Watch Your Spiritual Diet!

Watch Your Spiritual Diet!

Too often people are satisfied with spiritual comfort food. Or even worse: junk food. But as we know, we don’t stay healthy that way. Junk food of comfort food may give us great experiences for our taste buds or give us an illusion of being well fed but we stay -in long run- malnourished. Then we don’t even crave for real food anymore.

There will come a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. They will collect teachers who say what they want to hear because they are self-centered. They will turn their back on the truth and turn to myths. (2 Tim. 4: 3-4, CEB)

Spiritual food with empty calories just does not take hunger away. If we don’t get solid spiritual food we become spiritually malnourished. Just as junk food is bad for our bodies, spiritual junk food leaves our souls starving to death.

“Don’t work for the food that doesn’t last but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Human One will give you. God the Father has confirmed him as his agent to give life.”
(John 6:27, CEB)

Jesus is our Heavenly Father’s gift for us. God sent his only son to the world to be our Living Bread. God draws us to Jesus and when we believe in him we will live forever. Jesus came to the world to give life and more life.

Jesus said to them, “I assure you, unless you eat the flesh of the Human One and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. My flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in them. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me lives because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. It isn’t like the bread your ancestors ate, and then they died. Whoever eats this bread will live forever.” (John 6: 53-58, CEB)

Manna came from heaven but wasn’t the Bread of Life. But Jesus is and we need to eat and drink Jesus. This certainly refers to the Eucharist but it ultimately points out to the cross where Jesus gave his body and blood for our sake.

How can we eat Jesus?

By believing.
By abiding.
By reading the Word of God.
By praying.
By loving.
By taking the Eucharist.
By serving.
By practicing faith.
By embracing grace.
By sharing grace.
By living in grace.

What happens when we eat Jesus?

When we eat Jesus every cell of our being receives atoms of Jesus.
When we eat Jesus we participate in his death AND resurrection.
When we eat Jesus, our souls are well nourished.
When we eat Jesus, we will live forever.
When we eat Jesus, we are part of the body of Christ.

 

Gracious God,
Feed us with your love and grace.
Don’t let us get addicted to spiritual junk food.
Cleanse us inside out.
Give us healthy and hearty food.
Give us Jesus.
Give us the cross and resurrection.
Give us grace upon grace and
life upon life.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen

Q4U: Are you spiritually well nourished? How do you eat Jesus?

Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you seek ways to eat Jesus in your every day life!

Giving thanks today for
#201 the gift of Jesus
#202 the mystery of the Eucharist
#203 Jesus giving his body and blood for us
#204 being part of the body of Christ
#205 eternal life in Jesus
#206 the gift and mystery of faith
#207 radical power of God
#208 saving grace
#209 solid spiritual food in Jesus
#210 the awesomeness of the Word of God

Image courtesy of Matt Gruber.Linking up today with Sharing His Beauty &
Hear it on Sunday, Use it on Monday &

16 thoughts on “Watch Your Spiritual Diet!

  1. I really like this post. Thank you for posting it. 🙂 It would be awesome if I could win a copy of the CEB softcover edition. 

  2. Great post!  It’s sad that far too few Christians are feeding their spiritual selves.  Jesus is life, joy, peace and love…who wouldn’t want to eat more of that!  It’s like eating the best deserts without the risk of getting fat! 

  3. Interesting thought that we have atoms of Jesus, when we eat and drink Him. A preacher tried to prove, that if the eucharistic wine does not change to bloodlike liquid and taste like blood, it means, that the wine must be taken as Lord’s blood in a symbolic way only. I can’t agree. I believe there will be a change in the wine and bread on the material level, but we can’t see or taste it, because it is on the atomic or even on the isotope level.
    Taking part of the CEB lottery, too.

  4. Hi Mari-Anna,
    Like you, I can’t understand why so many “Christians” (?) have so little appetite for the rich feast of God’s word and communion with Him. The most satisfying of feasts! Maybe just too full of other — empty — things. But I so enjoy connecting through blog communities with others having that blessed hunger, so happy to find as many as I do! Thanking God for that. Blessings!

    1. Hi Sylvia! It is indeed a blessing to connect with other brothers and sisters in Christ online. We can learn so much from each other on our way home. When we are all part of the body of Christ we have a special connection. May God continue to bless you richly!

  5. More and more of the good stuff!  And by Good Stuff, I mean Jesus!  The more of Him we absorb, the more of Him will be visible in the way we live our lives and share His love!  I’ve noticed a trend this week in the “blogsphere”!  Besides my own post on “Super-saturation”, there are several others out there, yours included, on taking more of Jesus into our lives!  I think it is awesome…the deeper we go with Him, the farther He’ll take us and the more we’ll be blessed…and can bless others!  My desire is to each day grow more and more.  To reach that goal, I have been intentionally inundating myself with Him – through prayer, reading of the Word, worship, fellowship, serving, visual reminders, even listening to sermons and teachings on my iPod!  It seems I can’t get enough, and that is a good thing!

    Blessings, Mari-Anna!

    1. Thank you, Joan, sharing your reflections and experiences with us. Yes, we do need to be intentional and seek God diligently. It truly is that the more we get to know God, the more we want to know! Glad to be sharing the journey with you, Joan! May God continue to pour out grace upon grace on you!

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