my, my pastors. I thank God for them because they teach with revelation, with clarity. But they taught me how to feed on the Word of God. And God is so profound. There's more revelation than you can even imagine. The Bible says, ah, because of the information that God spoke and the events that took place on earth, the book Books could not even hold the knowledge of God. Now Paul tells us in Romans chapter 10 exactly how the eating happens in the body of a believer. Listen to me. I want you to follow the mechanics of this because most of us were taught it backwards.
Romans chapter 10, verse 8. But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart. That is the word of faith, which is preached. The word is in 2 places, the mouth and the heart. I need you to hold that right where you are. Hold that. Those that are watching me, hold that. Those that are watching me on Twitter, hold that. The word is in 2 places, your mouth and your heart. Verse number 9 says this, That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Verse 10, for with the mouth— excuse me, for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. Look at the order Paul gives. Mouth first, then heart, then mouth again.
Most of us were taught the exact opposite.
We were taught believe it first, then speak it. Get your heart right, then your mouth will follow.
But Paul does not preach it that way.
Listen to me. Paul says the mouth is the door to the heart. What you speak out loud is what your heart receives internally, deep within. This is the mechanic of feeding. This is how a verse stops being words on a page and starts being food in your spirit. You speak it out.
You speak it.
And when you speak it, you speak it out loud with your own mouth, slowly, more than once. And the speaking is the chewing. The speaking is what breaks the verse down into pieces small enough for your spirit to absorb it. I'm going to tell you something this morning, and I, I want you to weigh it before you reject it.
Listen, just, just weigh it before you reject it. 24 hours of speaking one verse out loud will feed your spirit more than a year of speed reading the whole Bible.
I know that sounds extreme, to many of you, but I have lived this, both sides of it. I've read the Bible cover to cover and walked out the other side still hungry.
Mm.
And I've taken one verse, one, and spoken it out loud all day long and walked into the next morning carrying something I had never Carried before because the mouth is the door to the heart and the heart is where the inner man lives. And the inner man is fed when the Word goes from the mouth through the heart and to the spirit. This is the route. That is the digestion of the word.
You cannot skip the mouth.
The eyes alone will not feed you. The eyes feed the mind. The mouth feeds the spirit.
So here is the practice I need you to stay with me with.
There are 3 plates, 3 plates.
3 plates.
Simple, repeatable, just plate number one, the word. Pick one verse, just one. Tomorrow morning before you touch your phone, before you get up, the noise of the day even begins, start your morning, speak that verse out loud slowly, then again, then again, carry it with you.
Think on it. Speak it at lunch, speak it before bed.
One verse all day in your mouth, just one verse.
That is how you eat. That is how the mouth opens the heart.
That is how the word stops being information and starts being bread. Plate number 2, the presence. 10 minutes, no phone calls, no text messages, No iPad, none of those things. Turn off your electronic devices. No agenda, no worship music, just you sitting in front of God with nothing to perform and nothing to produce.
I'm going to tell you what is going to happen so you are not surprised by it. The first 3 minutes will be loud inside your head.
Your to-do list will start screaming. The next three minutes will be uncomfortable. You'll start to reach for something, and somewhere after that, I and and I can't tell you exactly when because God sets His own table. He'll show up. God will show up, and you will know the difference between. Plate number 3. There's something God has been asking you to do. You know what it is.
You've been watching me. You've been following my lessons, and God has been prodding you, speaking to you about what to do. You've been hesitant, but the Spirit of God wants you to obey him. God knows what's best for you and I both.
Be obedient. You're watching right now and you're wrestling with the words that God has spoken to you about what you need to do.
You're wrestling about the call, whether or not you are authorized.
You say, well, Pastor, no one has acknowledged me.
Hmm, interesting. But will you obey?
You've been Been negotiating with it for weeks, maybe months, maybe years.
Jesus said his meat was to do the will of the Father.
That means obedience is not the price.
Obedience is the meal. Are you listening to me? Do what God has told you to do. Do the thing, the call that God has placed upon your life. You've been called to go back to school and you've been wrestling with this, doubting. The forgiveness, do this, it is necessary.
The conversation, the giving, the leaving, the staying, whatever it is, do it and watch your inner man stand up straighter than it has in years. To be strengthened in the inner man.
That's right.
The famine in our generation is not a famine of Bibles. We have more Bibles, more Bible apps, more sermons, more commentaries. We have digital platforms.
We have people that are ad nauseam teaching whatever, whatever they are teaching. It's not necessarily all sound.
Amen. We have more commentaries, more conferences, more access to the word of God than any other generation in human history. The famine is not of words.
The famine is of eating.
We're starving next to a loaded table. David said it in Psalms 23, thou preparest a table before Before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over. Look at the table. It is not set in a calm place. It is set in the presence of mine enemies. God is not waiting for your life to get easy before he feeds you.
He is setting the table right now in front of the people who oppose you, in front of the bills that have not been paid, in front Of the diagnosis that has not been reversed, in front of the marriage that has not been healed. The table is set in the middle of the war. The oil is poured.
The cup is overflowing. And only—
the only question that is left in this room this morning is whether you will sit down.
Amen.
And whether you'll eat.
Psalms 34:8.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord, he is good. The Lord is good.
Notice the order.
First, you taste.
See the second, you do not have to understand the meal before you eat it.
You do not have to figure God out before you trust him. You just have to taste.
The understanding comes through the tasting.
The seeing comes through the eating. So here's what I'm asking you to do before you walk out of this sanctuary this morning, before you walk out of this room. Pick the verse. Just do this. Pick one verse. Write it on a piece of paper if you have to. Speak it out loud this morning before you sleep. Decide the 10 minutes tomorrow. Set a timer. No phone. Just sit.
Name the act of obedience, the thing God has been pressing on you. Say it out loud.
Even Only to yourself, even if you have to do it to yourself in the car early in the morning or on the way home. And tell him you'll do it this week. Not just this week, but in the days and the weeks as well. 3 plates starting this morning.
3 plates.
And the Lord who set this table long before you walked in, who has been watching you walk past, walk past this table for years, who's been waiting for you to stop reading the menu and start eating the meal, he will say to you what he has been waiting to say.
Eat, child.
Eat, child. I made this just for you. This is the sermon. This is the message God wants us to receive. God wants us to feed. Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus has the conversation. With Satan in Matthew chapter 4. He mentions something from Deuteronomy chapter 8 that Moses says. Chapter 8, verse 3. Moses says that man shall not live by bread alone. Jesus repeats the same exact thing to Satan. Said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Jesus said this in Matthew chapter 4: man cannot live by physical bread. Yeah, there are 2 of you living in this place. You have the outward man that perishes day by day, but there is the inward man who is renewed day by day. The Bible says, study this, show thyself approved. You've got to digest Just ingest this word, not just read it casually, just to say or to just feel good about yourself or to improve your moral compass that I read the word. No, it is much more than that.
This word is living. It is a living word, and your spirit man must eat this word if it is to survive the turbulence. The trials of the enemy every day.
Bow your heads in prayer with me. Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Let your will be done in our lives, and your will is that we eat your word. Father God, use us. Feed us, oh God. We hunger. We hunger for more of you, God. Give us you, Jesus. And Father, we'll be careful to give you all the glory, honor, and praise. In Jesus' name we pray. And everyone said amen. Thank you for listening. Thank you for writing. Thank you for those that are watching us. Thank you to every one of our eChurch members. Thank God for you. 5:14. Grace Church, we are just getting started to do what God has called us to do. And many of you that are watching us online, follow us on social media, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Facebook, follow us on YouTube. Excuse me, I mean X. Thank you for correcting me. X, not Twitter.
X.
Follow us on TikTok, Instagram. And those of you that are following us on the West Coast and here in the East Coast and even in the city of Atlanta in the West Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia area. We're here. We're a new movement. God is using us. And if you're looking for a church home, look for 514 Grace Church. Google us. You can look us up online, www.514gracechurch.org. And if you want to give, go to our website. I just gave it to you, www.514gracechurch.org. You can give if you want to give $5, $10, $20, $25, $100, $1,000, 6 figures. We would be so glad to receive it. Thank you, because we need to get this word of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven published across the globe.
We have need of the Word being published in South Africa.
We are now finding that our ministry is being followed greatly in Africa, on the continent of Africa, and we need your help. We need your help to be able to publish this message not only in Africa but here even in the United States on the West Coast where our message is being followed there greatly, in Canada and the UK. Please support us. We're a 501 ministry, and God has blessed us.
We are under covering.
My wife and I, we do have pastors. I'm not a rebel. I don't believe in that. God has called us to submit. To be a leader, you must be a man or a woman of God under authority. You can't have authority if you're not submitted to authority. And I thank God for that. But I also want to extend this invitation. I would be a terrible leader if I were not to extend the invitation, a call of salvation to those of you that are watching us online. And thank you for following us. Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for commenting. Thank you for liking. Thank you for sharing. But if you don't know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, do me a favor. Repeat this prayer. Repeat these words. Just as I am, without one plea. after me. Say, Jesus, come into my heart. I need you. Save me. Forgive me of all the wrong things that I've done. Father, forgive me.
I know that I've not been pleasing.
I've not said things that have been pleasing. I've not thought things that have been pleasing. I've not believed things that have been pleasing. I've not lived a life that's been pleasurable to you. And Father, I ask that you forgive me. I denounce Satan. He has no authority over me. Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords in my life. I believe and I confess out of my mouth that Jesus died and then ascended. He first descended and then ascended, and now he's seated on the right-hand side of the Father. And because he's seated on the right-hand side of the Father, I'm seated. My past It's covered by the blood of Christ. Jesus, come into my life. Become my Savior. Be my Lord. And if you prayed that prayer with me, you are now a member of the body of Christ, a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. God has called you to a great thing. At such a time as this, he has need for you. Thank you. And I don't want want to just leave you out there. If you're looking for a good church, 514 Grace Church would love to pastor you. If you want to be a member of this, just message my wife or Tracy and I online on Facebook.
We have staff that follows that.
Message us, DM us, we'll, we'll get back to you. If you're looking for a church that you can be fed and your family can be covered and you can be fed and your children can grow up and the word of God is being taught with love, balance, and you can operate and flow in what God has given you. Message us on Facebook, DM us on TikTok and Instagram.
Love to converse with you.
God bless you. Thank you for watching. Thank you for following. And please do me a favor, like, subscribe, share every single one of these messages, and I pray that they were an inspiration to you, both you and your family. Share with a neighbor, share with a friend, share with a college classmate, share it with a peer of yours, share with a coworker. Let them know that 514 Grace Church is preaching the Word of God. My name is Pastor Harry Pitts, and I'm the lead— I'm the senior pastor here at 514 Grace Church. God bless you. My wife Tracy and I want to say that we love you. The leaders love you as well, and we love for you to allow us the opportunity to pastor you. God bless you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for following. We're not out of word, and we'll see you next time. God bless you, and remember, in all you're getting, get understanding. God bless you. We'll We'll see you next time.
