Spiritual Eating Disorders

We would never think of skipping a meal or 2 each day, but why do we so easily make the decision to skip a meal spiritually? There are many weeks that my spiritual meals on a daily basis are hit or miss. Then I wonder why I am falling into temptation and feel weak and luke-warm spiritually.

We need daily reminders of who God is and what He is capable of. We need daily reminders of what is right and wrong so we can face our battles equipped. We need to strengthen our convictions and evaluate ourselves and where we stand in the faith.

BULIMIA

As dangerous as Anorexia is physically and spiritually, there is another disorder that is afflicting Christians that is even worse from my perspective.

This disorder is caused by not using the most important bible translation. Let me explain. Do you know what translation is the most important one? The best, most important bible translation that we must have is the translation from the written page into your life!

You may not be spiritually anorexic. You may read and study the bible every day. You may be a scholar. But if you are not applying it, you have spiritual bulimia. You may feed yourself full of scripture to your hearts content, only to vomit it up a short time later by doing things that are contrary to what you studied. You completely waste all of the knowledge that you gain of God's word if you do not apply it.

There are Christians that hear about how we need to have our minds and bodies holy and pure in a sermon or see it in God's word, and then in their spare time fill their minds with most obsene things such as secular music filled with ungodly lyrics, movies and television shows filled with violence and sexual immorality. When Christians do this they get calloused to seeing sin and get to the point that they approve of it and even do it.

We feed ourselves with the scriptures that say we need to be patient and not let our anger lead us to sin, only to go home or to work, vomit up the word of God, and then act impatiently and sin in anger. This does not please the Lord. We hear sermons on how to make spiritual things our priorities so we aren't unfruitful for God, then we vomit up what we learn and continue filling our schedules with what we want to do. We hear sermons on prayer and what hinders it, but we vomit it up and make no changes.

We need to realize that gaining bible knowledge is not our goal as Christians. We should NEVER stop there. We need to apply the word to our lives. James says that we need to not only be hearers of the word, but DOERS of the word! If we do not obey the word of God, we are deluding ourselves into thinking that God is pleased with us! The knowledge that we gain about the Bible becomes useless.

My brothers and sisters, there are plenty of unbelievers that know the Bible very well but are still lost! Their are Bible scholars that are not Christians. Knowledge is not the goal.

We need the heart like Ezra. Probably the most well known verses in Ezra: "For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the LORD, and to do it" (Ezra 7.10). This should be us. We not only should set our hearts to study, but make up our minds now that we are going to obey, whether it is comfortable for us or not.