Day 17 - Eat His book
Scripture focus: "I'm telling you the most solemn and sober truth now: Whoever believes in me has real life, eternal life. I am the Bread of Life. Your ancestors ate the manna bread in the desert and died. But now here is Bread that truly comes down out of heaven. Anyone eating this Bread will not die, ever. I am the Bread—living Bread!—who came down out of heaven. Anyone who eats this Bread will live—and forever! The Bread that I present to the world so that it can eat and live is myself, this flesh-and-blood self." John 6:47-51 The Message
"To know much and taste nothing – of what use is that?" -- Bonaventure
In today's devotional, I want to change your life. Seriously. I want to give you a word of encouragement that can relieve your anxiety and put your feet on solid ground. But first, an example. I am an emotional eater. Under duress my body (appetites) cries out for peanut butter instead of prayer. My soul (emotions and personality) demands comfort (peanut butter and chocolate) rather than confession. And even though I know that comfort and peanut butter are quick fixes that lead to bigger problems, my body and soul want what they want. I have found it helpful to make a decision to follow an eating plan set before me by a nutritionist. She's teaching me how to eat peanut butter as a food group, not as a solution to what pains me. Every morning I get up and check out my guidelines. These guidelines are not up for discussion or alteration because I made a decision to be guided. I don't debate their merits. I believe they are meritorious, and thus I ignore the little voices in my head that offer me free reign in my eating as a suggested pathway to peace. The first week of this program, I felt very limited and my body and soul chaffed at the plan. But now, I see it as the ultimate freedom. Within these guidelines I am free to choose. But I do not deviate from the instructions. This is very freeing. It's quite the paradox. I feel more free today in my eating than I ever did when I believed I was free to choose any thing I wanted to eat without a plan.
I wonder. Have we sampled spirituality and treated it like a buffet meal – picking and choosing our favorite texts, following the spiritual guides who tell us what we like to hear, assuming that we will choose wisely and believing that this is spiritual freedom? If so, I think we've made a grave error.
In Eugene Peterson's book, Eat This Book, he says, "We don't form our personal spiritual lives out of a random assemblage of favorite texts in combination with individual circumstances; we are formed by the Holy Spirit in accordance with the text of Holy Scripture. God does not put us in charge of forming our personal spiritualities. We grow in accordance with the revealed World implanted in us by the Spirit." (p.15) He says that most of us are in favor of relying on sovereign self as opposed to allowing God's Word and Spirit to form us into a people who are God-created, God-ordered, God-blessed.
Sometimes freedom is an illusion or comes wrapped in a strange package labeled "obedience."
Recommended reading: Mark 10 - 12
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