No counting calories with THIS diet!!!

I know, I know!! It’s been over a month since I last shared with you, and I apologize… again. But I have finally discovered something that may prevent such massive delays in my blogging, and I hope it’s helpful to you as well. This week I want to talk to you about eating God.

I know, a rather odd opening statement, isn’t it? Well, let me explain starting with a little testimony. I spent this weekend at Acquire the Fire, a youth event with speakers, and bands, and great worship, and all this cool stuff. Well, they spent a good part of the first evening talking about getting saved, as per usual. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they do this. I think it’s a great and necessary part of any youth event. However, it doesn’t always hold a lot of new revelation for me as I have heard most of it a million times. So I was sitting there listening, and I was just so excited for this great time of connecting with God and getting a jumpstart in my walk with Him. Then the thought occurred to me: why did I feel like I needed a jumpstart?

God had been pointing out the same things that I needed to improve for a long time. Every youth event He told me the same thing… it just took me several years to listen. Anyway, as I sat there thinking, I felt like I was finally doing everything right. I had cut out the cussing and the dirty jokes, I was loving people, He was a priority in my life, I was even reading my Bible after all this time! That was a biggie, spending the time with God. And I wondered… if I was finally doing everything that He had been telling me to do, if I was living on track for Him, then why did I depend on semi-annual events like this to give my relationship with Him the extra juice to keep me going? What was I still missing?

It finally hit me when the speaker referred to Jesus as the ‘Bread of Life’ and the ‘Living Water’. For those of you who don’t know, let me clue you in on what I’m talking about here.

It was right after Jesus fed the five thousand (you know, with the loaves and the fishes and all that), and the crowd was sort of following Him and asking for more miracles. Really, they were hungry and wanted to see Him do that multiplying trick again, so they said, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” So Jesus told them this: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” You can check out the whole story in John chapter 6.

Another time He and his disciples were passing through Samaria, and Jesus sat down by a well. A woman came by and He asked her for a drink of water. Since Jews did not associate with Samaritans, she was naturally quite surprised and asked Him what He was all about. In John 4:10-13, “Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water… Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’”

So what does this mean? Is this saying that we should physically EAT Jesus? No. That, my dear children, is called cannibalism, and is in fact frowned upon in most societies. But think about it… how long can you live without food and water? It’s vital! It’s our sustenance, the thing that keeps us going. We sorta kinda need that stuff, don’t we? It’s saying the same thing about Jesus. Without Him, we are dead spiritually.

“Ok, ok.” You might be saying. “Haven’t we already covered spending time with God? You’ve mentioned this quite a lot in past studies.” Yes, I know. And I won’t lie, I thought I finally had this whole thing figured out. But let’s take it a step further with an analogy (I just love analogies and metaphors!).

How do you feel when you don’t eat? You’re sort of blah, not real energetic, maybe a little bit cranky? We get the same way when we’re dehydrated, right? Well, how strong and healthy would you be if you only took a few bites of food and a sip of water every day? You’d be pretty sickly. Would you be much better off if you chewed the food for a quick second, spit it back out and moved on with your day? No! You wouldn’t digest it, or get the good things your body needs from it. If this was your mealtime routine, could you then honestly say that you had eaten at all?

I think we often do the same thing when we read our Bible or spend time with God, don’t we? We take a few minutes in passing and read a verse or two, shoot up a prayer to bless old Aunt Betty, and claim to have done our devotions for the day. Or maybe we read a big chunk of scripture, then rattle off a long list of things you want God to take care of. Did we get anything out of those chapters we read? Do we even have the slightest clue what they were saying? If not, how can we apply it to our lives? And can we really call our babbling as time well spent? I certainly wouldn’t want my daily conversation with someone I cared about to consist entirely of a to-do list. And *gasp* I may actually want to add something to the conversation as well! If this is as far as we take it, how do we expect to get all the good things God has to tell us and do in us? I’ll tell you how… we don’t!

So we go on living like this, barely even attempting to feed our ravenous spiritual bellies… and then we attend an event. We go to camp, or to a rally, or whatever it is for you, and are presented with a varitable feast of God. We gorge ourselves on His presence and His word and His closeness, and go home feeling so refreshed. There’s a funny thing about eating a drinking though… you sort of have to do it again. But we go back to our old dietary habits, continue to be spiritually anorexic, and then wonder why we just don’t feel so fulfilled anymore.

Here’s another thought… if you starve yourself physically, how able are you to do the daily acts required of you? How easy is it for you to step beyond that and minister to the needs of others? Pretty tough. So why is it that we think we can starve spiritually and still be able to do good to those around us? How can we help others to understand Christ’s love when we are so spiritually weak and exhausted? That is not how we are called to be! We are called to be strong warriors for Christ! Can a fighter win the battle when he’s half-starved to death? No!!

To avoid redundancy, let me get to the point. Jesus tells us that when we come to Him, we will never hunger or thirst again. It’s sort of like a never-ending-all-you-can-eat buffet. A feast is always there, just waiting for us to dig in and enjoy! Why do we try to make do with such meager fare? Don’t wait until your next big event to stuff yourself with God…do it now! Trust me, you will feel so much better!!

So, that’s all for this week. Talk to you later my darlings!!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo