I received an email where a woman was expressing how her fire for Jesus had gone out. She confessed that she just did not have that flame blazing in her soul any longer.
I responded to her with an analogy that I heard a speaker and friend share. He compared the distractions of the world that steal our time and attention as the appealing lure of junk food.
We consume junk food regularly because we like it and want it despite how it might make us feel and how little it benefits us.
I look at it like this. Life and all the distractions that the world offers us vie for our attention and time. We consume regularly despite how detrimental these things are to our
intimate walk with Christ.
Just like junk food we are drawn to these things. They tempt us and seem so very appealing and yet we are still left hungry and wanting. And even more so we are left, sick, uncomfortable and regretting.
Many of us if given a choice between eating a big, fried, butter laden, hot and tasty dinner complete with a big ol' piece of chocolate cake or instead choose a couple of hard boiled eggs, veggie salad and an orange for dessert, most of us would opt to bring on the butter!
We hunger for what we feed ourselves regularly.What happens if we change our diet?
When we begin to choose the salad and egg or other healthy choices consistently eventually that style of eating will become far more appealing to us.
We will even begin to hunger and crave after it.
It is no different with how we use our time, with what we "consume" on a daily basis. If you find yourself bored with reading your Bible or always distracted while praying, if you find that you no longer feel passionate about your walk with God it might just be time to take a good, hard look at "what" you are feeding yourself.
Begin in your life to get rid of all outside distractions... T.V, books, movies, worldly music and instead choose Gods word, prayer, sermons online, praise/worship music.
You will begin to truly feed your starved soul.What you once craved you will no longer want. You will
hunger after the Father, you will
crave His word and time spent on your knees will be a
balm to your heart,
food to your soul, and your
joy will become abundant!
Fire will come, passions will stir within and watch out, because God will do a work in your life and in your family!!
Tradesman and I play a sermon almost daily in our house. To some that might seem excessive but to us it's exciting. I look forward to it. I
crave it. I can hardly wait to get on that couch with him at night and pop on a sermon. We gave up watching any t.v. a couple of years ago and pretty much dropped movies as well. We still like to watch one once in a while when we get one for a good deal at the Christian bookstore but for the most part it just does not interest us much these days.
We want to be challenged, we want to be moved and listening to great godly teaching regularly does just that.
Here are a couple of our family's favorite sites.
http://www.1031sermonjams.com/ ~Little snippets of powerful sermons with music in the background. Incredible speakers and pastors. You will probably recognize most of them. When I put one of these on in my house, I can guarantee that my older children will be hovered around the computer in no time.
http://www.illbehonest.com/ ~ A mix of short and long, challenging and life changing sermons. (My favorite "You must suffer" with John Piper, Tradesmans favorite.. anything by Paul Washer)
http://www.sermonaudio.com/ ~ We like to look up our favorite speakers and pastors on here and listen to whole series of sermons done by them.
*Updated new link*
http://www.disciplemakingintl.org/media/ ~ This is David Platts resource site. A pastor that we as a family have come to respect greatly. So many incredible and challenging sermon series. We are learning much.
Another favorite passion of ours is audio books. Hanging out on the couch together cuddling and listening to a challenging book not only is great time spent, it also fosters awesome communication that spurs one another on.
http://www.christianaudio.com/ ~ This site has a
free audio book download
every month. So far we have downloaded a few books that we have loved. Crazy Love by Francis Chan, Desiring God by John Piper, Revolution in World Missions by K.P. Yohannan, currently we are listening to The Hole in our Gospel by Richard Stearns (this months free download)
This is just a small sampling of some of the many amazing resources out there available to us. We have many more sites that we love and I wish that there were more hours in the day to take it all in.
When it comes to what we put in our minds we
should be picky. With stuff that isn't necessarily bad we still
should be choosy. Whatever our diet may be, it
will have a profound effect on that which we hunger after.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." ~ Matthew 5:6
Feed the fire!
even if you are still in your jammie pants.
to eat yogurt outside in their bare feet.
to enjoy baby girl eating yogurt outside...
until baby girl decides mama has taken enough pictures...
