Are You Being Fed?
One Sunday, my wife was driving us home from church and she said something that I found simple yet profound.
Without shifting her eyes from the road she said to me, “I feel like I’ve been really fed today. My Spirit feels strong.”
She then said, “You know, it's just common sense. our physical body needs physical food. But once we eat, we digest that food, and then we use the energy. So, that’s why we have to keep having meals in order to sustain our physical energy.”
She went on to say, “It’s exactly the same with our Spirit - our spirit is alive. It’s living - which means if you don’t feed your spirit - you will get weak. If you don’t feed your spirit - you cannot get stronger.”
That interaction I had with my wife leads me to the question I want to ask you – how does your spirit feel in this moment? Do you feel spiritually alive? Do you feel spiritually energized and strong?
Or would you say your spirit feels weak? Are you weighed down with thoughts of worry, anger, anxiety, depression, or even loneliness? Are these things draining you of spiritual strength?
Could it be, that part of the reason your struggle may be so difficult is due to the fact that your spirit isn’t being fed? Perhaps you feel so drained because the real you isn’t being nourished!
Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty" (John 6:35, NIV).
Value Where There Is None
March 23, 2022 (UPI) -- Auction house Sotheby's said it expects to fetch up to $551,000 for an unusual item -- a receipt for a piece of invisible art by French artist Yves Klein.
According to Stoheby’s, “Klein sold numerous pieces of imaginary art, which he dubbed Zones of Immaterial Pictorial Sensibility, in exchange for a weight of pure gold, and he would issue receipts to the buyers."
Oddly enough, Klein (1928-1962) was considered a master of the artistic genre Nouveau Réalisme – New Realism. Yet there is simply nothing “real” about this.
The receipt in question was for a sale of a piece of imaginary art dated December 7, 1959. The receipt will go on auction April 6, 2022, and is expected to fetch the unimaginable price of over a half a million dollars.
Not everything “real” is visible or tangible. Take your soul, for example. It’s not visible or tangible. It can’t be weighed or measured or photographed. But it is, in a true sense, the most real thing about you. And that soul has immeasurable value.
Your soul – YOU – were worth the cost of the life of the Son of God, that you might enter into eternal relationship with God. Yet we don’t see the value, the worth in investing in that relationship.
While some would rather spend their resources on imaginary works of art, spend your time and energy exploring your own worth and destiny.
You were bought at a price! Own it!
“For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:20, NKJV).
"For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" (Mark 8:36, ESV).
Man Sues Hospital After He Didn't Die
In 2005, a man named John Brandick went to the doctor with troubling symptoms. The hospital performed some tests, told him he had terminal pancreatic cancer and only one year to live. When Mr. Brandick heard this news, he decided it was time to live the good life. He quit his job. He sold his home. His sold his car and most of his clothing. He started spending his life savings. He traveled. He ate at expensive restaurants. He splurged.
About a year later, around the time he was supposed to die, he went back to the hospital to find out why he was doing so well. It turned out, he didn’t have cancer after all. He merely had an inflammation of the pancreas. He was not dying. He was going to live!
Think for a moment how you would respond if you thought you were going to die of cancer and then found out you were cancer free! Mr. Brandick’s response? He sued the hospital for misdiagnosing him!
Instead of suing the hospital, perhaps Mr. Brandick should have been thankful for a year of living his life to the fullest. How many of us ever really do that? It is interesting that it took facing a death sentence before John Brandick really began to live.
What is holding you back from living your life to the full? Jesus said, "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10). Have you experienced what Jesus promised you? If not, why not? Perhaps the answer is found where He also said, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it" (Matthew 16:24-25).
In other words, the key to real life, abundant life, is death. Death by way of self-denial and self-sacrifice. Just as Mr. Brandick only began to really live be embracing his own death, so we find our lives by losing them.
Ironically, the meaning and purpose for which we were created can only be experienced in death.
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