Ten reasons why I don’t eat
I don’t think I need to eat.
I don’t know how to eat.
Eating isn’t relevant for today.
I was made to eat as a child.
None of my friends eat.
I don’t understand eating.
I hear other people eating on a Sunday.
I don’t believe in eating.
I find eating boring.
I can’t find any food that suits me.
Wow! That sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it? Everyone needs to eat. It’s a basic necessity of life. Without food we starve.
Picture this. You’re walking merrily along and see a skeletal lump on the side of the road. You poke this lump, only to find that it’s not a lump – it’s a person. This person looks like they haven’t eaten in months, and when you inquire further, you find that they haven’t.
To add to your confusion, they’re sitting right in front of a giant free-for-all Tesco store. You ask them why on earth they don’t go in and eat something. ‘Well’, they manage to croak, ‘I didn’t think I needed to eat’.
You stop for a second to check if this person is actually from this planet, and then you frantically try to explain (using exaggerated hand gestures) the importance of eating, and the immediate necessity of going to Tesco and eating something before they turn to dust.
Spiritual diet
You know, dear reader, the importance of eating; and that’s what I want to talk about. But not physical eating (although that’s also important; eat your vegetables like good children). I want to focus on spiritual eating and your spiritual diet.
What does the Bible say about spiritual food? Well that’s a rather odd question really, because the Bible is food. The Old Testament says, ‘man does not live by bread alone but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord’ (Deuteronomy 8:3) and the New Testament says, ‘desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby’ (1 Peter 2:2).
You see, God’s Word is your spiritual food. You need this food like a baby needs milk. This food that God provides is essential for your spiritual growth and strength.
Honey in his mouth
To make the point graphically, God told some people to actually eat his written word. God told Ezekiel (in Hebrew his name is Yechezichial) to ‘feed your stomach and fill your body with this scroll that I am giving you’.
So he ate it, and it was sweet like honey in his mouth. There’s a mirror image of this in Revelation, when John was given a little book to eat, and he took it and ate it.
Both Ezekiel and John ate the scrolls they were given. Why? Because it’s important to eat God’s Word – not literally, of course, but spiritually. You should do the same.
Chew what you eat; that is, think about it, meditate on it. Then swallow it. Let it fill you; let it nourish you; let it strengthen you. Let it make you grow in both your knowledge and faith. Long for it like a baby longs for milk, and savour it like manna in the wilderness.
If we want our bodies to be healthy, we eat often and we eat well. If we only ate one meal a week we would be in a sorry state. We’d be in an ever sorrier state if that one meal was a ‘nutritious’ vitamin and omega 3 filled Mars Bar!
It’s the same with the Bible. We should eat often; daily in fact. But Paul says that we should long for pure milk. What good would it do if we drank sour milk? Moses, John, Paul and the other Bible writers didn’t write The Word on the Street or The Message Bible.
So get yourself a good Bible, a proper translation from the original Hebrew and Greek manuscripts, not some ‘free’ rendition.
Get chewing and get nourished. You’ll soon see the results.
