Monday, April 14, 2014
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It was one of the classic commercials of all time. It was the Alka Seltzer commercial: 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; someone who could only be rescued from terminal indigestion with "plop, plop, fizz, fizz". Several years ago, I met someone who knew that agony; the agony of late night stomach revolt.
Terry works in the theater district on Broadway in New York, and he told me how many show people just can't eat before they go on, they're too nervous. So by the time the show's over they're starved. So they get all cleaned up about midnight, and Terry said they'd go out to get a big dinner, and shortly afterwards they would head home for their night's sleep, and their night's wrestling match with what they had just eaten. See, 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 what it says, "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 and it actually suggests a cow chewing its cud. You know, 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 sort of 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 this 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 there is to having a living relationship with Jesus Christ. If you're tired of spiritual blahs and spiritual mediocrity, spiritual boredom, and 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've got to digest it. Maybe digesting God's Word has been the missing ingredient in growing your relationship with Jesus.
Spiritual digestion takes place something like this: First, you read over a verse two or three times, you chew on those verses until you can put them into words of your own. Then you answer the question, "What's God saying here?" A lot of us stop right there. Now you've got to ask the next question, "What should I do differently today because God says this?"
If you're reading a verse let's say about trials, you take out the word trials and you put in there the trial you're going through right now. If you're reading about sin, you put in there a specific sin of yours where it says sin. If it's about loving people, you put in there the name of somebody 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 that word from God 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 it's spiritual malnutrition.