Feeding Ourselves

I've been touching on the Word of God a lot lately.  Welp, I'm not done just yet.  I've got a bit more for everyone.  In actuality, I'm pretty much saying the same thing in every post.  I'm just finding new ways to say it each time.  This post won't be any different in that respect.  It's on, you guessed it, getting into the Word.  Just a few last thoughts on it...at least that's my plan.  God might throw a curveball, though.  So no guarantees on my end that these will actually be my last thoughts on the subject for awhile.

As Christians, all too often, we will only get spiritually fed if someone spoon-feeds us.  We need a preacher talking to us to take anything in.  We expect that to be all we need.

We haven't learned to do anything else except sit in a high-chair with a bib on while our pastor makes airplane sounds with his mouth as he "flies" the spoon of scripture into our mouths.  That's all cute and actually pretty hilarious when I picture my pastor from the pulpit doing those motions in front of the congregation.

The only problem is that most of us aren't six-month old babies in our faith.  We would claim to be much older, much more mature.  When you put it that way, it's not cute anymore.  It's just kind of sad and embarrassing when I get the mental picture of a perfectly capable adult sitting in a high-chair with a bib on getting spoon-fed.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm not saying it's bad to go to church and listen to your pastor preach.  That's actually fantastic.  What I'm getting at is that so many never get fed any other way.  We rely on others to feed us because we don't feed ourselves.

Sure, having your significant other give you a bite of their food while on a date can be cute, even romantic to some...but if your significant other is always feeding you by putting the food in your mouth for you, it's just really weird.  Hopefully, the majority of the food you put in your mouth comes from you putting it in there, not someone else doing it once every blue moon.

All too often in Christianity, we have failed to learn how to feed ourselves.  That's a pretty serious problem because most of us can only have someone spiritually feed us once a week.  Yeah, that 30 minutes to an hour, where the pastor is actually preaching.  And we expect that to sustain us throughout the week.  If you did that with actual food, you sure wouldn't last very long.

We can't just mooch off of what our pastor preaches on Sundays and live only off of only that.  Sadly, a lot of Christians don't even get fed on Sundays.  Only getting fed once a week or none at all will leave a very malnourished and ineffective Christian.  We cannot expect to be alive spiritually if we don't ever feed ourselves.  As Christians, we need to learn to feed ourselves throughout our days and weeks by actually reading the Bible.

There are two kinds of Christians though concerning this topic...at least two that I will touch on.  Those who just don't care enough to read the Bible and Christians who come up with excuses as to why they don't read the Bible.  It can really show where someone's priorities are.

If you're starving to death, you don't go to a fancy restaurant, have them bring you food, then refuse to eat it because you don't know how to use a fork.  No, you just start eating because you're about to die of starvation.  It doesn't matter how sloppy you are or if you use your fingers, you're at least eating and putting food in your belly.  You're keeping yourself alive.  That's your priority.  You don't make excuses as to why you can't eat.

Hopefully, we will stop this fasting from scripture.  We are starving but rarely realize it.  We have food at our fingertips but don't eat it.  We have tons of excuses but in the end, they just don't hold water in a country where good, spiritual food is so easily accessible.  It's not like we're living with some undiscovered tribe in the middle of nowhere.  We are so blessed to have access to the Word...but what are we doing with that huge blessing?  Aren't we wasting it by not digging in?

I'm going to take this spiritual food concept a step further.  If all we do is spiritually eat but don't exercise our faith and what we learn, we become unhealthy and ineffective as well.

Rachel's cousin used to have to eat something like 8,000 calories a day.  That's nuts if you ask me.  Try eating that with no exercise.  That's not going to work out well for a person.  So why did he do it?  He was a competitive cyclist.  Eating that many calories allowed him to put more work in on his bike.  He was able to train better which allowed him to compete better.  Without all that food he ate, he would have been weak and ineffective in chasing the goals he set before himself.

God sets goals for us too.  Do we even know them?  How can we reach those goals if we don't know them?  How can we achieve them if we don't feed ourselves the nutrition our faith needs?  The solution is to get in the Word more...or maybe even for the first time.  Only then will we be able to truly feed our faith, grow, and move towards those God-given goals.