Every morning I get up to have breakfast. Ever since I can remember, my parents ingrained in me that a good breakfast leads to a good day. Breakfast fuels your body, increases your concentration and for me, fills me. It’s been the same for the pat 35 years. A bowl of high fiber cereal, decaf coffee and a wheat toast. Occasionally I throw in a fried egg for variety. The only break to this ritual is when I fast.
Along with this ritual is a daily discipline I’ve established with my family of a devotional every morning. We’ve been doing this for quite a while and I realized one day we had slipped far away from how we came to the table. We usually started at 6:30am but over the past couple of weeks, started to drift. Everyone was starting to show up to the table half dressed, disorganized, preparing their breakfast and basically, unprepared.
On this day I got upset and shouted “Stop!”. I realized we were prioritizing our wants, our needs, our schedule before scripture. In God’s providence, the reading for that day was Zachariah 7:1-10 . In it, God called his people’s attention for being ritualistic and not sincere of heart. It was then I truly realized we can starve both physically and spiritually.
Feeding both
We must first understand we are spirit, soul and body. This means we can starve to death both if we’re not intentionally feeding each. If we physically starve our body it eventually starts to eat itself. All of the hard work we may have put into it, years of exercise, healthy eating or even just feeding it can be gone in a matter of days. We eventually shrivel up. Spiritually speaking its the same. We must feed ourselves spiritually every day to avoid starving ourself to death. This is what I call a non-negotiable.
Not feeding yourself physically and spiritually is a death sentence. The only difference is we can see physical death more easily than spiritual death.
Encouragement:
We are wonderfully made both spiritually and physically. We cannot live without feeding both.
Challenge:
How’s your physical health?
What’s your spiritual health?What one thing will you do today to improve on each?
