Soul Food
Greetings church family!
If there is one thing I love to do, it is eat. Somehow I’ve been blessed with a high metabolism, so looking at me, you may not be able to tell this. But I love all food - Mexican food, Thai food, Mediterranean food, Indian food, etc. One of my all-time favorite genre of food is soul food. If you are unfamiliar with soul food, it is a traditionally African American cuisine that originated in the rural south. Some of my favorite soul food dishes include cornbread, black-eyed peas, collard greens, baked macaroni and cheese, and peach cobbler pie (I’m making myself hungry just writing about this). I still remember Thanksgivings as a child with all of the above and more filling the space on the table, and filling the house with irresistible aromas.
There is another kind of soul food that is exponentially more essential than the cuisine mentioned above. In Matthew 4:4, Jesus declares, “Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Bread meets our physical needs, but we must remember that we are not physical beings only. We are spiritual beings as well, and this part of us needs nourishment. Scripture is God’s written word, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and authored by men devoted to God. When we go without physical food for an extended period of time, we can experience symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, and increased irritability. If that time period lasts for days or weeks, the symptoms can then be the loss of the body’s ability to regulate temperature, kidney failure, a weakened immune system, and ultimately, death.
What might be some of the symptoms of spiritual food starvation? Hopelessness? Confusion? Doubt? Fear? Anxiety? Ultimately, spiritual death? To some degree or another, these symptoms can be mitigated, or avoided altogether by embracing a daily dive into Scripture. Look at what Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says about studying Scripture.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 - “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Romans 15:4 - “For whatever was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that we may have hope through endurance and through the encouragement from the Scriptures.”
So, you’re convinced about the need to daily study God’s Word. But, how does one get started. Here are 4 suggestions from which to choose from.
Devotional readings on Bible reading plan apps.
There are apps in the app store on your phone that allow you to follow 5-day or 7-day reading plans. Each day of a plan provides a devotional reading accompanied by Scripture to read as well.
Read a book of the Bible, a chapter a day.
You can choose a book of the Bible, say the book of John, and commit to reading a chapter a day. Before reading, pray for the Holy Spirit to help you to understand what you’re about to read. After reading, take note of some lessons, concepts, thoughts, etc. that resonated with you. Take note of the characters involved in the passage you read and the possible emotions they’re experiencing or the motives they may have behind their actions. From all of this, note what you’ve learned about God/Jesus/the Spirit or about the human condition or about the relationship between God and man.
Accompany your Bible study with a commentary.
This suggestion invites you to do everything you would do in suggestion #1, but accompany your reading with a Bible commentary. There are many online commentaries to choose from (www.enduringword.com is one example). When you take notes from your reading, you can include the insights from the commentary in your notes.
Memorize large passages of Scripture.
For this suggestion, pick a chapter of the Bible (Psalm 51, Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 13, etc.) and commit to learning the chapter by memory. This process will involve a lot of repetition of smaller sections of the chapter, and eventually repetition of the entire chapter itself. You’ll be surprised how much insight you gain from this frequent repetition.
Whichever method works best for you, I want to encourage you to take time to feed your heart and mind with the soul food it needs. Bread alone just won’t do!
Blessings church family, and remember, God is for you, God is with you, and God loves you!
Pastor Chris
