Feeding Yourself

You are a spirit, you have a soul and you live in a body.  We feed our bodies, not always wisely but often.  We feed our souls by reaching for our desires--again, not wisely, but often.  We neglect the most important part of our being--the spirit.  Consequently our spirit is contaminated by our soul which responds to our flesh.  Most Christians depend on one meal a week for the spirit's meal.  The 99% of the time is given to feeding the flesh and soul.  The body will go back to dust but the spirit and soul will go into eternity.  On what we feed will determine that dwelling place.
Philippians 2:12-13 (NLT) ¹² Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. ¹³ For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.   We do not realize how much of our knowledge of God comes from God working in us.  We forget much of what we hear and only slightly less of what we read, but much less than what we speak. Our minds are slow to retain the wealth of knowledge available to us.  But God has given us His Spirit to be our Teacher and Guide.  Prayerfully, with worship and humility, approach the reading of His Word to be taught and fed.  Sometimes you hunger for just reading and you find yourself reading long passages with enjoyment.  Then there are the times when you linger over one verse, or line, or even a word.  His Spirit sets a table before us.

Feeding does not stop with eating.  Digestion must follow to give us the benefit of the food we eat.  It is also true in the feeding of our spirit.  Just as food begins to digest in the mouth and stomach, so our spiritual food goes through a process.  Our soul is very connected to our physical body.  Our mind meditates on what we read.  Our emotions are involved with tears or joy, with cries of petition or shouts of praise.  But what we do in action with what we have read, or meditated upon, will determine what our spirit retains.  Repentance, rejoicing and setting our will to carry through in all our expression, is an important part of our response.  It is also important that we establish our faith in God to do what we cannot, in direct relation to the Word we have just "eaten", whether it is a sermon we have just heard, a study in which we have just participated, or a time in the Word.  Proper digestion results in health and growth that will be evidenced in what we become and do.  We become the light in a dark place.