Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Remember those classic Alka-Seltzer commercials - the two tablets dropping into a glass of water to the tune of "plop, plop, fizz, fizz"? Usually they showed someone eating something disagreeable just before bedtime. Right? And someone who could only be rescued from terminal indigestion with a "plop, plop, fizz, fizz." Several years ago I met someone who knew the agony of late night stomach revolt. Terry works in the theater on Broadway in New York. He told me many show people just can't eat before they go on, so they're starved by the time the show is over and they get cleaned up. It's around midnight then. And Terry said they would go out together for a big dinner and shortly thereafter head home for their night's sleep and their night's wrestling match with what they had just eaten. Eating's nice - if it's followed by digestion!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Eating, Then Lying Down."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Joshua 1:8 and it ends by saying "then you will be prosperous and successful." Interested? Here's how. "Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful." Meditate here is a Hebrew word that actually suggests a cow chewing its cud; chewing over what the Bible is saying until you've gotten out of it what you need. It's obviously more than just a mental exercise where you just quickly ingest some Biblical facts and move on.
In fact, the purpose of spiritual eating isn't just to get the Bible into your brain. It's to get it into your life! A lot of people are suffering from spiritual indigestion; either a discomfort about their relationship with the Lord or just a hollow lethargy toward the things of God. And it may be because they're doing what those midnight munchers on Broadway are doing - eating and then lying down instead of eating and putting it to work!
The ability to read something God says in His Book and then immediately convert that into action is probably the single most important key to having a living relationship with Jesus Christ. If you're tired of the spiritual blahs, spiritual mediocrity, spiritual boredom, spiritual failure, consider God's one-word prescription for Biblical indigestion or non-digestion.
"Meditate ... so you may be careful to do everything written in it." Key word - do. So many of us settle for meditating to know what's written in those verses, or to analyze what's written, or even to just understand what's written. None of those are bad, but they're not enough, any more than just eating your dinner is enough. You have to digest it. Maybe digesting God's Word has been the missing ingredient in you really growing up in Jesus.
Spiritual digestion takes place something like this. First, you read a few verses over two or three times, chewing on them until you can put them into words of your own. You first answer the question, "What is God saying here?" A lot of us stop there. You've got to ask the next question, "What should I do differently today because God says this?" If you're reading a verse about trials, you take out the word trials and you put your trial in there. If it's about sin, you put a specific sin of yours where it says sin. If it's about loving people, you put in the name of someone you have a hard time loving. Then, you ask the Lord to help you carry this word from Him in your heart and in your mouth all day, applying it to the specific life-change that word from Him calls for.
When you do that, you're digesting God's life-changing spiritual nutrition. Turn eating into doing right away, and you'll get stronger every day. Remember, you weren't meant to eat and then just lie down. That's spiritual indigestion and ultimately spiritual malnutrition!