Hit-or-Miss Eating
I want to use an article I read called How Do You Satisfy the Appetite for God, for our devotions this week. It was written by Joe Seaborn in a 1998 edition of The Holiness Herald, which was the Church of the Nazarene’s magazine for many years.
Seaborn begins by quoting Jesus who said "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness!" and then he writes this: "The soul cannot finally be satisfied with anything less than divine fare." I like this point – we all hunger and thirst in a spiritual sense, and unless we find our fulfilment in the divine, we will always be left wanting.
Recognizing Spiritual Malnourishment
But, as Seaborn says, "people are finding spiritual nourishment at several tables and consuming their spiritual fare in several ways". And the first way that he mentions is "hit-or-miss-eating". He says "The rule of thumb today is that attending two out of four Sundays constitutes 'regular church attendance.' It's not uncommon to hear, 'We don't attend church much during the summer; we do church on the school schedule...' No wonder we have malnourished people. No wonder the church is not storming the world. Hit-or-miss church attendance is no better than hit-or-miss eating."
I think this is also true of our daily time of prayer and Bible reading. If we are in the habit of a "hit-or-miss" approach to our daily spiritual diet, we will quickly find ourselves malnourished. Consistency is essential if we want to grow, and if we want to be satisfied with good spiritual food.
Get honest with yourself for a moment, would you: Is yours a "hit-or-miss" spiritual diet? Where you sometimes spend quality time with God, but sometimes not? You sometimes go to church, but sometimes not? I think many of we give our workplaces more commitment than our places of worship, and that surely can't be right.
Committing to Spiritual Consistency
I wonder if God may be saying to you today: get consistent again. Make your daily quiet time a non-negotiable in your day. Make your weekly worship service a non-negotiable. Get it into your mind that these are so important for your spiritual nourishment and health that they can't be done sporadically.
Not only that, but wouldn't it be a great witness to the people around you, if they saw your commitment to your faith in this way? How will it convince anybody of the importance of the Jesus message, if we treat it as a 'hit-or-miss'?
