The American Heart Association has listed seven behaviors and factors which will decrease a person’s risk of acquiring heart disease. Considering this is still one of America’s leading killers, our nation has been unsuccessful. Research has discovered one of the behaviors – a healthy diet – isn’t being followed. Americans simply believe their diets are healthy when they are not. The problem is not that Americans have little access to healthy food; it’s that they reject it and opt for less nutritionally sound foods on a regular basis.
In some towns there is a church on every corner, Bibles are available in print, on our phones, computers, even in our hotels, and prayer is always available. Yet the church seems to be satisfied with so little when it comes to their relationship with God. A service on Sunday, a bible study here and there, ten minutes of quiet time, a prayer before a meal, throw a check in the offering basket, and “I’m good.” There is nothing inherently deficient in these activities, yet, does our soul thirst for God in the midst of them? David prays, “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
Isaiah 55 lays out the spiritual provision the Lord gives to all mankind when he writes, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” Christ is this source of living water and the bread of life. If you are one that has not eaten of the bread of life, has not accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will not live eternally. Come earnestly because one needs nothing to inherit eternal life except to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, who has paid the penalty for your sin and mine. Once that has happened, continue to feast upon Him.
Yet, even as believers there is a temptation to model ourselves after the Israelites whom Jeremiah spoke to. God tells them, “…my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit.” Their sin was forsaking the fountain of living waters and instead hewing out broken cisterns for themselves. As followers of Christ are we unable to hold the living waters because we are broken? Is our life “hole-y” because of unconfessed sin which is keeping the Holy Spirit from filling us? The remedy is simple: acknowledge our guilt and rebellion, confess it, and He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).
Therefore, do not follow after the pattern of our nation which lives to eat and does not eat to live, as far as your spiritual health is concerned. Spiritual food comes from an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. This teaching caused many of His disciples to withdraw from Him (John 6:66). Jesus then asked the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” I pray that we all would answer as Simon Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”