Eat Right This Instant!

Some people eat to live and others live to eat. 

I am a proud member of the latter group. Those who belong to the former group leave me literally dumbfounded. I do not understand how food can be an afterthought, or how eating can be a chore one has to remember to do in order to get through the day. That is foreign to me. I live to eat.

True confessions, though. As a self-professed foodie, I can’t say I actually know anything about food. I’m no good at discerning flavors or spices or knowing what goes into a dish to make it amazing. I just like it. I admire it, I savor it, I talk about it, I delight in it. Food makes me happy!

The kind of food that entices me, however, is rather particular. Let’s face it. In America we can make our diets consist of just about anything we want. We can be fast food freaks, packaged and processed people, organic purists, whole and raw food champions, gluten/dairy/sugar or fat-free fanatics. The choice is ours. It is, in fact, easy to feast on some things and avoid others all together. In addition to food costs and our lifestyle, our daily intake is also influenced by allergies, preferences, and tastes. Much goes into our dietary decisions.

The same holds true for the food we feed our spirits. I recently thought I had a healthy diet of spiritual nourishment, only to have the Lord point out that I was actually starving myself from what I truly needed. I was going to church every Sunday. I went to work every day at a Christian organization. I surrounded myself with Christian friends. I skimmed passages of the Bible in the morning. I even listened to Christian music when I felt like it. BAM! A nice, well-rounded Christian diet, right?

While there is nothing wrong with those things, they’re actually more like snacks. You can graze on snacks and enjoy them and they do benefit you, but the problem was that I was skipping meals. Meals are where the essential nutrients come from. The catch is that meals, by nature, take more work than snacks. Wholesome, nourishing meals require forethought, preparation, space and, of course, lots of time. And that, for me, was the rub. I wanted a faith that moved as fast as my life. I thought grab-n-go Christianity could sustain me.

The meal my soul was craving was time with the Lord. Sweet, rich, quiet and still time in His presence. I had been refusing to sit down with Him and just BE. To talk to Him, but more importantly – for me – to listen to Him. I didn’t think His Word could teach me anything new since I’d “read it before,” an all-out affront to the truth that God’s Word is “living and active” and meets us right where we’re at. I’m sad to say I was neglecting the meat in my diet, my very relationship with Jesus, thinking sugary and salty snacks could sustain me.

What are you feeding your spirit these days? Have you been favoring processed foods over whole foods? Have you been powering through on empty calories? What if all the essential proteins, vitamins and nutrients that will rejuvenate you are only a bite away?

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” Psalm 34:8

“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12