I went grocery shopping with someone who’s determined to disappear pandemic-produced pounds so it wasn’t surprising that they bought a bevy of bags filled with fruit and other fortifying foods.

When they told me today that they had hot dogs and potato salad for dinner and popcorn and soda pop for a late-night snack, I first and foremost empathized (having put on pounds myself during the pandemic) then lovingly said, “Ya know, it doesn’t do any good to have healthy foods on hand if you don’t eat  them!”

We both laughed but it’s a great reminder of how many Christians do this very thing in their spiritual life.  It’s great to have a Bible but doesn’t do any good if one doesn’t open  it, if one doesn’t read and especially study and most especially memorize and meditate on it – i.e., if one doesn’t ingest  it.

What does it truly accomplish spiritually to “taste  the good word of God” (Hebrews 6:5) but not drink  its “pure milk” and eat  its “solid food”?

• “like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation [i.e., spiritually]” (1 Peter 2:2)
• “solid food is for the [spiritually] mature” (Hebrews 5:14a)

If someone were to discover a plant or develop a pill which cures every disease or illness, what good would it do to simply place it on the nightstand or even hold it in your hand?

The Bible is absolutely and exactly just such a “pill” certainly spiritually and even extending to the emotional and relational and, yes, even the physical realm of human life (more on this wonderful and explosive and jaw-dropping truth – including “receipts”/proof – in a future post, it will definitely blow your mind and change your life) … yet so many simply relegate it to their nightstand or dresser or (perish the thought) even a closet shelf.  Or maybe they pick up that “pill” every once in a while (Sundays?) and hold it in the palm of their hand and even admire and adore it.  But, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ and those of you who haven’t met Him (yet), believe me when I say this:  that won’t do any good, won’t truly transform your life and “cure anything and everything that ails you” if you don’t ingest it, “washing it down” with the regenerating and renewing “water” of the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5; 1 John 2:27 … much more on this in a future post, too).

Oh, and to bring this post full circle, while it’s bad to not actually eat the healthy food one buys, it’s even worse (in an exponential, snowballing kind of way) to ingest junk food like hot dogs and potato salad and popcorn and soda pop, which have the same effect on us physically as sin does spiritually.  But I have found that the key isn’t to fear or focus on avoiding junk food but rather to fill that vacuum with good, wholesome, healthy food.  I.e., it’s more about making healthy food a lifestyle, a way of life, than it is about avoiding junk food per se, because when one does the former, the latter takes care of itself and is rendered obsolete; so also, the key isn’t to fear or focus on avoiding sin but rather to fill that (spiritual) vacuum with the tangibly transforming and healing and living and active and palpably powerful Word of God, the Bible!  Fill your daily vacuum with that and sin won’t stand a fighting chance and will be rendered obsolete and you’ll enjoy spiritual  fitness and health, too.  At least for as long as you keep  filling that vacuum with God’s wonderful Word!

• “Thy word I have hidden in my heart, THAT [in order that, so that] I MAY NOT SIN against Thee.” (Psalm 119:11, emphasis added)

It never gets old or ceases to amaze me how, in our spiritual and frankly even our earthly  lives, everything always comes down and back to the Bible!

DRINK. IT. UP.

 

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