I’d guess many Christians feel somewhat guilty when we talk about “read your Bible and pray every day.” We would like to do more but for some reason we just don’t. And how much is enough anyway? My intent with this article is not to guilt-trip you into striving at a spiritual discipline for a week or two. Rather, I would like to invite you to a rich buffet and remind you about some spiritual nourishment you may be missing out on.
Reading the Bible
When it comes to amount of Bible reading and prayer, there are no check boxes to tick off. I’d love it if there were, but honestly, it would be more about feeling good about myself and less about my relationship with God. I’d complete my 10 minutes of each and breeze on to the rest of my to-dos for the day. But I’d be missing out.
The Bible is God’s revealed truth to humankind and it is food for us to thrive on. “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God,” (Jesus quoted this Scripture in Matthew 4:4).
The reality is, if we are not somehow regularly receiving the truth from the Bible, we may be spiritually starving. Ideally we would read the Bible regularly for ourselves, but truth from the Word can also come through good quality Bible studies, sermons, commentaries, and Christian growth books. There are different ways we can engage with the text:
Fast reading – We read through large portions and whole books at a time to gain an overview and context.
Slow reading – We focus on smaller chunks, meditating on phrases and words to allow the truth to sink deep inside us and to seek God for understanding.
5-minute devotionals can be great, but if they are all we ever engage with, it’s as though we eat french fries for every meal. We will end up malnourished.
A Balanced Diet
Just as a balanced diet includes all the food groups, so there are multiple spiritual disciplines that make up healthy spirituality. Here are some others:
Praise and worship. We put our eyes on God instead of our circumstances and give God the glory that is due to Him. We proclaim God’s goodness and power, and at the same time remember we are not the center of the universe.
Repentance. We acknowledge our sins – the words, actions, and attitudes that grieve the Father and those around us – and our ongoing dependence on God for His righteousness.
Prayer. Conversation with God is the heart of our personal relationship with Him. We express all that is on our hearts, make requests, listen for His voice, and generally spend time attentive to God.
Thanksgiving and remembering what God has done. Testimonies build our faith and our fear of the Lord.
The Lord’s supper. We eat physical food, but we are spiritually strengthened.
Fasting, solitude, silence. We withdraw to be with God and to hear Him more clearly.
Community/fellowship. I suppose we could always eat alone, but something would be missing. It is the same with our spiritual nourishment. Each of the disciplines can and should also be practised corporately with a gathered body of believers. We feed one another with love, truth, encouragement, challenge, and much more.
The Purpose of Spiritual Nourishment
At the end of the day our spiritual health is not an end in itself. It is not the goal, but it is an important factor in achieving God’s command to love people, make disciples, and bring his kingdom on earth. We eat and we exercise. We don’t just fatten ourselves with spiritual knowledge, but we put it into practice by loving our neighbours.
A healthy spiritual diet is also not so we can accumulate lots of knowledge about God. We are to know God personally (relational knowledge) and that knowledge will lead us to share the love that He has put in our hearts.
Where to Start with Spiritual Nourishment
Many of us would love to learn an instrument / paint / write a book / exercise / read the Bible / pray more, but we think we don’t have the time. I cherish Linda’s approach to painting: she committed herself to paint for 15 minutes a day – that’s all. Often she gets into it and paints for longer stretches, but she’s cultivated a habit and many beautiful works of art over the years. It is the approach this article from the Navigators takes: How to have a Daily Quiet Time (starting with 7 minutes a day).
My invitation to you is to assess your current spiritual diet and exercise regime, and start to include something that is missing. Even a small change is progress. And also, let me know what spiritual nourishment I have forgotten?
PS. I was encouraged by this article which points out that if you spend 12 minutes reading the Bible each day, you can read the whole Bible in one year.
