What we put into our body matters.
More people are realizing the importance of fueling your body, not merely stopping your hunger or avoiding starvation.
If someone is looking to change their diet toward health, they’re going to receive basically these two instructions:
Stop eating junk that destroys you and start eating foods that fuel you.
Our bodies and our spirits are united– What we put into our spirit matters.
More people need to realize the importance of fueling your spirit, not merely stopping discouragement, or avoiding falls into sin.
In 2 Timothy 2:14–16 Paul tells Timothy to serve up a steady diet for the spiritual life of God’s people when he commands, “Keep reminding God’s people of these things.”
Sugar is addicting and so is spiritual junk food. We need to remind each other where real fuel for our spiritual lives is found.
Paul gives the two basic instructions we’d expect (but often forget) for our spiritual diet:
1. Stop eating junk that destroys you.
Warn them before God against quarreling about words; it is of no value, and only ruins those who listen…
16 Avoid godless chatter, because those who indulge in it will become more and more ungodly.
2. Start eating food that fuels you.
15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
This God-breathed nutrition plan is deeply needed in our day!
Our fast-food church culture has Christian’s willing to debate and divide over almost anything except rightly handling the Word!
Christian, it takes real work to read, study, and apply the Word of God. You won’t be ready for that workout if you’ve been indulging on junk!
Paul warns against meaningless conflicts. Sometimes you have to lock horns with disobedience to God (Gal 2:11). The Lord challenged teachers over the meanings of Words. At other times, real meaningful debate must happen to pursue faithfulness. The early Church met to deliberate on the proper decisions in crucial moments (cf. Acts 15).
The fitness needed for the conflicts that the Scriptures warrants won’t happen overnight. We need a diligent effort in the Word, not a steady stream of spiritual-sugar.
Your Netflix, Twitter, and Instagram diet might be weighing you down. That squishy-spiritual midriff from lots of Facebook is not going to help you when the crucial questions about the Word come into your life.
Online right now, with only a few clicks, you can find people debating aggressively over things that are not clear in the Word and conceding or excusing things the Word makes clear.
Our diet is catching up to us!
The Church needs to recommit to a balanced diet that fuels spiritual flourishing! Let’s get back to a steady intake of the Word and cut out the junk!