No, Mr. President.

Post-Modernism and The Emergent Church

Spiritually Starving

Ask anyone, I love food. There are few things that make me more content then sitting down to the table and eating a hearty meal. There is just something about sitting with friends and filling that endless cavity that they call a stomach. I'm a big guy and I can put back a lot of food. Many times I find myself complaining that "I am starving". I think it goes without saying that this might be a slight exaggeration. Never have I came to the point of near death or malnutrition because of the lack of food in my life. I've always had plenty to eat, many times far too much. We do know however, that if we go without food long enough we will die. It's a simple scientific fact, our bodies need food to continue running. No food, then we're done.

How often do we apply that to our spiritual lives? All throughout scripture we see Christ and the Word of God described as bread or living water. It says in John 6: 35 "Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." Then again in Matthew 4:4 "But he answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" That's quite clear. Christ and the Bible are our spiritual nutrients. If we can't live our physical lives without physical food then how do we expect to live our spiritual lives without spiritual food? Somehow we have it in our minds that we can live a healthy spiritual life without ever filling ourselves with spiritual nutrients. That doesn't make sense.

I recently just started reading a small book called REFUEL by Doug Fields. In the book he makes a list of things that are effected in his life when he isn't saturated in the word. I thought it was a very concise, appropriate list. So here it is:

• I'm more selfish with my time
• I'm impatient
• I lack compassion for those who are hurting
• I'm more vulnerable to temptation
• I begin to act like I deserve certain things
• I'm short with people
• I'm disobedient
• I feel distant from God
• I'm cynical
• I find it more difficult to make good decisions
• My insecurities are more prevelent
• I begin to look to others to fill voids that I know only God can fill
• I'm critical - in speech as well as thought
  

We begin to fall apart when we don't get our spiritual food. How can we live our spiritual lives with out the nutrients thereof? We can't.

John 4: 10-15 reads "Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water." The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock." Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water."