Your words were found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; For I am called by Your name, O Lord God of hosts. (Jeremiah 15:16)
What food is to the physical body, the Word of God is to our spirit. Food gives us physical nourishment. The Word nourishes us spiritually. Jeremiah had a meal of the Word. Job desired the Word more than a feast! Neither have I gone back from the commandment of his lips; I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food. (Job 23:12)
Peter tells us that we are to desire the Word like a baby desires a bottle of milk! As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby (1 Peter 2:2).
Jesus said that food alone would not nourish us. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).
Malnutrition is the results of lack of nourishment, and there are certain physical signs that follow. There are also spiritual signs of malnourishment. Doubt, fear, irritability, impatience, rage, selfishness, lack of peace, etc. The only cure is The Word!
Occasionally through the years as we sat at the dinner table one of our children would tell Susan and me that they weren’t hungry. I would get up from the table, go to their room and find the candy wrappers in their trash can! A lack of hunger for the Word may mean we’ve fed ourselves with the candy of the world and have filled ourselves with that which will not satisfy nor nourish spiritually.
Hunger is a sign of health, both spiritually and physically. Keep yourself hungry and well fed!
It was so cool to read your blog for today. It related so well to the same topic my 10-year-old son and I were discussing this morning, that is, how we need not rely on or expect just a quick devotion (that was prepared by someone else) and a 5-10 minute prayer each day to sustain us spiritually. We talked about how those are fine, we can certainly gain something from them, but that they are perhaps more like a small, healthy snack but not the well-balanced full meal that we need each day, where we take time to meditate on God's word and spend more time before Him in prayer to allow Him time to talk to us. I let him read your blog for himself and we then talked about how God works in this way to reconfirm something to us (the fact that we will come across the same spiritual subject from different sources within a short time of each other).
ReplyDelete