Health food

Do you enjoy a healthy diet? Or maybe you don’t get enough... of God’s nourishing, life-giving word? Matthew 4 v 4 provides a helpful health chart to shape our priorities.

Essential

Read Matthew 4 v 1-4

I don’t know about you, but if I’d been without food for forty days I’d think a good dinner would be my first priority. I’m not sure that I could think sensibly about anything else!

Jesus shows us a different perspective. Doing what God said was far more important than feeding His hungry stomach. So He quotes this fundamental lesson God taught Israel through their forty years wandering in the desert. Natural provision is only one side of the story. Spiritual food is essential. Without God’s words we are not truly alive.

TIME OUT

Jesus clearly had a mind full of Bible—the quote came readily to His tongue. What implications are there for the time we will need to spend with God’s word?

If God’s words are essential to live by, don’t miss a meal! Plan for regular times to read the Scriptures. Make it a priority—which will mean other things have to go lower down...

TIME OUT

It’s great (and important) to read the Scriptures and to know them—but what did Jesus do with what He had read? A big intake of food without processing it can give you bad indigestion...

Nourishing
Do you remember reading 1 Peter 2 v 2? It says: ‘Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation’. Many new believers stay babies for years. They are not clear what God says about all kinds of things; they continue doing many things that grieve their Lord, and fail to do other things that please Him. They are immature in their relationships with other Christians and do not live close to God. The reason is obvious, surely...

PRAY

Pray that God will give you friends to encourage you to be hungry for God’s word, and a church family that will both teach the Bible clearly and live it honestly.