As a struggler with weight management for most of my adult life, I have tried many of the popular diets out there at one time or another. I’ve drunk the shakes, cut the carbs, counted the points and consumed the gallons of water; my bookshelves are sprinkled with diet guides, calorie counters and health food cookbooks. And I’ve watched the scale go slowly down, and celebrated the success…for a while. If you’re like me you know the story; we lose the weight, stop the diet, start back on the junk food and gain the weight again…sigh. A lifelong battle with self-control.
In the same way, we can struggle with our spiritual “eating habits”. We can become unhealthy by eating too much of the wrong thing and too little of the right thing. I came across a quote recently, by one nutritional expert, who said, “Eating large quantities of high-nutrient foods is the secret to optimal health and permanent weight control.” High-nutrient foods! That term resonated with me. When I considered it in light of spiritual nutrition, I realized that the most nutrient-dense food of all is God’s word. Are we eating the volume we need in order to maintain the health of our soul?
Many of us read God’s word in small bites, like appetizers. We nibble on a verse here and a verse there; grabbing a daily devotional, perusing a “word for the day” like we are snacking before a meal. But then we never actually get to the main course. We close the book and say, “I’ve had my time with God today. I’m full now.” And we never get into the rich, deep nutrients of His word. According to one source there are over 31,000 verses in the Bible! If we were to only read one verse a day, assuming it was a different verse every time, it would take us almost 85 years to read the whole Bible once!
What if we were to consume large quantities of Scripture on a daily basis? Instead of the large doses of junk food that we consume daily, like gossip magazines, television shows, even the newspaper; we could be filling our hearts and minds with greater portions of God’s word. And instead of becoming weak and lethargic from our consumption of “empty calories”, we could be growing strong in the truth.
Paul said, in Colossians 3:16, that we are to “let the word of Christ richly dwell” within us. I can think of no better way to do that than to fill our minds with large quantities of Scripture. Instead of choosing a verse, choose a whole passage. Read a chapter at a time. Better yet, read a whole book of the Bible in one sitting. Read portions of Scripture out loud. Let it sink down deep and give the mind time to digest it. Pray it back to God to gain greater appreciation of the truths within it. The more we eat of God’s rich, nutritional word, the more we will be satisfied and the healthier we will be.