Take and Eat

DISCLAIMER: Before reading, I must say there is nothing wrong with practicing a disciplined diet! There is nothing wrong with devoting time and attention to your body. (In fact, this is GOOD, and you should) And finally, this in no way has to deal with you, whoever you may be, but has everything to do with what I, Heather Brooke, felt pertained to ME and only ME when I read chapter 12 of Simple Devotion: Answering the Radical Call by Micah Wood and Samuel Bentley.

One of the chapters in the book Simple Devotion: Answering the Radical Call really challenged me this past week! It was titled, “Take and Eat” and was talking about how important it is to not just daily practice prayer but to daily practice the discipline of reading your Bible. The authors spoke of the two ways we read our Bible:

1. Out of discipline- Bible reading plans, daily following the narrative of the Word

2. Out of devotion- at random, seeking inspiration of where to look, or topically studying what is on your heart in the moment

The authors suggest that the mature walk with God calls for both studying the Bible with discipline and devotion….get this…DAILY.

Transparently speaking, in the two years since Silas has been born I have been reading my Bible way more out of devotion than out of discipline. And I feel GOOD about that!! It is way hard to transfer from being able to do everything and anything you want any time you want to having your world revolve around a little person who wakes when they want, sleeps when they want, and perhaps more importantly, does not sleep when they want! In the last two years, I have walked in prayer and prayed just to make it through my day! In the last two years, my prayer and Bible study have absolutely been there but have absolutely been at the randomness of having a little man rule my world.

God's Word is very often referred to as food or substance throughout the Bible. In fact, there are many times that God instructs the prophets to eat or swallow the scrolls that He was wanting them to know and act upon. (Ezekiel 3:1-3, Revelation 10:8,9) And Matthew 4:4 says, “ Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”.

What got me most about this chapter is that since last June, I have been practicing a variety of cleanses and scouring to find the most preferred diet to be healthy for some health issues I have been facing. Researching the paleo, vegan, vegetarian diets, perfect blends of juices, and super foods, and more. I’ve been practicing the discipline of abstaining certain foods and making an effort to include others.

Before I go on, let me pause again to say, there is nothing wrong with practicing a disciplined diet! There is nothing wrong with devoting time and attention to your body. And finally, this in no way has to deal with you, whoever you may be, but has everything to do with what I, Heather Brooke, felt pertained to ME and only ME when I read this portion of this book.

What got to me when reading this little 8 page chapter was the comparison to the Bible as food. I have been so concerned with what I eat physically, how I eat, and how that might affect my body; yet, have been content with my spiritual food to be random, a sparse daily scripture, and often binging on inspiration from a notable author or what I hear on Sundays and Wednesdays. I absolutely have been practicing devotion but have settled into a lax normalcy in the discipline of my devotion.

These two sentences really got to me:

“It is hypocritical for us to neglect reading our Bibles [with faithfulness and devotion], and then cry out in prayer as though we are hungry for God. Real hunger pushes us into the scriptures.” (p. 113)

I added the with faithfulness and devotion part. But wow, that was a “BOOM! moment” for me. How could I devote more time, energy, and discipline to eating or thinking about how I eat than my discipline to reading the Bible with specific intent.

You see, sometimes I get obsessed with the way I’m eating, I want to do it right because it is SO important. I do want to find healthy recipes, I do want to spend time to making things the real way and not getting the processed stuff. And I do feel immense guilt if I feel I am not measuring up.

These feelings are not wrong when healthy and balanced but, for me, they are not balanced when this discipline is stronger then the discipline of devotion. Reading this chapter both challenged and freed me. It challenged me to let go of the “Silas runs the show” excuse, the “I’m a student” excuse, and the “I’m trying to become a teacher right now” excuse and to begin again to practice my devotion to reading my Bible with more discipline...and even more discipline than my physical disciplines to the way I eat, or the way I prepare for teaching, or the way I do anything. This chapter also helped free me from the ideas that I place on myself that I must do absolutely whatever it takes to practice close to perfect health or I am an ignorant failure. Again, this is not an excuse to become relaxed in diet or anything else, BUT a challenge I feel that I absolutely cannot allow this discipline or any other to be greater than my daily discipline to devotion.

I write this in all transparency and in no opinion of anyone other than myself; but with the hope that my “ah-ha! moment” might also free and challenge you to place the same or greater importance of the spiritual as you do the physical.

Resource:

Wood, M., Bentley, S. (2012). Simple Devotion: Answering the Radical Call. Ashland, OH: Bookmasters, Inc.