Self-Feeder

The Jesus Story … Continued!

Starting on February 20th the Sunday morning teaching time will be from the book of Acts in the New Testament. We’ll be looking at one chapter each week and then drawing a single lesson for the morning. It will take us about 6 months to go through the book of Acts. However, since there are so many lessons in this book we will only be able to look at certain ones during our Sunday mornings! It would take years to cover the variety of subjects that the Bible teaches in Acts. There are really only two subjects not covered in the 28 chapter book: Marriage and Parenting. Those two subjects are probably on the agenda for late 2011.

One of the primary areas that I believe God wants to bring growth in each person is in the area of ‘feeding.’ The book of Hebrews talks about milk, meat and feeding.

But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:14 NIV)

God wants to make each one of us into ‘self-feeders.’ He wants to teach each one of us to feed ourselves spiritually… that each of us would learn to dig, catch, gather, sort, prepare and eat the kinds of spiritual food that will nourish us long-term.

Those of us who teach on Sundays work very hard to prepare a fresh hearty meal that includes a variety of nutrition. Sunday is important, but Sunday is not enough. Sunday is more like a restaurant. Sunday morning is not meant to be the only place that each of us eat. Going out to dinner at a nice restaurant is great! Eating at a restaurant can be convenient and a pleasure to the palate. Restaurant food is often rich, fattening, prepared by a ‘trained’ chief – it is good and often mouth watering but it is missing a lot. Eating at a restaurant is not how a healthy spiritual life is lived.

There is a great deal to be learned by planning, shopping, preparing, chopping, cooking, serving and then eating. If eating is the only thing that happens in the way of spiritual nutrition then it is not a well rounded spiritual life.

When the only food someone gets is from a restaurant, the food is likely to get ‘old’ and ‘boring.’ When the restaurant is a ‘supplement,’ then it is less likely to get ‘old’ and ‘boring’ but instead it becomes an anticipated outing. (People go away thinking – I’m going to try that at home!)

Jesus, Teach us to be ‘self-feeders!’ Amen