Spiritual Starvation
Be FOUND Bible Study Method
If we truly believed that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God, then why don’t we study every word of the Bible?
I believe it is because we haven’t been equipped in how to study the Bible. If we were honest, we would admit that even just the thought of opening the Bible gets us a bit overwhelmed. My hope, in this space, is to give you a new tool each week that you will be able to take and dig in a little deeper to find a little more sweetness from the Word!
The truth is that we were all born hungry. The enemy is pretty crafty at serving up many different ways that deceive, detour, & ultimately distract us from the reality that it is only in and through God can we really be full satiated, complete-lacking nothing! Every other way is counterfeit completion!
There is no Jerry Maguire quick fix here. Where do you think we even got the expectation that another human could ever even come close to completing us? The Devil. Satan. He has many names.
I prefer to call him out as the Deceiver.
Every single time he opens his mouth, he lies. He is the father of lies. Lies are actually birthed in the pit of his dark little soul. That title reminds me of just exactly who it is that I am dealing with. He is now like he was in the Garden of Eden and throughout all time because he is not creative. His tactics don’t change. He promises life but delivers death every single time!
Some of you may be like me with my health. I will try just about anything for a quick fix for health and getting my weight in a better place. What if I told you that I had this new diet that was supposed to really work to help you really be healthy?
Here is the secret with this new diet, you would only eat once a week.
But! It would be a huge meal, juicy meat, roasted veggies, hot rolls, and we would even finish it off with a super tasty dessert! You would think I was crazy right? But isn’t that what some of us do- we come to church or tune in for church once a week and feast on this delicious meal that the pastor has so graciously and tastily prepared.
Then we get up from the table, wipe our mouths off with our little communion napkins and then don’t eat again all week until we come back to the table to the meal that the pastor has prepared for that week! For those of you who have pastors that give two sermons a week, well, that’s a luxury isn’t it?
And yet, we still live hungry lives. The hunger in us needs to be satisfied. We were made this way so that ultimately we would be drawn into the Word of God to be fed and full.
“For He has satisfied the thirsty soul and the hungry soul, He has filled with what is good.” Ps. 107:9
Church, what are we left with? We will be held accountable as we are raising generation after generation of weak, malnourished, Christians! We're wasting away sitting in our pews. We're starving and we don’t even know it!
If we were really only to physically eat one or even two meals a week, we would be malnourished. Why can’t we see that the same truth holds for our spiritual health as well. Look at the signs of physical malnutrition:
- reduced appetite, lack of interest in food and drink
- feeling tired all the time
- feeling weaker
- getting ill often and taking a long time to recover
- wounds taking a long time to heal
- poor concentration
- low mood or depression
- not growing - FAILURE TO THRIVE
- changes in behavior, such as being unusually irritable, slow or anxious
- low energy levels and tiring more easily
Did you know that you can be so physically malnourished that you get to a place where you aren’t even able to hear or feel your own hunger pains? You can't hear your own stomach growl! Your salivary glands have even stopped salivating!
My hope is to be able to give you some simple tools so that as you dig into the Word of God you can really feast on what God has prepared in advance for you.
Can ANYONE relate? The real question is can anyone NOT relate spiritually to at least one of those physical symptoms?
One time, I tried a diet called the "Shred" diet where I ate 7 smaller meals a day- a snacking diet. The problem was that I was still hungry at the end of the day! Some of you are treating Jesus like snack time or like this diet - where you are just snacking on little bits throughout your day or week.
Before I took a Bible interpretation class, my way to study the bible was a game of chance and definitely more of a soul food “snack,” as I would open the Bible and wherever my finger landed is where I would read. Then I would go straight to interpreting what I thought God had for me from that passage from my limited perspective at that one moment in time.
But guess what? Much like that diet- at the end of the day, I was still hungry. See God had so much more than a snack for me, and HE has so much more for you! Let’s lean in and see what He has for us in His Word!
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