Dinner is Served, Spiritual-Style

In my family, we have two aunts who made wonderful cut-out sugar cookies at Christmas-time when we were kids. Beautifully decorated trees, angels, wreaths, and snowmen were displayed on platters at the annual party. Icing in red, green, blue, and yellow adorned the cookies along with sprinkles, coconut, and red hot candies. While I should have been filling my plate with ham, green beans, and potatoes,  I always chose the sweets!  Fortunately, it was once a year that I made a meal of sugared treats.

Our spirit—inner man—needs all the fullness of God’s Word to be healthy and stay strong against a world full of sin.  Just as we cannot live forever on homemade cookies and other sugary desserts, we cannot remain healthy spiritually on what we learn initially after accepting Christ. If we try, we remain a babe in Christ,  unable to teach others with our own faith on shaky ground.

What does a full, healthy dinner from Scripture look like? As with a healthy meal for the body, it has variety. Here are a few of the choices:

• Forgiving others when they don’t deserve it and perhaps don’t offer an apology
• Storing our treasures in heaven instead of here on earth where the belief is that you should  get all you can
• Giving our own will over to that of God’s will for our life
•  Putting the legitimate needs of others before our own when we’d like to behave selfishly
•  Giving away what we want to keep for ourselves to meet the need of another

They can  be hard to swallow, but these choices are  essential to the health of our spirit. They go beyond the basics of the Scriptures, which tell us that God loves us, sent His son to die for each of us, forgives our sins, and has a great life planned for us.

How are we able to do these things, or even desire to do them? It will become easier as we get to know God on a deeper level through reading His Word and learning to trust in Him. It will take time, as we experience God’s ways in our lives.  We will need to develop  an eternal perspective—knowing what truly lasts. And it doesn’t come without studying the Word, accepting and embracing the difficult truths of the Scriptures—the meat of the Word: “Let us stop going over the same old ground again and again, always teaching those first lessons about Christ. Let us go on instead to other things and become mature in our understanding, as strong Christians ought to be. Surely we don’t need to speak further about the foolishness of trying to be saved by being good, or about the necessity of faith in God;  you don’t need further instruction about baptism and spiritual gifts and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.” Hebrews 6:1-2

Where are you in your relationship with God?  Are you  at the starting point, ready to begin that relationship  through Christ? Let us help you through our salvation assistance! 

**The Living Bible